TV reviews: ‘Six Degrees,’ ‘Runaway,’ ‘The Game’
“Six Degrees” (Thursdays, ABC): There are these six strangers, see, and they all live in New York, and they don’t know each other at first but their lives sort of intersect. And then some of them meet each other. And, um, stuff happens. This is essentially a Generic TV Drama with no premise. It’s not about a particular family or business or place. It’s about six people who sort of know each other, and the things that happen in their lives. I like Hope Davis and Campbell Scott and would watch them in almost anything. But this show is boring. TiVo verdict: zzzzzzzknkk- Wha? Huh? What happened?
“Runaway” (Mondays, The CW): One of the new CW network’s few brand-new series is this drama in which a man is wrongfully accused of murder and goes on the lam — taking his wife and three children with him. They arrive in a small Iowa town in the pilot episode, with new names for everyone and fake backstories to throw off curious locals, while the FBI scours the country looking for them. The idea of a family version of “The Fugitive” is interesting, and I like the characters well enough. (Donnie Wahlberg and Leslie Hope — Jack Bauer’s wife on “24″ — are the parents.) But I don’t really BUY it. Jumping bail and fleeing the jurisdiction are not things innocent people do, and bringing the wife and kids along seems even more dubious. How long can this go on? They’re apparently going to be in this Iowa town at least for a little while. So what will happen? Every week someone will ALMOST find out who they are, and then not? TiVo verdict: It’s a nice show. I won’t personally be committing myself to it, but you might give it a whirl if you have room in your schedule.
“The Game” (Sundays, The CW): Another new show on The CW. It’s a sitcom about the wives and girlfriends of the players for a fictional NFL team. I watched for 10 minutes before realizing that I’d known within five minutes that it wasn’t any good. TiVo verdict: If you love “Girlfriends” and other crappy “urban” sitcoms left over from UPN, then this is the show for you.
October 3rd, 2006 at 11:56 am
The premise of “Runaway” sounds very much like the River Phoenix film “Running on Empty.” Worked nicely as a two-hour feature, but I don’t see long-term sustainability for a weekly series…
October 3rd, 2006 at 6:02 pm
As to the premise of “Runaway”: I was friends with a boy in my kindergarten class named “David” and he and his family were honest-to-goodness hiding out from the feds.
I don’t know how good they were at it, as everyone in the kindergarten class–even the whole town–knew this. They moved to Alaska about 6 months later.
And if you’re on the run from the feds, shouldn’t you not tell everyone where you’re moving to? Unless you’re being cunning and telling a lie. But they weren’t. I wrote to David in Alaska and he wrote back.
October 5th, 2006 at 6:47 am
Binky, I’m guessing that David’s family was in trouble with some minor bureaucratic office that had no budget for trying to locate them. Maybe they were trying to get out of repaying a farm loan.
Surely if it was something major, the FBI would be competent enough to track down David’s family under the less-than-a-deep-dark-secret circumstances you describe. Wouldn’t they? I hope?
October 6th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
What is it about Alaska? I had a friend from Alaska and her dad was a total liberal whacko. (I wouldn’t be surprised if he was on the run from the IRS.) It must be the oppressive cold or remoteness. Or maybe it’s the Eskimos.