the kill point

OK, I've watched the pilot, or the first two episodes, or whatever I'm supposed to call the first 25% of the Spike TV mini-series The Kill Point. A few days ago I detailed my interactions with Mike, a marketing guy promoting the series for Spike TV who hunted me down ("Spike TV digs your site") via Google and pretended to be my friend if I'd just accept DVDs of the first few episodes on his show and talk about them here. The discs arrived, accompanied by a form letter that tried v.hard to look like it was real … if I had any doubts that lots of bloggers received similar invitations in an attempt at viral marketing, the letter wiped them away. Yet the marketing worked in a way … here I am, writing about a show I wouldn't have watched otherwise.

I have a chip on my shoulder about this show before I even watch it, so perhaps I'm the wrong person to be writing this. The initial email from Mike said The Kill Point was "a new crime drama with similar grittiness to The Shield," my love for The Shield being the reason they hunted me down in the first place. It was a smart move in terms of getting me to watch, but a dumb move once I'd seen some of the show, because it has little connection to what makes The Shield so good. For one thing, The Kill Point has very little "grittiness" … it's a by-the-numbers drama where people say "shit" once in a while. The notion that The Shield is popular because you can say "shit" on FX is a remarkable misreading, if you ask me. But let's do a comparison, although in fairness, I've seen many seasons of The Shield and only the two-episode pilot of The Kill Point.

The Shield offers one of the most compelling characters in recent television history, Vic Mackey. Mackey's opponents have been played by the likes of Forrest Whitaker and Glenn Close. While the basic underlying narrative is the typical cop show, The Shield moves away from the norm by making its hero truly murderous, showing why someone like Vic Mackey would approach his job the way he does, and adopting an almost cruelly harsh view of modern city life. The Kill Point offers a bunch of stereotypical characters … the two main ones are a Gulf War vet-turned-bank robber played by John Leguizamo, and a highly-regarded hostage negotiator played by Donnie Wahlberg. Both actors are good enough, although they've both been better. But there are no surprises, or rather, even the surprises are familiar. So of COURSE the bankrobbers are disgruntled vets, and of COURSE the hot-shit negotiator is thwarted by idiot higher-ups, and of COURSE one of the hostages has an important father who tries to use his power to interfere. And of COURSE there's an old gay guy who is braver than everyone else, and … well, you get the idea. There is little on The Kill Point that you haven't seen before. It's not a bad show, but neither is it particularly interesting. It never rises above the ordinary, and that's not really as negative as it sounds, most stuff on television is below ordinary, so you wouldn't feel like you'd wasted your time if you watched The Kill Point. But you wouldn't remember that you'd watched it six months later. To compare something like this to something as terrific as The Shield is simply over-reaching.

Now, I have only seen 2 of the 8 episodes … I've got one more on the DVDs they sent me, and one more that I've recorded, then four that haven't yet aired. So I may change my mind after seeing the whole thing. But that's unlikely, because there's a good chance I won't bother watching the rest of the episodes.

Comments

[Artfan]

Can't wait till you get the next SpikeTV email: "So psyched you dug the show! Since you liked it so much, we're sure you'll find our next show, 'Carmen Electra Almost Takes Off Her Bra,' just as groovalicious!"