The Lost Return Changed And Worth Watching In The 4400 - The Complete First Season

The Good: Excellent direction, decent plot, interesting characters, good acting
The Bad: Cliche moments, Build-up to the season finale.
The Basics: When 4400 people who have vanished over the years return to Earth without aging, two investigators set out to learn what happened to them.


Several people I respect recommend The 4400 to me and I'll admit that I originally resisted giving it any attention because it was produced around the same time as the other "alien abduction" stories like Taken and I thought it was merely an offshoot of that brief fad. Having given it a chance with the ridiculously inexpensive The 4400 - The Complete First Season on DVD, I'm happy to say I was wrong to hold off so long. This is a series that is worth time and attention, but it requires both. The 4400 is not a show for a casual watcher; it is heavily serialized and each episode builds on the one before it.

When a comet that is about to pass Earth makes an abrupt course change, the Department of Homeland Security in Seattle is put on high alert. When the comet is revealed as a ball of light that deposits 4400 people who have disappeared over the years in the woods near Seattle, Agents Tom Baldwin and Diana Skouris are put on the case to investigate who - and what - the 4400 are. They encounter a creepy girl who unabashedly predicts the future, a young man (Tom's nephew) who has the ability to heal people, and a man who disappeared from Korea who finds a reincarnation of the white woman he loved back then. Baldwin and Skouris find their personal and professional lives put in jeopardy by members of the 4400 who manifest telekinetic powers, superhuman strength, and a serial killer who appears to be able to plant himself in other people.

The 4400 may instantly seem like a weird knockoff of The X-Files (reviewed here!) where the "creature of the week" is always one of the 4400 and the mythology episodes are always a part of ongoing storyline, but The 4400 manages to be distinctly different. The 4400 has elements of a political thriller combined with the science fiction mystery of who the 4400 are. In short, more than simply a "here's an interesting twist on humanity" story each week, the stories continue to build on one another to explore the consequences of who the 4400 are. And that's pretty clever and it is what makes the show work.

The strength of The 4400 is that it - especially in the pilot "The Return" - simply allows some moments to be, without explaining them or insulting the audience by repeating them. This is especially true of the character of Richard Tyler, who was a black man in the military in the '50s and returns to a world far more integrated than he ever suspected it could be. As he sits and observes the world around him, the viewer understands what he is going through, without it having to be explained more.

And in one of the clever aspects of the first season, Richard's alterations as a returnee are not revealed. He is one of the characters to watch, whose presence on the screen energizes the show. He is well-portrayed by actor Mahershalalhashbaz Ali who plays him with a humanity and truth that is very real and often vulnerable. Amid all of the other character conflicts and supernatural exploits being portrayed, Ali creates a character who is perhaps the most human of the lot.

At the other end of the spectrum is Conchita Campbell, a young girl who is given a supreme acting challenge of portraying a returnee who appears to have an incredible gift while caught in a child's body. Conchita delivers a performance that is a perfect blend of innocence and creepy. She modulates between a girl with the impressive power to simply know the future and a little girl who just wants to be a little girl. And it is the actress who makes the character work here.

The two leads of the show, Joel Gretsch and Jaqueline McKenzie as Tom and Diane are the actors who bear the most burden for making the show credible. Ironically, it is Tom and Diane who are the most cliched characters in the ensemble. Tom is in the middle of a divorce, Diane is single and assertive, compassionate and wow, they get paired together. The implied sexual chemistry writes itself, but is unactualized in the first season. And McKenzie takes the cliche of the single woman working a career path who does not have time for a social life and makes it work only through her performances in scenes with Conchita. McKenzie and Conchita Campbell play off one another in a way that makes Diane's character seem more than simply a stereotype.

Joel Gretsch seemed to me from the beginning to be a poor man's Mark Valley, an irony considering that Mark Valley appears in the series in the latter two episodes of the season. Gretsch is the kind of generic good looking guy who barely breaks that mold and is only able to in the context of his character dealing with his comatose son. How Gretsch is billed over McKenzie is baffling to me.

And that brings us to the real weakness within the first season of The 4400; the series exchanges its early brilliance of showing, not telling, for a series of cliches. Jordan Collier, a 4400 businessman who seems to want to protect the 4400 and fight for their rights, becomes a cliche of a ruthless businessman within his three episodes in the first season. The season climaxes in a witless chase scene and a shooting that is fairly hackneyed.

But what overcomes all that is the humanity, especially in the character of Richard (and, by extension, the performance of Ali), who continues to be subtle and who takes all of the big things happening in the world of the 4400 and makes them personal and real. And it is that that makes the first season of The 4400 worth watching.

And where it is going from there is what makes me look forward to the second season of the series.

For other science fiction television shows, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Heroes
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Fringe - Season 1

7/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2006 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Partnerships In Transition: Once And Again Season Two

The Good: Excellent acting, nice character development, good balance, Good writing
The Bad: Awkward soap-opera moments, Dramas outside the family
The Basics: While Rick and Lily evolve their relationship, they run into many problems with their children, ex-spouses, and occupations in this realistic drama.


The original concept for Once And Again was a good one; two divorced parents meet, fall in love, and navigate the struggles of blending their families. In the first season of the television drama, Once And Again (first season DVD set is reviewed here!) fell out of balance, in the mid-season shifting abruptly from the new partnership of Lily Manning and Rick Sammler to the end of the partnership between Lily and her husband Jake. Rick falls out of play for much of the latter-half of the first season.

The producers of Once And Again apparently realized this and the second season of the show returns with the partnership of Lily and Rick front and center, evolving naturally through the second season. In fact, the show's best moments focus on Rick and Lily, though Rick's daughter Jessie gets some awesome developments and scenes. Conversely, the season's disappointing aspects come in the form of the larger than life issues that the show suddenly takes on. Allow me to explain.

The second season of Once And Again begins a few months after season one's finale, with Rick and Lily reconnecting following a summer mostly-apart. They take hesitant steps to move as a couple into the lives of their various children and those efforts are balanced with them taking time to be together. As Rick and Lily get closer, Eli becomes more rebellious and he starts a band, Grace finds herself hanging out with social misfits and outcasts, Jessie develops an eating disorder (cleverly alluded to in the first season), and Zoe goes through the usual struggles of a preteen. Lily finds new strength in her new job, though she must deal with sexual harassment and her sister Judy who revamps the bookstore she previously owned.

On the other end, Rick and Miles Drintell begin work on a mammoth development known as Atlantor. Atlantor makes Rick a public figure and the scope of the development puts him under attack by Karen, his ex-wife, who represents many community organizations that object to the Atlantor project.

Unfortunately, as much of the plot becomes consumed with Rick duking it out with Karen and Grace over the Atlantor project, the show gets away from the meat of the concept. Not the Lily/Rick relationship, which becomes deeply intertwined with the Atlantor issues, but rather the concept of a family drama that focuses on the realism of attempting to blend two families. The show takes on an overly dramatic quality at times with Rick and Karen ending up in court a few times, adding something of a fantastic quality to the show.

In stark contrast, the Jessie storyline, wherein her anorexia is exposed and treated, is brilliant for its realism. Once Jessie gets into counseling, the show has numerous scenes that are unlike anything else on television. Jessie talks, the therapist listens, we see a young woman working through problems. Nothing huge or earth-moving, but certainly leaps and bounds for the character.

And this is, ultimately, a show about characters, individuals who do things and grow in different directions. Here is how the second season finds them:

Lily Manning - Reconciled to divorcing Jake and getting on her life with Rick, Lily juggles her love for Rick, her children and her job. Her story is one of standing by her new man through troubles while she confronts difficulties of her own at work,

Rick Sammler - Unwittingly finds himself in the crosshairs of public debate when his project with Miles Drintell becomes a huge development that outrages local advocacy groups. He must deal with reaching out for his potential success and taking it, while dealing with his rebellious son, his adversarial ex-wife and his anorexic daughter. All this while maintaining and growing a relationship with Lily,

Jake Manning - Devoted to the restaurant, he works to be a better father to Grace and Zoe while moving on with his life. That is, until a Giant Plot Moment, which will shatter his life forever,

Karen Sammler - Now befriended to Judy, Karen must wrestle with issues of letting go of both Eli and Jessie. She develops the strength to make decisions completely independent of Rick, with results that radically change the family,

Eli - Suddenly starts a band, falls in with a troubled girl named Carla and rebels against everything as his academic and sports life suffers,

Grace - Befriends a social misfit named Carla, learns to drive, and starts to date a social outcast named Spence. As she spends time with Carla and Eli, she finds herself troubled to realize that her feelings are a lot more confused than she originally suspected,

Jessie - In denial about her parents' never reconciling, she develops an eating disorder. Her story is one of finding herself and growing up,

Zoe - Provides comic relief,

and Judy - No longer with Sam Blue, she befriends Karen and puts her struggle to find love into her bookstore, with brilliant results.

This is, at its best, a family drama with character at its center. The advantage of Once And Again is that its characters are brought to life by an immensely talented cast. One of the ironies of the casting for Once And Again is that it is an adult show that gave rise to Shane West, a teenage heartthrob. Those who moon over West are far too young to "get" this show. Shane West is, however, remarkably talented as Eli and he plays off Billy Campbell brilliantly.

The real winners in the second season of Once And Again are the women. Susanna Thompson evolves her character of Karen from a somewhat monolithic antagonist to Rick in season one into a fully developed, complex, emotive character. Thompson's brilliance is that she manages to make the transformation through her body language, her expressions a softening of her tone, a movement of her eyes. She is brilliant and it is clear the actress is contributing a lot to the character's intricacies.

Julia Whelan, who plays Grace Manning is similarly brilliant. Clearly classically trained, Whelan is a rising star whose talent will take her very far. She plays the average and disaffected young woman perfectly, portraying Grace with something more than what is in the lines and words she delivers. Whelan is brilliant at exploding the potential of Grace with her soulful eyes and passionate deliveries.

The hands-down best performances in the second season of Once And Again are delivered by young actress Evan Rachel Wood. She is brilliant in her character struggles as she - in the course of the season - transforms Jessie from a girl into a young woman. Wood is charismatic, never pushing Jessie from angsty realism into melodrama. She is a pro and her scenes, especially the counseling scenes which have the potential to be gruesomely awkward, radiate with intrigue and nuance that is far beyond anything any other young actor or actress is doing on screen today. She is, frankly, awesome and her performances are worth the price of the boxed set DVD alone!

As for the DVD set, it's nice (a lot thinner than the originally-released Season 1 boxed set). Unfortunately, fans of the series are likely to remain disappointed with the way Buena Vista fails to support this title. One episode has commentary. That's it. No deleted scenes, no behind-the-scenes, nothing. One episode with commentary. Is the commentary good? Yes. Could fans of the show hope for more? Yes.

On the plus side, there is still one more season that could be packed with extras. This is a show that deserves them. A wonderful show for anyone who has been divorced, struggles with relationship issues or anyone who wants to watch talented people act like individuals going through (mostly) realistic struggles in life, love, parenting and/or growing up.

For other dramas focused on families, please check out my reviews of:
Veronica Mars
Freaks And Geeks
Parenthood Season One

10/10

For other television program reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2008, 2005 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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Family Drama At Its Best: Once And Again Season One Succeeds!

The Good: Amazing character work, Great acting, Nice plots
The Bad: Imbalance in the use of cast and characters, No DVD bonus features!
The Basics: Once And Again tells the story of two families that are coming together when their single parents fall in love, and all of the repercussions of that!


Every now and again, a television show comes along that is just plain fabulous and it deserves the acclaim it receives. They are few and far between and at the end of the 1990s, the only one that actually achieved its acclaim and deserved it was arguably NYPD Blue. My favorite, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, never received the praise it deserved and so until Once And Again came along, there was not a show that was both purely great and recognized by the critics that lasted long enough to find its audience (Sports Night, for example dying a horrible death right around the same time Once And Again was on). Once And Again deserved the praise it received and it never deserved the lack of audience it suffered.

Once And Again tells the story of the Sammlers and the Mannings, two families that are marred by divorce and have resulted in two children a piece being raised by two parents separately. Rick Sammler is father to Jessie and Eli, ex-husband to Karen. Lily is in the process of divorcing her cheating husband Jake and takes pride in being the mother of Grace and Zoe. In the pilot episode, Rick and Lily meet and fall in love.

Their love, it seems, is continually complicated by the various factors in their lives. Rick's son Eli has a learning disability and his ex-wife Karen is almost as demanding with Rick as she is with Eli. Jessie faces self-confidence issues and the youthful fantasy of having the whole family she was born into together. But the bulk of the complications come on Lily's side. Lily and Jake are not yet divorced and as the season goes on, Lily has to face that and she does, with an indiscretion with Jake. Their one night fling sickens Lily and taints her relationship with Rick. As the two slowly work back to one another, the divorce with Jake gets ugly over the restaurant Jake and Lily are part owners in. To complicate things more, family crisis after family crisis arises to strain their relationship.

But through it all, there is this love.

At the end of the day, this is a drama about love, how people love and how it works in complicated, modern-day family situations. The coming together of two different families is something that has not been explored well in the film media and Once And Again is pretty much the best exploration of it out there. Why? Such blended families, those where there are children from prior marriages in both adults' life, are complicated and therefore need more than simply ninety minutes to tell the story with all of the variables well. Therefore, to do a story about a blended family, one needs a television series, not just a film.

Once And Again is an adult television show. The adults are dealing with adult problems like love, children, divorce, infidelity, and death. There's nothing childish about the series, though some of the episodes do focus on the problems and perils encountered by the children in their schools and life outside. The episodes are written with a keen insight for the way people interact and live their lives. The dialog in Once And Again is tight and realistic. The people speak more as real people we might know or as people in the situations they find themselves in than individuals in a drama series. And Once And Again is serialized, requiring an adult commitment to the show week after week to build the characters up and progress them forward.

That is not to say that the series is not entertaining. The realism only makes it more entertaining. It fills a void in television that existed before the series came on and has existed since it was canceled. The characters are interesting and they find themselves in difficult situations and how they get themselves out of them are worthy of attention. Part of this is entertainment is created by what I call the "honesty rooms." The characters speak directly to the viewer at different points, articulating their deepest, most honest thoughts. Some of them are desperately painful, like admissions of deep wounds, some are hilarious, such as when Grace notes that "boys are so dumb. It's amazing they survive."

The only real problem with the first season of Once And Again is the imbalance in the show toward Lily's character. As the season goes on, she dominates in a way that almost buries the Rick character. Still, all of the characters are intriguing. The main stories involve:

Lily, who opens the series with an inner strength that causes her to separate from her cheating husband, Jake. Lily falls in love and experiences a rebirth, which empowers her to take charge of her own life, live without fear and strike out against Jake and pursue a new profession all while exploring a relationship with Rick.

Rick Sammler is a somewhat depressed divorcee who comes alive when he meets Lily. He is plagued by his ex-wife Karen and as his personal life gets better and better, he falls into a destructive work relationship with a crazy advertising mogul named Miles Drentell to the detriment of his partnership with fellow architect David, who is perpetually single.

Karen Sammler is a perpetual worrier who wants what's best for Jessie and Eli, but finds her position in their lives threatened by Lily. As a result, she opens up to love again, first to a kind, but dull man, then to a much younger man who challenges her in every way.

Jake Manning is the owner of Phil's, the restaurant founded by Lily's father and now managed by Jake. Stressed by his extramarital affairs and complications with the restaurant, Jake works hard to be a decent father, but usually comes across as a jerk.

Eli Sammler, a basically good young man who comes to sexual maturity in the first season and is forced to prioritize his life when his learning disability makes him choose between doing what he wants and being knocked off the basketball team where he thrives.

Grace Manning, a young woman mired deeply in fear of everything that surrounds her. In the first season, she faces the dissolving of her family and in the process opens up to the consequences of truth and her first love. She's perhaps the most realistic and intriguing character in the series and her process of coming out of her isolation is compelling and wonderful to watch.

While Jessie, Zoe and Lily's sister Judy all have character arcs and growth throughout the season, they are primarily supporting players in the first season of Once And Again. They tend to live in the orbits of the primary characters listed above. At least in the first season.

The acting in Once And Again is magnificent. While Sela Ward won awards for playing Lily, Billy Campbell, who plays Rick is just as good. Both have subtle, emotive performances that traverse the whole range of human emotion. As the series progresses, we see them loving, whimsical, angry, hurt, and impassioned. Add to that, Ward and Campbell have wonderful screen chemistry that makes their relationship believable.

But the real acting winners come in the supporting performances of Susanna Thompson and Julia Whelan. Thompson plays Karen with so much longing and hurt that it is sometimes difficult to watch her. Yet, she is compelling and strong as an actress consistently delivering empathetic performances that are worthy of awards. As her character must face the loss of the potential with her ex-husband, Thompson continues to deepen her performance with subtlety and nuance.

Julia Whelan plays Grace and the actress has a presence to her that is impressive for such a young person. She dominates her scenes as a character that begins as a scared brat and quickly deepens into an individual that has layers of fear that are being pulled back to reveal a confused, vulnerable, intelligent and loving young woman. Whelan is an expert at using her face and body language to portray the changes in confidence Grace undergoes in the first season.

Over three DVDs, the 22 stories of the first year of the Sammlers and Mannings is told wonderfully with realism and compassion and a clear understanding of how humans work. The only real disappointment in the DVD collection is that there are no extras. And this is certainly a show that deserves as much commentary as it has critical acclaim and loyal fans.

While not a perfect show, this is possibly the strongest first season of any television show I've ever seen (right up there with Sports Night), making it a great value in DVD form.

For other family dramas, please check out my reviews of:
Parenthood - Season 1
Gilmore Girls
Six Feet Under

9.5/10

For other television or film reviews, please check out my index pages on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2007, 2003 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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What Do You Get When You Have Three Funny People And One Crummy Script? "The Outrageous Okona"

The Good: Good actors, I suppose
The Bad: Horrible characters, Deathly unfunny, Ridiculously simplistic, Utterly nonsensical
The Basics: In one of the series' most obvious attempts to be funny, "The Outrageous Okona" fails miserably at bringing humor or character development, wasting both time and talent.


Weaker than the entire first season, the opening episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation's second season fail to innovate in any real or interesting way, nearly destroying even a die hard fan's appreciation of this classic show. Continuing that trend is a truly awful episode "The Outrageous Okona." To date, there are very few people who have not tried to exploit their relationship to Star Trek. Two people who have never made much noise about their presence on the show are Billy Campbell (later of Once And Again and The 4400 fame) and Saturday Night Live veteran Joe Piscopo. Both are featured in this episode.

Billy Campbell (credited as William O. Campbell) plays Okona, a rogue ship captain who owns his own vessel, keeps his own hours and is basically a star-bound swashbuckler. When he needs repairs, the Enterprise comes to his rescue. He returns the favor by flirting with as many female officers as possible and seducing them. I suppose it's a fair trade. The Saturday Night Live veteran plays The Comic, a holodeck comedian that is conceived to teach Data about humor. When two unfriendly neighbor planets come in search of Okona, things take a turn for the faux-menacing and everything gets resolved.

Okay, this is easily one of the low points of the series. You have the wonderful comedic resource of Whoopi Goldberg on the cast playing deadpan to the hilarious (out of character) Brent Spiner. The scenes with Guinan and Data are grinworthy amusing at best. The scenes on the holodeck where Data attempts a stand up routine are just plain horrible. Whoever wrote this episode had no sense of comedy. The character The Comic is using 1950s humor and delivering it poorly. It's flat out stupid to believe that the jokes he tells would be considered funny in the 24th Century; they're passe now. More than that, they illustrate a lack of imagination on the part of the writing staff. Such obviously dates and human-centric humor pulls us out of the time and place Star Trek The Next Generation creates and reminds us "this is just a television show." Great television never does that.

I think the reason Billy Campbell doesn't brag about his Trek affiliation is that his character is a caricature. Okona lacks depth, his words are cliches and his style is pretty much by the book of what one would expect for a space swashbuckler. There's a whole rivalry and annoyingly cryptic set of dialog between Okona and Worf that further detracts from both the character and the episode.

For fans of Star Trek The Next Generation this episode is a disappointment in that it trivializes Data and makes him seem stupid instead of just naive. This episode serves little purpose and the problem that finally presents itself (too late into the episode) is one that seems simple and is easily resolved. For anyone who doesn't watch Star Trek The Next Generation, this is just a 43 minute collection of absurd, un-funny lines without any real depth, character or meaning. In short, it's a waste of time for fan and casual viewer alike.

[Knowing that VHS is essentially a dead medium, it's worth looking into Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Complete Second Season on DVD, which is also a better economical choice than buying the VHS. Read my review of the sophomore season by clicking here!
Thanks!]

1/10

For other Star Trek episode or movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2008, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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