APRIL TV EXTRAVAGANZA

DA VINCI’S DEMONS

**1/2 (out of ****)

“If you thought The DaVinci Code was really cool, then maybe you should watch this” is bouncing around the brains of everyone who works at Starz, and you know what? They’re probably right. You should watch this. But I’d like to think that it’s my job to speak to the people who didn’t think that The DaVinci Code was cool, and to them I’ll say that this is at least a little better. Both do a good job of Embracing Their Stupid, but Demons takes it a little farther, whereas Code stops right there. In reality, the only thing they have in common is their alphabetic proximity.

Tom Riley stars as a young, trendy (by today’s standards) Leonardo, who finds the time not just to lead, but also do machines, be cool but rude, and be a party dude. He’s a smarmy asshole, almost intolerable if it wasn’t for his cool hair and the fact that he’s the lead. LeoD runs around town inventing shit, fucking babes, and giving the finger to the man. All of this is done in the least docudrama style possible, lest any morons think that they are watching the history channel and believe any of this shit. The History’s Mysteries of it all falls flat, and what you’re left with is Elementary by way of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which is totally okay if they just kept with it. But if that’s what you’re offering me, you have to keep the pace up, and Demons falls into the quicksand of its own seriousness far too often. The battle between DaVinvi the Showman and DaVinci the Tortured Artist could have been an interesting, if not tired, idea, if only the show didn’t get so sad when the Showman isn’t in the scene.

YOUR PRETTY FACE IS GOING TO HELL

**1/2 (out of ****)

 The premise is so simple and brilliant: the offices of Hell are just like the offices you work in or, more appropriately, the office that you work in is just like hell. And so we follow Gary, the fat slacker, and Claude, the new nerdy intern, as they live out their rut in a job that doesn’t just feel like it will last an eternity, it literally will. The two get sent on a mission by their manager/Satan, and botch it on every level. It’s never as funny as feels like it should be, or one day will be, but let’s not forget that we’re all trying to be kinder to pilots around the hellish PopFilter offices, and if you replace the necessary world building with an extra laugh or two, this show might have the goods. And because it’s an Adult Swim show, there’s almost no investment: the first episode is less than twelve minutes.

RECTIFY

***(out of ****)

And yet another example of everything that can go right, and wrong, in a pilot. Daniel Holden is released from prison after spending 20 years on death row. When he was in high school, he was accused of raping and murdering a 16 year old girl, and he confessed to the crime. Two decades later, it turns out that there’s a problem with the evidence used to convict him: his sperm was not among all of the other sperms that were found at the scene of the crime. So, during a much publicized event in this small Georgia (?) town, he is released to the world, to a press conference, to cheers and boos, and to a Senator who made his name with the case, and isn’t going to stop until he’s back. Rectify (which starts with a prison guard going through a prisoner’s rectum, the best title screen not featuring a title I’ve ever seen) is SLOW, the kind of slow that is hard to find on television, particularly in a pilot. But the slower it is, the better it works, as we get to figure out WHO exactly this guy is, and what his life will be like now. Unfortunately, the show is just as preoccupied with the WHO as it is the WHAT, as in WHAT actually happened, and WHAT will the (evil) Senator do about it. These are the parts that move quickly, but couldn’t be more boring. Stock, 2-D characters speaking in cliches, which looks that much worse in comparison to the other half of Rectify. Even the writing gets worse in these scenes. The Senator asks a lawyer if he remembers the case. The lawyer says that he was there, and then asks the Senator if he remembers that. The Senator says yes, but he wanted to make sure that the lawyer remembered. Yeesh. I almost expected him to look at the camera and ask “But do they remember?” It’s a testament to the show that it works this well with a lead that is so quiet and inside of himself (Rectify!), and that it can make it through a couple of clunky scenes. Good luck, Rectify. I think I might be on board.

-Ryan Haley