I am – Hercules!!
It’s a “Dallas”-like nighttime soap, from screenwriter Cynthia Cidre (“Fires Within,” “The Mambo Kings”) about South Florida Cuban-Americans dealing with threats from within and without the family sugar-and-rum business. “Cane” stars Jimmy Smits, Nestor Carbonell, Hector Elizondo, Rita Moreno, Polly Walker and Ken Howard. I thought it slow-moving, cliché-riddled, logic-challenged and dull, but I never cottoned to “Dallas” or “Dynasty” or “Falcon Crest” either, so I may not represent the sought demographic. A big part of the plotline involves using the family’s sugar to replace oil as a fuel source. This struck me as plenty odd, and perhaps it belies my ignorance, but aren’t we more likely to consider solar and hydroelectric and even Jericho’s windmills before we start putting a sugar derivative in our cars? Annoyingly, Nestor Carbonell, who plays the Fredo of the Duque family, is a lot more interesting on “Lost.” I suspect we’ll see him back there soon enough, and this suspicion pleases me. USA Today gives “Cane” two stars (out of four) and says:

… Latinos of all stripes are absurdly underserved by network TV, but surely they deserve a more potent cocktail than Cane. … As much as CBS may yearn for the days of J.R. and Bobby Ewing, those days have passed, and you certainly can't bring then back with a show that feels more dated than Dallas. There's nothing more useless than a heat-free soap, and Cane is practically frozen. …

Entertainment Weekly gives it a “B-minus” and says:

… the drama all feels a bit familiar, as if someone used the find/replace function to trade "oil" with "sugarcane" on an old Dallas script. The end of the pilot, however, hints at a more ruthless side of Smits, which could give the series a needed boost. …

The New York Times says:

… “Cane” has sex, rum and salsa and still manages to be plodding. …

The Los Angeles Times says:

… in most respects a class act, albeit one whose energy so far derives largely from a real star turn by Jimmy Smits. … he gives "Cane" at least an illusion of speed and substance and soul …

The Washington Post says:

One of those slack, campy throwbacks that really ought to be thrown out, "Cane" tries to bring grand-opera soap opera back to prime time and ignominiously fails. …

The Boston Herald says:

Jimmy Smits makes his long-awaited return to prime time - playing perhaps the stupidest businessman in TV history. How else would you describe a successful family man who hires a virtual stranger - and then invites him to bring along some of his buddies - to kill an enemy? … At times it has the pacing of a telenovela - which wouldn’t be so awful if it were on five nights a week. For a one-hour show (presented Tuesday night with limited commercial interruptions), the endless shots of couples stepping to a Latin beat are better suited for “Dancing with the Stars.” …

The Boston Globe says:

… a night-time soap opera throwback to the 1980s. The CBS series, also known as Jimmy Smits's new vehicle, has none of the psycho-dynamic family confrontation of the state-of-the-art soap "Brothers & Sisters." No one in "Cane" is deep enough for that kind of Freudian shtick. And then it doesn't lean on comic wit like "The O.C.," which ushered the genre into the 2000s with ironic quotes around every plot twist. Indeed, "Cane" is humorless - "Falcon Crest" sans shoulder pads. … My sense is that "Cane" will survive for at least a year, perhaps only thanks to Smits's appeal. So if you're one of those suffering from a fear of TV commitment, you probably won't be able to blame it on "Cane."

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… slick and earnest soap … The dialogue in Cidre's teleplay has a propensity for stiff pronouncements that too often finds the characters talking at, rather than to, each other. …

10 p.m. Tuesday. CBS.

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