Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
When it rains, it pours here at Coax. The floodgates seem to be opening with reviews of pilots rolling in from pretty much every direction right now. Here's the debut offering from a brand new spy we'll be calling THE WBEAST from now on. Stand back... someone's gonna get hurt.
A little somethin somethin on the fall 2001 pilot front. Call me The WBeast.
Here are my impressions of the Warners/New Line 44 minute pilot presentation of Murphy's Dozen, apparently a leading candidate - unfortunately - for the WB's suddenly hole-filled fall schedule.
This depressingly literal-minded stab at a light, hourlong pro-values family melodrama concerns the unlikely Murphy family of Philiadelphia, Mom, Dad and their 12 kids ranging from infancy to college age. In the presentation reel the parents are played by William Russ (readers may remember him as the Dad on that terribly dull Thank God It Isn't Friday show BOY MEETS WORLD) and multi-emmy award winner Kathy Baker (don't get too attached, kids -- the WB has already insisted she be re-cast, primarily because she looks WAY too old in this, too bad she's the best actor involved by a mile).
The program essentially represents a hedge by the WB, in that 7th Heaven faces an intense license fee negotiation next year and the idea behind the development of Murphy's Dozen was to create a slightly edgier, cheaper and sexier version of 7H that could easily slide into the Monday Family Hour should that mainstay evacuate or simply be too costly to re-up. Importantly, the show is created by Gavin O'Conner and Tim Chambers. Chambers is new on the scene, and O'Connor has no TV experience. In actuality he's a one-hit feature director, having independently made last year's marginally successful Tumbleweeds. O'Conner and Chambers wrote here, O'Conner directs.
The draw here, if there is one, is the car-crash-meets-emotional-porn voyeuristic thrill of watching the daily struggles of Parents in way over their heads with twelve children living under one roof. But instead of defly weaving the 14-person-family ensemble into a robust and colorful tapestry, we're treated to a mealy dose of TV cliches that meted out among the twelve insufferable spratlings and their cheerfully overwhelmed mommy and daddy.
BOOOORING!!
Okay, so the show itself will likely be another highly forgettable waste of network real estate, featuring the safely roman catholic Murphy clan settling down for the new school year in Philly. Since there are so many damn Murphy kids, some are essentially dress extras, while others get to make a impression, however passing and oblique. The oldest son is played by the 30something-looking AJ Buckley (a poor man's Ed Norton, scratch that; a VERY VERY poor man's Ed Norton) who is unbelievably enrolled as a junior at Villanova. He's got a nondescript Asian girlfriend, so expect much WB-style relationship hand wringing should this thing get picked up. Also getting a lot of play in the pilot are twin Murphy sons, played by Dane and Brando Christenson (younger brothers to Erika Christenson, of TRAFFIC), who play High School footbal and get involved in a toothless, unfunny b-plot involving a shaved eybrow and other nonevents.
That's three of the twelve kids, the rest include a dimly "rebellious" hearthrob (Devon Sawannabe Chad Michael Murray), a wiseguy brother (Ben Crowley), an insufferablle mid-teen sister (Britney Snow) and a slew of rugrats. So what kept me watching? Well, there's the amusement factor -- watching such a feebly written piece of work can be a fun experience, as O'Conner and Chambers unveil crippled and uninteresting story points at an admirable rate. Gee, the mid teen daughter is anxious about a prominent zit? One of the interchangeable middle sons has a crush on an unattainable girl at school? The cute moppet baby daughter asks some uncomfortable questions at the dinner table? The closest this show comes to anything even resembling the trenchant, triumphant moral shading of TV's best family drama (The Sopranos, of course) is the hearthrob's son's once-in-a-while suck on a Marlboro. By and large, the Murphy kids are boring, straight-laced douche bags, and O'Connor's "indie-feeling" camera work (a bastard child of Nash Bridges' dutch angles and the dick-high streadycam stuff innovated by NYPD Blue nearly a decade ago) merely tries to hide, unsuccessfully, the fact that this show is the same safe, doughy-white product that we've seen a million times before.
That said, there's a reason to watch, provided you have a healthy supply of hand lotion and Bounty towels nearby. The Murphys have an oldest daughter, and franky, she's a FOX. Agnes Bruckner plays the 19-year-old Caitlin Murphy, and Jesus H. Christ she is one hot box. There is one worthwhile scene in the show, with Bruckner in sexy PJs, eats a bowl of cereal and generally shakes her ass around the kitchen. THIS IS THE REASON WE TUNE INTO THE DUBYA BEE! To see babes between the ages of 16-30 strutt their stuff. In Agnes' case, she has the weird effect of being a Twin Peaks-era Sherilyn Fenn dropped into a sad Eight is Enough knockoff.
It's almost foolish to expect that Murphy's Dozen will ever reach any thematic moment of truth, any chilling tonal peaks, or any single instances of surprising humor. So instead, should they get an order for this thing, they might as well make it The Agnes Bruckner Show, because that's one flower in full bloom amid a soggy garden of weeds.
WBeast
