Stumptown (Wednesdays at 10:00 on ABC)
Stumptown is a perfect example of why so many new show are utterly failing this season, both with critics and with viewers. It's one of the better pilots to air this week; it has a charismatic lead, some great visuals that were clearly created on a higher-than-average budget, and a fun action-comedy tone accentuated by director James Griffiths (black-ish). But it's also not about anything and doesn't have any sense of urgency or give us any impetus to keep coming back.
Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother, the Avengers films) is Dex Parios, former military and current PI in Portland. She has PTSD. She drinks. She gambles. She fights bad guys in really cool action sequences, particularly the one that opens the pilot in which she strangles a kidnapper from the backseat of her car as it goes over an unfinished ramp. She has a brother with Down syndrome. She has a best friend who owns a bar and a potential love interest who's a detective. She's dark and moody and kick-ass.
And that's it.
And I don't say that to make it seem like Stumptown has nothing going for it, because it does. Mostly it's Smulders, who's a great, gritty lead. When you have a show as simple as this (and as most broadcast procedurals), it helps when your lead is having as much fun as Smulders is. But in the world of streaming and cable television, Stumptown feels both too low-stakes and too try-hard. Despite how much fun the script is (based on a comic series, incidentally) and how nice the visuals are, why do I care about Dex? It seems like creator Jason Richman wants us invested in the show and in Dex, so he has surrounded the lead with action sequences and likeable characters.
It's a well-done pilot, but after watching it, I still don't know what is supposed to get me to tune in again.
Emergence (Tuesdays at 10:00 on ABC)
I have the almost-opposite problem with Emergence, the latest in a long line of supernatural broadcast dramas cut from the Lost cloth (and the second from creators Tara Butters & Michele Fazekas, who debuted Resurrection to huge numbers a few years ago before muddling the story in an awful second season). I immediately gravitated toward the plotting of this pilot, which was designed to get viewers coming back for answers. While that obviously doesn't always work, it's effective for me... for a few episodes, at least.
Here we have a Long Island police chief, Jo (Emmy nominee Allison Tolman, Fargo), who is called to a plane crash site in the middle of the night after a freak power outage. At the site, she discovers a nameless girl (Alexa Swinton), whom she comes to call Piper, with no memories and a trail of mysterious people trying to find her. As the mystery of Piper's identity begins to unfold, Jo and her family take the girl in and try to keep her out of danger, even as it becomes evident the girl has strange powers and inexplicable forces surround her.
Like Stumptown, the key to Emergence is the successful performances from its two leading ladies, Tolman and Swinton. Tolman is grounded and relatable and human, and she imbues Emergence with a sense of normality and comfort. On the other end of things is Swinton, who lends the perfect blend of cold blankness and a sweet desire to be loved and accepted. They feel like people, like family, and that's a testament to both how strongly these characters are played and written, even after only one episode.
It's helpful, of course, that there is a story here. Emergence feels simultaneously like a dozen or so previous broadcast shows (Manifest, The Event, The Crossing, The Whispers, and the aforementioned Lost and Resurrection, among many others), particularly with its use of strange symbols and electrical disruptions, as well as an homage to films like E.T. That urgency I mentioned previously that was missing from Stumptown is present in spades in Emergence: the episode ends on a cliffhanger and introduces several dangling plot threads related to Piper, the plane crash, and the supporting cast.
But beyond the plot, it's the characters that lend urgency and a desire for more to the show. It's the kindness of Jo and her daughter, the familiarity of her situation with her ex-husband and co-parent, the tenderness with which her sick father interacts with Piper that make Emergence rise above the usual supernatural trappings of these kinds of shows. And even though I've been burned so many times by ABC when it comes to genre television, I can't help being sucked into the mystery surrounding Piper but also into the warm family that adopts her.
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