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Hercules Says Fox’s THE FINDER Offers One Of The Better Broadcast Pilots Of The Season!!
An amiable and imaginative new Fox hourlong from “Bones” mastermind Hart Hanson, “The Finder” follows a Iraq War vet whose explosion-damaged brain now allows him to find anyone or anything on the planet.
Tonight’s episode got a couple of big laughs out of me. It’s been a while since a network hourlong pilot did that.
Played by Geoff Stultz (“October Road,” “Happy Town”), The Finder works out of a bar in the Florda keys called the Ends of the Earth, which seems to have few to no customers and an enormous underground vault.
The bar is owned by The Finder’s massive lawyer, Leo Knox, played by “Green Mile” behemoth Michael Clarke Duncan.
The show feels kind of like Elmore Leonard crossed with Batman. In the pilot The Finder, who may be the world’s greatest detective, tangles with a half-naked yacht-dwelling villainess surrounded by oddly and identically attired henchmen.
The Finder swaps a lot of favors (and apparently a lot of body fluids) with a hot Sisco-ish deputy marshal played by Swedish actress Mercedes Masöhn. And he acts as surrogate uncle to a hot blonde teenager named Willa Monday (blonde 17-year-old newcomer Maddie Hasson), who works at Leo’s bar as a condition of her probation.
Adding to the cool? John Fogerty, who wrote the show’s theme, turns up in person early on in the pilot to perform “Fortunate Son.”
... The show may be composed of easily recognized elements from other shows -- it could be described as a breezy combination of "House" and "Burn Notice" -- but that didn't stop me from appreciating its escapist charms. ...
... if the various kinks work themselves out, “The Finder” will at the least be a medium-strength entry in the increasingly crowded field of comedy-dramas featuring eccentric characters. ...
... despite the strength of its parts, the whole feels very nascent and shaky, like a newborn colt separated from its mother. On its feet, yes, but with no real defense save its good looks. ...
... In the premiere, the procedural part of the show — the case of a pilot who disappeared — feels convoluted, rushed and ultimately unsatisfying. But Stults is a lot of fun to watch, and the show’s flippant tone makes for a nice break from Serious Television. ...
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:
... not sophisticated TV but it does have its charms, mostly stemming from star Geoff Stults. He makes Walter a slightly off, scruffy straight-arrow -- a good guy with quirks. …
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
... needs to find compelling character interplay. In the first episode, it's frustratingly MIA.
… The cast members already has a nice chemistry and appear able to handle that spectrum. Fans of quirky procedurals will likely find “The Finder’’ a dependable way to lose an hour.
... Stults has the makings of an appealing procedural hero (even if his powers remain largely unexplained and seem to make no sense), and he already has amusing screen chemistry with Duncan. In future episodes, when it's no longer necessary to spell out his problems and motivations, the show may be able to relax into the kind of easy weekly entertainment you can find an hour earlier on Bones. ...
... mostly resembles a bland variation on the sort of light blue-sky show with which USA network has enjoyed so much success. Frankly, the quirky private-eye motif plays like a less-compelling version of "Human Target" …
9 p.m. Thursday. Fox.
Readers Talkback
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Jan. 12, 2012, 9:14 a.m. CST
Looks Fun. The lead has some of the goofy charm of a young Bruce Campbell.
by v3d
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I think Variety hit the nail on the head - looks a lot like it was produced by the same group who did Monk and Psych.
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this sounds almost exactly like his Nightside series. Main character finds things, his best friend own a bar he frequents, an occasional helper is a harass valkeryie type named shotgun Susie, and in the first book he rescues a kid, a blond girl too, who he takes under his wing! Unbelievable.
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Jan. 12, 2012, 10:10 a.m. CST
i_love_lanalang - Are you going to watch this tonight, asshole - or just keep up your pathic posing as TX expert without watching anything at all --- fuckhead
by Michael Lunney
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Because that backdoor pilot episode on Bones last year was absolutely atrocious.
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Gotta give anything a shot that he's in. Seriously. The man is good, and often hilarious. A man of his size and presence could do a certain kind of comedy just BEING... but he's not just funny physically.
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it was called the Zero Effect. Jake Kasdan made a great film with a similar premise. Bill Pullman and Ben Stiller were fantastic in it. A few years ago Kasdan shot a pilot with Alan Cumming stepping into the Daryl Zero role. A shame that didnt get picked up and this did. oh well.
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How do you know it's a shame when you haven't actually seen THE FINDER or THE ZERO EFFECT pilot? Are you psychic?
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Doesn't take a psychic when the promos for the Finder, along with the prior appearance on Bones, clearly state the premise of the show. As I am familiar with both Hart Hanson and Jake Kasdan's work, I simply prefer Kasdan.
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but I have to ask, how does a TBI make a person "find" people or objects?
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Weren't these characters first introduced in an episode of "Bones"?
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They seemed to have traded in the female bar tender/pilot for the deputy marshal and added the blonde teenager.
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Jan. 12, 2012, 1:06 p.m. CST
medusagirl1973 - you're completely off base - and Herc, they've already had a pilot for this - it was an episode of Bones
by DoctorTom
medusagirl1973, it's not ripping off Simon Green's Nightside stories, and it's not like John Taylor was the first character to be able to find things. For one thing, Emma Bull had created the character Orient for the Borderlands series in several anthologies and the novel Finder, long before any Nightside books appeared. If you had actually watched the episode of Bones which served as a pilot for the Finder series, you might have noticed that this is actually licensing the Locator series of books by Richard Greener.
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Jan. 12, 2012, 1:09 p.m. CST
shakatany - yes, though they came from novels by a completely different person than Kathy Reichs, though
by DoctorTom
see my previous post. When they showed the Bones episode I was surprised that they mixed characters from different authors' literary properties.
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Seriously, it looks like it could be a fun show but I have never seen a single episode of "Bones" so I don't know I'll be able to follow it fully...
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.....the tone of this talkback. This is all up on the Wikipedia page for the The Finder. Look it up and start being nice to each other. I have spoken.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv1kCJ76Phw
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it was the same producer, and he just used Bones as a low-risk method to do a backdoor pilot for the show.
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I agree, his presence alone makes it worth trying.
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Jan. 12, 2012, 1:54 p.m. CST
So is this pilot a rehash of the story from the bones episode or a 100% new footage?
by ahdvd
The bones ep was surprisingly good, though it did have saffron burrows in it, whose name is (un)surprisingly absent from the above piece
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Which is still one of my favorite TV shows. I'll give it a shot just because I like Duncan.
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Why do you let i_love_lanalang get to you? You are starting to sound like a child with a temper tantrum. Let it go.
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Jan. 12, 2012, 5:41 p.m. CST
Backdoor pilots are still a thing?! Wasn't TOS' "Assignment: Earth" a backdoor pilot as well?
by Al
Last one I remember properly, even though I didn't watch it, was The Practice morphed into Boston Legal. And this had a spinoff ep on Bones (didn't see either.) Hey, for anyone who saw the Bones ep, did the main characters spend a lot of time rolling their eyes and acting excited about the exaggerated quirkiness of the main character? I'm just always fascinated how backdoor pilots work. Hell, even TNG introducing the Cardassians (I think S6 was rather Cardassian-heavy on TNG) was a setup for DS9.
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No interest in this project, at all, as it's basically turned into window dressing to fill in the blanks while Bones has her baby.
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This looks horrible. The clips i've seen made it look worse than anything CBS cancels. No thanks. But since it looks shitty it will get huge ratings.
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Anytime a show resorts to heavy exposition to explain the premise I tend to punch out mentally. I understand wanting to introduce the audience to the show's template, but SHOW it to me instead of trying to tell me what a quirky genius the lead character is. I tuned out after the first fifteen minutes, and changed the channel after thirty. That's pretty bad, because I watched three episodes of Terra Nova before I bailed on that dreck.
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was the one for Private Practice on Grey's Anatomy. By the way, is it just me, or does Backdoor Pilot sound like a pretty good porn name?
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Hey, for anyone who saw the Bones ep, did the main characters spend a lot of time rolling their eyes and acting excited about the exaggerated quirkiness of the main character?
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Whoa something went wrong. I meant to add that it was Booth's idea that they consult the Finder; Bones, of course was skeptical but they managed to work together to solve the case. The first backdoor pilot I ever came across was an episode of the original Star Trek titled "Assignment: Earth" - it was not picked up.
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So this isn't as awful as the Bones episode that introduced the characters?
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Isn't bad at all. Very quirky.
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