Tag Archives: Secrets and Lies

Reviewing My 2014-15 Predictions: ABC

11 May

ABC

Well, there’s no point in making predictions if you’re not willing to revisit them later and see just how wrong you were. Now that the final decisions are in, let’s review how I did.

ABC next. My fall predictions are here and my spring predictions are here, and in short, every show gets one of three predictions: that it will air 12 episodes or fewer, 13 episodes or more, or be renewed.

Forever

Prediction: 12-

Reality: 13+

Forever seemed like an instant failure to me, as a supernatural procedural starring a unpronounceable Welshman, but then it was actually decently successful and seemed on pace for renewal. Ultimately, it landed on the borderline and ABC went with a thumbs down. I’m fine with my guess here.

Black-ish

Prediction: Renewal

Reality: Renewal

 

This and the following show seemed like ABC’s two buzziest and most widely promoted shows, both did very well, meeting or surpassing expectations and will be coming back.

How to Get Away With Murder

Prediction: Renewal

Reality: Renewal

Like Black-ish above, except probably even more anticipated because it’s from ABC overlord Shonda Rhimes. I felt best about this renewal out of all Fall network shows.

Selfie

Prediction: 13+

Reality: 12-

This certainly seemed like a failure, and looking back I’m not sure why I thought it would even last a full season. Probably my personal fandom of John Cho and Karen Gillan helped, along with a prominent billboard near my apartment, but I should have gotten this right.

Manhattan Love Story

Prediction: 12-

Reality: 12-

This was the first cancellation of the year, which I should really pick as a special category next year. This seemed like a pretty obvious dead on arrival sitcom. One of the easier calls.

Cristela

Prediction; 12-

Reality: 13+

Buried on Friday night, next to a Tim Allen show that it seemed to have very little in common with, and starting fairly late in the fall, this seemed destined to fail. Cristela came out to surprisingly (to me, anyway) mildly positive reviews however, and did better than expected, which still wasn’t quite enough for a second season. Points for beating my expectations, though.

Spring:

Galavant:

Prediction: 12-

Reality: Renewal

Galavant is a fit with ABC’s family friendly lineup, and it’s silly fairy tale like Once Upon a Time, but seriously, a comedy musical? That seemed ill-fated for sure. I was wrong, but I don’t feel bad about this pick.

Marvel’s Agent Carter:

Prediction: Renewal

Reality: Renewal

I should have mentioned this above, but in what has to be an incredible rarity if not an actual first, EVERY spring ABC show was renewed. That’s insane and incredibly unlikely and I’m still stunned. Marvel’s Agent Carter, as part of the Marvel Universe, on a network owned by the same people who own Marvel, seemed about as close to a slam dunk as there is, and though it actually ended up being a pretty close call, it made it.

Fresh Off the Boat

Prediction: 12-

Reality: Renewal

In hindsight, this seems like a perfect fit on ABC and makes total sense as a renewal. At the time, I was troubled by its time slot, away from the ABC comedies it was most similar to, and from some of the not entirely positive articles about how disenchanted Eddie Huang, on whom the show is based, had been by the process.

Secrets and Lies

Prediction: 12-

Reality: Renewal

This one still seems like a 12- to me. I can’t believe it got renewed. Before I rechecked to write this, I could have sworn it was cancelled. ABC executives must have really been feeling lucky and didn’t want this to throw off their string of successes.

American Crime

Prediction: Renewal

Reality: Renewal

This was an IMPORTANT show, with a couple of noteworthy actors, and though it ended up being borderline in terms of being picked up, I erred on the side that if it was borderline, ABC would pick it up for the PRESTIGE, and I was right.

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Spring 2015 Review: Secrets and Lies

16 Mar

Secrets and Lies

It’s impossible not watch new TV shows and movies without viewing them through the prism of existing works we’re already familiar with. It’s impossible, for example, to watch an episode of Allegiance or The Assets and not think that either of those shows is a cheap rip-off of The Americans, regardless of whether they are cheap rip-offs or merely inferior similar programs which were conceived entirely independently coincidently. Likewise, whether or not it was conceived entirely independently, it’s hard to watch the pilot of Secrets and Lies and not immediately think of Gone Girl. Both focus on a media feeding frenzy that accompanies an attractive man accused of being a cold-blooded killer in a high profile murder case, and both hold out initially the information regarding whether the did he or didn’t he actually do it. Unfortunately, Secrets and Lies has these elements of Gone Girl but none of the quality which makes Gone Girl work.

Ryan Phillippe plays a hot father who, while out on a run, finds his neighbor’s young son dead somewhere on his path. Phillippe and his family live in Charlotte, a city in which, on his block at least, every neighbor knows the other, and gossip spreads fast. When no other suspect is quickly uncovered, Phillippe becomes the primary suspect, and the media, despite the lack of any evidence, pounce. In response, the nation and the locals turn against him. At the same time, he’s struggling with his marriage, with the implication that he participated in an affair which has his marriage on the rocks.

A persistent detective played by Juliette Lewis pesters and pesters him, suspecting him the whole time, but trying to subtly have him incriminate himself, rather than attack him straight out. Most of the first episode consists of her trying to trip him up, while he never quite gives in, and this happens about four different times, as he vacillates between trying to lawyer up to be smart, and trying to convince the world he has nothing to hide. Slowly, however, some incriminating evidence slowly builds even while he proclaims his innocence to suggest at least the possibility of his guilt.

The show promises both secrets and lies, but the first episode under delivers on both, not making the most of its first forty minutes to reel viewers in. The only lies, at least that we know about, are Philippe’s about his whereabouts, which he doesn’t remember (very drunk) and the only secret, revealed at the end of the episode, could not be more obvious to anyone who has ever watched a television show.

More than lacking substance, Secrets and Lies commits the more fatal sin of being boring. For a show whose goal appears to be edge-of-the-seat entertaining with a little bit of soapy intrigue, the first episode sure doesn’t make you want to know what happened or care at all about any of the characters.

Will I watch it again no? No. Secrets and Lies tries to be a sexy, mysterious potboiler, where you don’t know whose lying, and who isn’t, and what secret, or so the title implies, is right around the corner, but it is not one of these things except surprisingly boring and unsurprisingly unsurprising.

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