Reviews

The concept of the bad guy being forced to help solve crime has a limited shelf life. Unless. The more episodes I watch, the more I'm convinced Sir in the basement is just Gabi's imagination. She's come up with this fantasy to deal with her trauma.

There's no reason he hasn't yelled for help when people were in the house. There's been no explanation on how she got him in there, how she does his laundry, etc. And there's no future for the show.

However, if he's actually caught, she sees the reality, boom. Then next season, she comes out of a stint in a mental health facility. And she decides if her fantasy Sir can help, then the real one can as well.

It gives the show a way forward. It gets Gosselaer out of the basement ( and into prison) . It allows the romance of Gabi and Trent to continue.

I really want to like this series. I like Scott Caan.

This episode is so obviously a Jeffery Epsyein/Ghislaine Maxwell ripoff, but with college kids. Not the most original.

But if my kid was missing and some person said the way to help was to rub eggs on me, then read some wax impressions, I'd be screaming for the Chief of Police. The Kemi character is off putting. Burning sage in an office? Claiming to be married 12 times throughout the centuries? Why would I want a nut job to be looking for my kid? Then with one picture and suspect computer skills, she zeroed in on locations in seconds. Yikes!!!.

And the lead detective having sex with her co-worker/fiance in the supply closet? Time is so important, but we have 10 minutes to be completely unprofessional. That's distracting.

And the Keith sub-plot? Ripped off from the guy who pretended to be Timothy Pitzen. Someone better start coming up with new ideas.

The pilot is off to a shaky start. This 'putting the band back together' episode felt like a weak way to excuse the missing members of the team (Reid and Simmons).

Rossi and Prentiss did not age well. It's not the grey hair. Was it the actors? Was it the makeup? Joe Mantegna really looks like he's been ill. The chemistry of the whole team was missing. Talking to a screen is not the same as the team interacting.

But besides that, the story lines are odd. After that bloated finale where Garcia and Alvez (as a sub for Morgan) suddenly lusted for each other, the show tries to Retcon us into thinking it was just a dinner - for her. Garcia went from a free spirit to a Martha Stewart clone, with flowery wallpaper, a cookie-cutter apartment and Anglophile get togethers.

When Rossi first re-joined the group, there was this big talk about them working as a team and not being lone wolves. Now, they're all split up and solving cases on their own. Guess they don't NEED to be a team.

The case of the trained 19-year-old with the sophistication of a 40-year-old ended with a whimper and a cliff hanger for the case Tara is working on the other coast.

But I will have to say, the worst part when, MINUTES after the unsub shoots himself, Alvez tells JJ that "ballistics" determined it was a suicide, not self-defense. Really? A lab test that is "the study of the effects of being fired on a bullet, cartridge, or gun" was performed on site and it was a suicide? How did THAT happen? It would have been more believable if the girl had said the guy killed himself.

I hope, for viewers, that this improves. I, for one, will not be paying money for a streaming service for this weak retread.

The faithful adaption skipped over portions of the book where the Atreides interacted with the locals. Why does this matter? Because it sets up how the Atreides are different. How they don't sell water leavings, but give it freely. And why make a scene about packing up the bull head if they're never going to show it again? I think they missed an opportunity.

This was better than I expected, but it seemed so familiar. Then the Russell's had their party and it dawned on me. "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" had this exact scenario. The big party, the snobbish invitees that don't show, the heartbroken hostess, the husband who couldn't care less. Mrs Russell hires a Lady's Maid who knows the ropes, the Browns hired the neighbor's butler.

I watched it because I got free HBO and I liked Downton, but is it worth subscribing? No.