FALL TV EXTRAVAGANZA!!!

 

A GIFTED MAN

*** (out of ****)

A Gifted Man has a lot of shit going on in its pilot, especially for a first episode. Patrick Wilson is a neurosurgeon. He is a dick. He has a sister with a criminal kid. His sister is a loser. His ex-wife who he hasn’t seen for ten years runs into him at a restaurant. He realizes he still loves his wife. One of his patients is a sixty year old party animal who won’t stop partying, and then dies. Another one of his patients is a young tennis player who just had a brain aneurism and almost dies. His wife died two weeks before they ran into each other. He can see ghosts. He might one day not be such a dick. That’s a lot of shit for a pilot, right? And most of it seems cheezy and melodramatic, right? The answers to both of these questions are “Yes, but…” Everything about A Gifted Man, from its title to its premise, makes it seem like it’s destined for TV Movie land. How it consistently pulls itself out of that and remains compelling is enough reason alone to watch it. It’s not flashy. There’s nothing dark or funny or HBOy about it. And you don’t even realize how much plot is racing by you when your watching it. You just kind of get sucked into the story and go with it. I might already be jaded by the start of the new fall season, and have seen so much crap so far that I am starting to like things that are relatively good, instead of actually good. But just in case, go over to your great-grandparent house and watch this with them. You know they will be watching it, because their TVs have been stuck on CBS since the early nineties.

TOMORROW: THE NERDIST!!!

-Ryan Haley