Friday, April 24, 2009

Pilot Script Review - I Witness

I WITNESS
Written By: Pam Veasey & Trey Callaway
Draft Date: February 5, 2009
Pages: 55
Network: CBS
Category: Thumbs Down

It's so interesting when CBS, the crime network, gets it so shockingly, blandly wrong with a crime show. This one, I'm not even sure why I'm wasting my time reviewing it considering it hasn't been shot because of a cast contingency not getting lifted (here's a thought... don't shoot it!) I guess it's just because it, too, is part of the Crappy Crime Show Gang and it's nice for people to know that CBS doesn't always hit it out of the park with these things.

But, I'll be brief, as this isn't being shot. Obviously, I thought it was bad. The lead character is Erin Bray, a detective at the Chicago PD as well as a professor at Northwestern University. What makes Erin unique as a character and a cop, besides the fact that she's getting a divorce and was a child abductee herself (and wouldn't you know it, the pilot case is a child abduction) is that she has the COMPLETELY UNIQUE ABILITY TO LOOK AT THINGS FROM DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW. WOW! We even get several of them along the way, described in the script as "E-POVs." They aren't like Shawn Spencer's zoom-in/close-up POVs on Psych, it's more that Erin will just, y'know, be somewhere else in a room and be looking at something from a different angle and thus notices things.

In class, she picks out three students who weren't paying attention to help her with her case. They are familiar types - the jock, the nerd, and the popular girl (who happens to be half-Japanese, half-Irish). They wind up playing the role of Foreman, Chase, and Cameron from House.

They eventually figure out who the perp is (note: not the father or the mother) and catch him thanks to the magic of drawbridges.

Yawnsville.

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