|
CARLA RULES, BUT "THRESHOLD"
CAN'T SCARE UP A GOOD STORY
September 30, 2005
Two years ago, Carla Gugino starred in "Karen Sisco" as a U.S. Marshal fighting crime with style, and it was good. Damn good. Best new show of 2003. Nobody watched. "Karen" got canceled.
Now, Carla Gugino stars in "Threshold" as a government operative pretending to be a U.S. Marshal fighting aliens with style, and it is less good. Much less good. Whether it can repeatedly draw an audience is yet to be seen, but if this show sticks around for a while, I'm going to be ticked since it was "Sisco," which only lasted seven episodes before ABC yanked it, that should have made Carla a star.
Of all the new sci-fi/fantasy shows invading our TVs this fall, "Threshold" was the one I most looked forward to, based mostly on the strength of the cast. Along with the talented and insanely attractive Gugino, "Threshold" also gives plum roles to Brent Spiner, known to most as "Star Trek: The Next Generation"'s Data but always capable of more, and Peter Dinklage, star of the film "The Station Agent." Dinklage, by the way, only stands about four feet six inches, but the man's acting prowess is through the roof.
There's also some talented people behind the scenes, as well. Noted movie scribe David S. Goyer, who penned the excellent "Batman Begins," and Brannon Braga, who's written about a gazillion "Star Trek" episodes in its various incarnations over the last 15 years, both serve as executive producers. Goyer also directed the pilot.
Unfortunately, any excitement this show generated in advance turned to sleepy boredom about two-thirds of the way through the two-hour premiere. "Threshold" tells a tale that has been told many times before in many different ways - an alien menace comes to Earth "Body Snatchers" style and starts infecting humans, which then turn against their own kind to achieve world domination.
Gugino plays Dr. Molly Anne Caffrey, a government strategist who becomes, as one character tells her, "the most important person on the planet" after a group of ship workers in the mid-Atlantic are exposed to a shiny but unimpressive special effect that materializes in thin air. You see, Caffrey wrote a plan called "Threshold" that outlines a course of action for the United States to take in case of an alien invasion. It's clear that her country needs her once some of ship workers die from grossly unnatural causes (their faces are horribly contorted) and the others escape to land and start murdering, pillaging, and causing your basic mayhem. Caffrey quickly assembles her team of scientists, mathematicians and linguists to save mankind while keeping it all off the TV news.
"Threshold" conveys none of this story with any flair or wit or originality. In fact, it's not even scary. About 450 times an episode, the show tries to spook you out by revealing the alien "fractal pattern," a circular design that looks a combination between a TV news hurricane graphic and the symbol for radiation. This fractal pattern shows up everywhere - on video surveillance tapes, in blood spatter, even in rush hour traffic. It's a lame device used to distract viewers before they realize that the mythology of "Threshold" is vague and wholly uninteresting. When Caffrey's team isn't spouting off sci-fi mumbo jumbo about an alien signal that "unzips DNA strands," they dream about strange young men wearing masks and other surreal images that inexplicably connect to the real world.
At only three hours in, the plot of "Threshold" needn't yet entirely make sense. But the storylines on this show come close to insulting the intelligence. CBS's promo department has been heavily advertising the series as "one of the best mysteries of the TV season." That's false advertising, my friends. "Threshold"'s puzzles don't even qualify as mysterious. Mundane is more like it.
No secret government plan is needed to figure out how to eliminate these aliens. Just change the channel.
|
|
