I am – Hercules!!
“Defying Momentum” is more like it; the plots of “Defying Gravity's” first two episodes, airing tonight, advance so languidly you’ll swear its producers were trying to stretch an episode worth of “Star Trek: Enterprise” storyline across an entire season.
A 13-episode international co-production about astronauts destined to endure a trouble-plagued six-year mission across the solar system, the ABC series was created by James Parriott, who also created “Misfits of Science” and “Forever Knight” but has more recently been toiling in such estrogen-soaked ABC hourlongs as “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Ugly Betty.”
It stars a number of respectable actors, among them Ron Livingston (“Office Space”), Laura Harris (“Dead Like Me”), Christina Cox (“The Chronicles of Riddick”), Paula Garcés (“The Shield”), Malik Yoba (“New York Undercover”) and Florentine Lahme (ABC’s even worse astronaut miniseries “Impact”). Livingston, I’d wager, is trying to appropriate for his role the voice and mannerisms of “Space Cowboys” star Tommy Lee Jones. Not the worst strategy.
Though the pilot, set about 40 years in the future, is a mess in any context, it compares with particular horribilitude to Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor’s superb Fox pilot “Virtuality,” which aired about a month ago and also focused on a large-ish crew of astronauts assigned to a high-profile multiyear space journey. Both projects offer terrific space effects, sets and production design.
“Gravity’s” six-year journey, which involves visits to all of our system’s planets, is semi-secretly being manipulated by the mysterious and powerful Offscreen Something called “Beta,” which may be a computer, or an extraterrestrial, or an extraterrestrial computer, or a mutant, or something else entirely. Beta’s existence and involvement is hidden from most of the crew on Beta’s mission, which strikes me as a dopey made-for-TV strategy; perhaps viewers will one day discover the reasoning, but I suspect they’ll discover the reasoning isn’t sound.
The series’ dialogue is taxed beyond even what seems to be the ABC dramedy development department’s quota of standards-and-practices-friendly sexytalk; the female astronauts always seem to have just wandered off “Sex and the City” or “Oprah” as they cluck about “booty calls” and share tips on flirting with their male co-workers.
There’s a dollop of “Moonraker”-style zero-g space-boning. The crew’s funny-free “comic-relief” physicist is inexplicably forced to spend hours cracking a computer code to access his ship’s mammoth porn payload. (But if this guy can conquer souped-up encryption, why isn’t he smart enough to just bring the porn aboard via the -- presumably super-tiny -- 2053 equivalent of an iPod or smartphone?)
There’s also a doofy subplot about a female astronaut needing to get “a guy” to perform an illegal early-term abortion (the Supreme Court appears to have momentarily overturned Roe V. Wade) -- as if government troops somehow tracked down and destroyed every copy of the formula for RU486.
The first two hours of “Gravity” are a mishmash of sci-fi clichés, watery characterization, and time-wasting who-gives-a-shit plot twists. Livingston’s character is the kind of idiot who starts throwing punches when, in the middle of a live news conference, he fields a reporter’s insulting but completely predictable questions about a famous decade-earlier tragedy.
Its pacing infuriates as the show endlessly jumps to (generally disposable) pre-launch flashbacks full of leaden ABC-dramedy banter and lengthy plot-halting montages edited to ghastly power ballads.
One suspects the “Grey’s Anatomy” fans will be driven away by the technobabble, the Trekkies will be driven away by the project’s undernourished imagination, and this show will be remembered alongside the likes of UPN’s “Mercy Point” as one of the sadder chapters in the annals of televised space opera.
Entertainment Weekly says:
… The first ep feels ridiculous; maybe it's the fact that despite being on a futuristic space mission, everyone acts like they're on Private Practice (sample line: ''He's not my type. He left two people on Mars''). …
The New York Times says:
… has high-tech props and a spooky sci-fi mystery, but it is layered in feminine concerns and the mawkishly sentimental pop music that frames plot points on “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Private Practice.” …
The Los Angeles Times says:
… The budget has gone into the spacecraft -- the constructed interiors, the computer-generated exteriors -- and all the outer space, which looks good enough that you never think about it not being real. The human element can be less convincing, however, with many of the characters flat or opaque, the dialogue a tad artificial. Some bits are overstated, others feel undercooked. …
The Chicago Tribune says:
… so inferior to Fox's Virtuality that it made me glum …
The Washington Post says:
… The unfortunate truth of this mission is that you're going to need a whole lot of patience to get through even the first hour of it. …
The Newark Star Ledger says:
… "Virtuality" was interested in questions of how people would deal with the psychological pressures of spending years in the same confined space with the same small group of people, where "Defying Gravity" is just in a hurry to get to the zero-G sex scene. … The two-hour premiere has hints of a possible alien conspiracy behind the mission, but that's clearly taking a backseat to whether Livingston and Harris will hook up again during the trip. … feels too slight, or silly, to treat as anything but the cheap, disposable summer programming it is. …
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:
… The space scenarios in "Gravity" often defy common sense and are just as ludicrous as the medical workplace hijinks on "Grey's." If you can stomach over-the-top, unrealistic plot turns -- and millions of viewers do every week when they watch "Grey's" -- "Gravity" is an entertaining enough sci-fi-tinged soap … Many viewers will understandably respond, who cares? But fans of relationship-driven story-telling might just get hooked on this silly, lighter-than-air summer series.
The Salt Lake Tribune says:
… What "Defying Gravity" doesn't have is thought, a sense of wonder or an intriguing premise. Just as space has no atmosphere, the show is devoid of ideas, and viewers are left with the hope that the two most attractive people will have sex while space walking. At this rate, that just might happen. …
The Boston Herald says:
… borrows from another ABC hit, “Lost,” but bungles the execution. Each episode features flashbacks to the crew’s training days. The gimmick is already exhausted by the end of the two-hour premiere. …
The Boston Globe says:
… a perfectly decent bit of sci-fi soap - some cool “Star Trek’’ futurism, plenty of pretty “Grey’s Anatomy’’ ensemble melodrama, and a twist of eerie “Twilight Zone’’ mysteriousness …
Variety says:
… the storytelling needs to pick up momentum quickly if the show expects an audience to tag along …
9 p.m. Sunday. ABC.
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