I have fond memories of Jeff Goldblum in Tenspeed and Brownshoe, and I hoped that Raines might capture some of the same feeling. It did, just a little. I was caught by the opening voice-over (mention Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald, and you have me), so I stuck with the program. Raines is a homicide detective. The gimmick is that he sees dead people. SPOILER ALERT!! Nobody who's seen The Sixth Sense is going to be surprised by the big reveal at the end. I sure wasn't. END SPOILER ALERT!! The thing is that the gimmick isn't necessary. Goldblum is quirky enough without it. I suppose the idea of talking to the victims after they're dead would be even cooler if they'd actually tell him who killed him, but they don't know. Or at least the one in this first show didn't. So instead, they'll give hints, lie, and in other words behave just like an ordinary suspect or client of some P.I.
Speaking of P.I.s, there's on in this show too. He's no Andy Barker, but I liked him because he had a statue of the Maltese Falcon on his desk. Or maybe it was the real Falcon. Anyway, he's a victim, so we won't be seeing him again. His ghost didn't talk to Raines, because he saw who killed him, and that would have spoiled everything.
This show is nothing special. I'll probably watch it now and then, though, because it has a kind of retro feel to it and because I like Goldblum.
9 comments:
Very so-so. Too driven by its concept, I thought. And the mumbling was annoying. It looked good though. Made me want to get out of Detroit, that's for sure.
Liked the Andy Richter one.
He doesn't talk to dead people; he makes the victim his imaginary companion and the victim / shotgun seat buddy changes his/her character as information and clues trickle in. The victim can't tell Raines the identity of the killer because the victim is a projection from Raines' own mind, and Raines doesn't know. Once the crime is solved, Raines doesn't need the imaginary companion any more (and presumably vice versa), and the shotgun seat is vacant.
Oh.
Yeah, Bill, I think you must've missed a minute or three toward the beginning, wherein his ex-partner and he were discussing Raines's tendency to imagine victims speaking to him (hence the mild cleverness of the "ghost" chewing him out for suddenly imagining her in clownish makeup and with a cig and a stiff drink when he belatedly realizes she was working as a prostitute). But your assessment is otherwise spot-on from my perspective...Goldblum almost saves it, and it's almost good (Ms. Davalos as guest victim was not a bad choice, for those of us who wouldn't've minded the ANGEL spinoff obviously being prepared for to feature her).
I'm giving this one a chance, though I believe NBC has already cut back on the number of episodes it's ordered.
I missed it. I took my wife's word for it that everybody was in re-runs, and forgot that I had intended to catch this one. I may have even caught Andy's show, but I'm not really a fan.
I caught the rerun on Friday.
Eh? Nothing special.
Anyone who had read the reviews knew about the partner as it was mentioned in the ones I read.
_I didn't care for it. Particularly that there was too much of the ooh ooh dotty background music. I did enjoy the Andy Barker half hour - quirky but without being jokey.
_There was a Cdn series back in the 80s called Seeing Things, where its newspaper reporter would have visons of a murder. It could be described as Andy Barker meets Raines.
Only SEEING THINGS was better than either RAINES or ANDY BARKER (or MONK, or...). It got a limited syndicated run in the US.
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