Well that was an easy title wasn’t it? Pretty much says it all right there. Peace out Blog readers! *drops mic*
But seriously. I watched this epic piece of garbage last night in my ongoing quest to watch crap TV shows so you don’t have to and let me tell you… it’s a doozy. Let’s start with the basics, shall we? Bear with me. This might take a while…
Intelligence is about a guy who ends up being a high value intelligence operative because someone put a computer chip in his head that allows him to access all sorts of top-secret classified stuff. Sound familiar? Yeah… it did to me too…
But where Chuck set up its characters right off the bat and had their flaws built-in from the get go Intelligence shows the lie to its name by dropping cookie cutter perfection into the plot. Josh Holloway’s Gabriel doesn’t JUST have a computer in his head. He is a Tier One Former Delta Force operator. And he looks like he just stepped out of an underwear ad. Oh and he’s snarky. What’s his starting character flaw? Something happened to his WIFE! GASP! zzzzzzzzz…. but otherwise the only thing missing about this guy is an animated sparkle to his teeth.
Then we have Megan Ory as Riley Neal. Easy on the eyes. WAY TOO EASY ON THE EYES. Yvonne Strahovsky in Chuck provided the cute… nay beautiful… fantasy to the charming fable whereas Megan is apparently here to be the butt of Gabriel’s dismally ineffective wit. And what sort of a name is Riley Neal anyway? Which committee of power suits concocted that? Where is the percentile table they rolled it up on? I mean COME ON. Who would come up with something like that? It’s tailor built for Megan’s tough, pretty demeanor. It’s like they had the name and poured Megan Ory into it and golly gee willickers, focus group, she fits! Ostensibly her ‘role’ in this travesty of drama is to protect Gabriel because she is a Secret Service agent Specially Trained For Protecting People and SHE has been selected because of her capacity of dealing with ‘difficult’ people. Oh and she’s amazing at her job too… so amazing that she was stabbed four times while protecting the president’s kids and STILL got them to ballet practice on time (an actual line – i’m not kidding). Because apparently she had to do it entirely herself as the Secret Service couldn’t afford back-up that day. Budget cuts you know. Damn that sequester.
In spite of that Ory is the most watchable part of the show. The kid’s got something. I can’t quite put my finger on it but there is something about her that’s waiting in this character. It’s like she believes that this dog of a plot could get better if they threw out the idiot bums who were bong hitting while writing it and is just waiting for that to happen. On the down side though, in terms of last nights ‘plot’ they completely blew it in spectacularly stupid fashion. Not only does she fail to protect her target but ends up being ‘saved’ by him not once, not twice, but THREE FREAKING TIMES during the course of one hour long episode. Way to go Secret Service! Way to go writing team for not just dipping your toe in the waters of feminine stereotypes but jumping in with both feet, wallowing, swimming in it and then drinking the whole pool of it like it was an oasis in the desert.
Finally there is Marg Helgenberger as Lillian Strand. Lillian is essentially the same character Marg played on CSI so… yeah. Just go watch that show. It’s better than this one and she’s better in it. Which should tell you all you need to know if you’ve read my thoughts on the cretinously godawful CSI.
Next let’s go to the plot… Lets not. Someone kidnaps someone…. there are bad guys… they want the chip… you’ve seen it done better on Chuck. Let’s just skip to the end in which the bad guys are predictably vanquished. (with the help of a Chinese Intelligence asset standing in for the Deus Ex Machina in the episode)
So the bad guys are vanquished. Riley Neal karate chops the traitor in their midst in the throat and he goes unconscious. They capture the renegade Chinese agent that kidnapped the scientist. They are all in the same building at this time. They exchange bad Chinese renegade guy to swap for information on Gabriel’s wife (gasp! Snooze) and then we see the evil traitor guy shifting on the couch as the Chinese gal they implanted with a NEW chip wakes up… They are apparently NOT captured…. even though they were in the same building at the time and the last scene we saw them in they were both unconscious. Seriously writers? I mean come on. Honestly… My cats can write better than that. Did you not have this read by your friends? Did you fire your continuity editor due to budget cuts? (damned sequester) or did you rush this crap project to the green light so that you didn’t miss out on the big pile of cash you had coming? No one i know would have made this kind of mistake. NO ONE! People i know who don’t even WRITE wouldn’t make this kind of mistake. People i know who don’t even READ wouldn’t make this mistake.
All in all Intelligence is one of the most hackneyed, simplistic, idiotic, stumbling, shitty endeavors produced for the small screen since last years Golden Boy (you can read my review of that hunk of frozen dog shit here) Don’t bother. Tell your friends not to bother. Write to the studios to tell them to send the writers back to grade school so they can learn the basic fundamentals of plot continuity. Tell them it is not okay to hire twelve year olds to write produced scripts. Tell them it isn’t okay to rush something into production so they don’t miss out on the stack of cash. Tell them… just tell them… in a universe in which they are competing with Game of Thrones, Justified and any number of professionally written shows this just smacks of disgusting laziness.
Here’s the Executive Producer: Michael Seitzman
And the show is on CBS on mondays if you really want to torture your eyeballs and your writing soul. I don’t recommend it. In fact…. kill it with fire. Purge it from the memory. Or read a book.
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