WASHINGTON FIELD (script review Washington Field)
Status: Busted
Shows what I know about procedurals.
If you recall, I dug this script (as did many other industry-ites). I kind of hyped it up, in fact, so when May upfronts rolled around and it wasn't picked up... people were scratching their heads.
Why?
You really only need about 2 minutes with this people to know why.
It's like The A-Team. Only it takes itself seriously when what's going on on-screen is, well... really, really, really campy.
Every single thing, from the character introductions that told us about the team members' specialties, to the mysteriously added opening voice over talking about the Washington Field unit, to the villains, to the investigation... it's all silly. But played in such a melodramatic way and with such a heavy score that LAUGHING IS NOT AN OPTION. And it's unintentional (believe you, me). Especially goofy is, what in the script was described as the ultimate in cool, The Big Board. Which plays like a supersized CNN magic screen. Except that the guy who operates it uses even more hilarious hand movements to move information from place to place on the screen (and that guy needs an intern to organize it... clutter!) At one point one of the team members puts their PDA near the screen in order to upload some information from the screen to the PDA and a little PDA icon pops up. Cheesy! Also utterly unnecessary in the age of, um, the internet...
The cast fails (partially because the characters fail). Eddie Cibrian and Teri Polo have zero chemistry (even less than Flashforward's Joseph Fiennes and Sonya Walger!) Gina Torres's character's main skill set seems to be that she can... drive things... to places... and more abhorrent moments aboard.
It's easy to see why this wasn't picked up. But I'm certainly keeping my copy around... if I ever need an inappropriate laugh.
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