Can Human Target stay on target?

Sebastian’s back Guest-clacking for us again, after sharing his thoughts about The Listener with us last time.

I was a bit wary when I heard about the remake of the 1974 TV show, Human Target. I never saw the ’70s version of the show, so having nothing to compare it to wasn’t the reason. My wariness stemmed from the sheer fact that single hero (or “One Man Army”) drama series in the last couple of years always seem to fail miserably. Except Chuck, of course, but let’s just brush past that one really quick, I vented my frustration with it on numerous occasions already.

The failed ones I’m talking about are, most prominently, My Own Worst Enemy and Journeyman, with the latter, of course, also being in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category, which seems to be the guarantee for failure in itself. I could add The Listener to the list of single male lead shows that failed, as well as Life on Mars. All shows that I loved to watch and didn’t understand why they didn’t work for the rest of the TV audience. So I very well might be wrong with my assertion that Human Target works, as a show. It seems people love “so silly it hurts” (Chuck) or really like annoying voice overs by “real spies” combined with Cagney and Lacey reunions (Burn Notice). They also seem to like quirky lovey-dovey (Pushing Daisies, at least for a season).

So Human Target should be perfect. Because it has all of that, except silly. And Cagney and Lacey.

It has a strong male lead in Mark Valley, who basically picks up where his character left off on Boston Legal and, even more, Fringe. He really rolled with the punches on those shows but wasn’t given too much to work with on the David E. Kelley show on the one hand and the JJ Abrams show on the other. He’s a great fit for the role. His lines are strong as wel,l if you ask me. His jokes are often ironic, sometimes sarcastic, and to my own personal glee there’s also a lot of Schadenfreude involved. He plays the personal security guard as if he was born for that role. His martial arts aren’t filmed with too many cuts, stunt men work isn’t visible and when there’s action it reminds of the Mission Impossible movie franchise. And his Japanese really sounds great. He makes the script work.

Add to that Chi McBride, who also picks up a role he did before, namely the PI from Pushing Daisies, sans the quirky. The authors seem to have watched a lot of that show because the jokes he gets are made just for him, the sarcastic undertone he already had on PD is still there and, imagine that, he now is really getting into action as well. He’s delivering punches, and finally working with his being tall. Something that was desperately lacking on PD.

Finally we get the “hacker dude” that’s necessary in this day and age on a spy show, hacking into computers, getting information. In a way that isn’t pretentious, which really could have ruined the whole show. I guess you wonder what that means — just think about all the computer hacking scenes you know from movies and TV shows. Numbers floating around. A camera following the hacker around his seat in front of one or multiple screens. Stylized conducting paths done in green and blue 3D. Images following these paths CSI: Miami style. The sound of keyboard strokes. Violins. The run-of-the-mill “hacker montage.”

None of all this crap. Because we all know that sitting in front of a computer screen is boring. It isn’t filled with any sort of action. Hacking takes time and therefore it is done off-screen during the times the real action is happening; it is a means to an end. There aren’t numbers floating around on screen like in The Matrix. And no blinking lights. Finally, no blinking lights. It’s done real but not in real time. For me, a computer savvy guy in his early thirties, that’s da bomb; I can believe in it. And the actor playing this guy? “Rorschach” from The Watchmen. Isn’t that awesome? Let me answer that for you: yes it is. The actor’s name is Jackie Earle Haley by the way.

With all the action, sarcasm, irony and hacking going on, I was willingly suspending my disbelief when it came to the basic fact that the producers stuck the show into very confined spaces in the pilot and the second episode. The Pilot plays on a bullet train in California, episode two a plane. Action is easier (and cheaper) done in these locations and while it annoyed me a little bit that you can feel the sound stage atmosphere everywhere, especially in the second episode, the cleverly written dialogue, the good acting and the superbly choreographed action sequences made up for things that usually throw me off.

All in all I can simply hope that Human Target will stay on target and on the air. I like it. It’s really good and “not at all pseudo.” In this day and age of silly, quirky, nudge-nudge knowhatimean TV dramas, I think it’s a breath of fresh air. Or just Old School Cool.

Clacked by Guest Clacker
on Jan 20, 2010 @ 11:30 EST5EDT