Where Pilots Go to Die: FOX's "The Oaks"

It's always sad when you watch a botched pilot of a script that you really, really loved and are just wholly disappointed by what you see.

In this case, I'm talking about the pilot episode for FOX's supernatural drama The Oaks, which wasn't picked up to series. Last I heard, studio 20th Century Fox Television was attempting to shop the project to other networks, but I would be surprised if anyone picks it up after what I've seen. (You can read my original review of the pilot script here.)

It's not that there isn't an interesting story there because there is. I was utterly captivated by David Schulner's gorgeously nuanced script for The Oaks, which tells the story of three very different couples living in the same house in three different decades: there's twenty-something couple Mike (Matt Lanter) and Sarah (Shannon Lucio) who have recently weathered the death of their young daughter and have fallen apart as a couple; middle-aged blue collar parents of two Frank (Michael Rispoli) and Molly (Romy Rosemont, who replaced Gina McKee) whose daughter Lucy (Mackenzie Milone) seems troubled and whose son Brian (Kyle Kaplan) is prone to spying on his developmentally challenged teenage neighbor Jessica (Shanna E. Braddy); and expectant professional couple Dan (Jeremy Renner) and Hollis (Bahar Soomekh) who are in the midst of completing renovations on their historic home even as they interview midwives for the arrival of their child.

Some interesting stories and the action often transitions seamlessly from each decade to the next, their plots often overlapping as they serve a dual purpose: the first to explore the invisible thread that seems to connect these couples to one another through time (the ghost story) and the second to explore that most fragile of states: wedlock. Each of the couples faces an enormous hurdle in their married life, from the loss of a child to the non-existence of a sex life to long-buried secrets that, in the case of Dan and Hollis, could threaten to derail the life they've build for one another.

See, Dan did Something Bad as a teenager growing up in the very same neighborhood that he has now moved back into with his wife, something that 1988's Little Brian witnessed and something that involved taking advantage of Jessica, who--in 2008--is all grown up but still living in her parents' house right across the street from Dan and Hollis' new house. Dan claims that he doesn't remember Jessica but it's clear that he does, even if Hollis isn't quite suspicious enough.

Add to this a secret room, an oak tree planted by Sarah in 1968 that refuses to be cut down in 2008, whispers and visions in the water, and characters showing up in various eras seemingly by chance and you have the makings of an interesting and provocative supernatural-tinged drama, albeit one that seems more designed for a limited run than an open-ended series.

So what doesn't work? The majority of the casting for one, sadly. While the script brings these characters to life in vivid detail, many of the actors seem strangely out of place or unbelievable in the roles. Yes, I get that Mike and Sarah are a young couple but I found it extremely difficult to accept Lanter and Lucio as adults old enough to own a house (even with his father's help) and have had raised and lost a child, even as producers have tried to age up Lucio a bit with some period-appropriate makeup, hair, and clothes. By the reverse token, I had a hard time feeling connected to Rispoli and Rosemont's, er, dumpier characters who seemed to have zero chemistry between them whatsoever; while their sexless marriage is a huge element to the plot, I didn't see the whiff of any previous attraction between them evident in their interactions.

As for Jeremy Renner, he just looks... distractingly odd in the 2008 segments and I wanted to see him express some sort of moral conflict going on inside him. Or anything really. Renner's Dan is meant to be wholly emasculated by his Blackberry-obsessed career-driven wife Hollis (Soomekh) but we don't even see a clue about this dynamic between them. They just seem like any other tech-savvy modern couple expecting a baby and paranoid about disabilities and end up little more than ciphers on screen.

The direction was also disappointing. I'm usually a fan of Michael Cuesta (Dexter) but here I didn't see any elements of his trademark flair; camerawork was pretty straightforward and pulled some cliche zooms and close-ups right out of the 1980s horror flick handbook. For such an evocative and imaginative script, the produced pilot of The Oaks felt wholly flat and unrewarding, a scenario that may have occurred since both writer David Schulner and executive producer Shawn Ryan (The Shield) were not on set during production, due to the writers strike.

I can understand why The Oaks didn't make it to series at FOX and I can also understand why studio execs would possibly want to scrap the filmed version, recast, and start over again at another network: the script and the characters are intriguing and the concept is original and thought-provoking. But like several of the characters in The Oaks, after watching this, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I needed a bath to wash off my disappointment.

Sigh.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Price is Right Million Dollar Spectacular (CBS); Baby Borrowers (NBC); America's Next Top Model (CW); Wife Swap (ABC); So You Think You Can Dance (FOX; 8-10 pm)

9 pm: Criminal Minds (CBS); Baby Borrowers (NBC); Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious (CW); Supernanny (ABC)

10 pm: CSI: New York (CBS); Celebrity Circus (ABC); Primetime: Crime (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

9-10 pm: Secret Diary of a Call Girl/Weeds on Showtime.

As I am still catching up on telly that I missed during my honeymoon, I actually missed this week's episodes of Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Weeds on Showtime, so I'll be watching them tonight. On Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Belle is booked by a return client for the entire evening and gets to test out her time management skills. Over on Weeds ("The Whole Blah Damn Thing"), Nancy makes her first official run across the border for Guillermo and Celia is offered a deal by Captain Till.

Where Pilots Go to Die: FOX's "Spaced"

Ah, schadenfreude. There is something innately satisfying about watching a terrible pilot project go down the tubes when it was doomed from the very start. And there were few more misguided and foolhardy attempts this past pilot season than that of the US adaptation of UK cult series Spaced.

Created by Simon Pegg, Jessica Hynes (née Stevenson), and Edgar Wright, the original Spaced was a brilliant and hyperkinetic pastiche: at once a tongue-in-cheek satire of sitcoms, an inversion of social stereotypes, and a collection of astounding sight gags, blink-and-you'll-miss-'em pop culture references, and endearingly quirky characters. It was most definitely a product of its time as well, fused into the fabric of 1990s Gen-X slackers and offering a commentary on both American and British cultural sensibilities of the time.

In a word, it was brilliant.

Cut to 2008, following a rough development year, in which the stars/creators of Spaced spoke out against the US version of the series after they weren't consulted about the remake and in some cases (Hynes) weren't even mentioned in any press releases about the series. I managed to get my hands on the completed pilot for the American update of Spaced and I was curious to see if it warranted the ire of Pegg and Co.

And that's where schadenfreude comes in. To call Spaced a pale imitation of the original is actually quite insulting to pale imitations everywhere. No, this US remake--written by Adam Barr (Will & Grace) and directed by Charles Stone (Lincoln Heights)--is quite possibly one of the worst things I've ever seen and that's saying quite a lot.

Quick recap on the action: two strangers, both post-breakup with significant others, meet at a coffee shop as they look for a new place to live when they stumble onto a dream apartment. The only catch is that it's only being offered to a married couple, so they pose as newlyweds in order to land the place. It's a deceptive simple premise that, in the original anyway, never falls into Three's Company-type sitcom gags and instead uses it as a springboard to explore the relatonship between Tim (Pegg) and Daisy (Hynes) and their friendships, hopes, dreams, and bizarro fantasies.

It was with a great deal of trepidation that I sat down to watch Spaced's busted pilot over the weekend... and was amazed by how wrong the production team had gotten every element of the series, even from the script stage. While the original Spaced had an effortlessly cool vibe, every line of dialogue in this awful pilot reeks of overwriting and reaching to try to approximate something trendy and cool... only fall completely flat. Adding in cutaway scenes in which San Francisco's Transamerica rotates for no real reason or an invisible force appears next to a trolley car do not a smart quirky comedy make. Instead, these remain head-scratching examples of just how wrong the producers (which include Wonderland Sound & Vision's McG) got it and perhaps how little they understood the underlying material in the first place.

Onto the actors then. Never have two actors been more miscast as Josh Lawson (Chandon Pictures) and Sara Rue (Less Than Perfect) than they have been here. As Ben, Lawson is completely unbelievable as a sad sack wannabe comic book artist/slacker... who clearly has spent more time at the gym than at a drafting board. And unfortunately, he doesn't become more believable when he dons trendily nerdy glasses that only make him look slightly more like Matthew Perry in The Ron Clark Story. As for Rue, her Apryl isn't at all sympathetic and merely irritates every time she's on screen; the same goes for Ben's sidekick Bill (Will Sasso) who lacks all of the nuance of the original's Nick Frost. His sole characteristic seems to be that he enjoys (A) playing video games, (B) re-enacting the bullet scene from (ahem) The Matrix, and (C) pretending to shoot people with a gun made out of his hand. Yes, this is real character development time, people.

Supporting characters get just as much short shrift and aren't nearly as imaginative or credible as their counterparts across the pond. Apryl's best friend, a sticky-fingered wannabe thief named Vivienne (Yara Martinez) lacks any defining characteristics whatsoever and remains, at the end of the pilot, still a complete and utter cipher. Tortured artist/downstairs neighbor Christian (Frederico Dordei) is completely predictable in his overwrought "quirkiness." Hell, even landlady Marsha is a wet blanket in this without any of the humor or flair of Julia Deakin's brilliant original.

I feel incredibly happy that this project will never make it to air and never sully the good name of Spaced. Fans of the original UK series have waited for years for a Region 1 DVD release of the series (which will finally be released on July 23rd) and would have been aghast at what American producers did to their beloved series.

Can some international formats transition nicely onto American screens? Sure, just look at NBC's The Office but for every one that does work there are likely ten or so that are mindblowingly awful adaptations of successful series. Spaced distinctly falls into the latter camp and I'm happy to see it buried in some fallout bunker six miles beneath the Earth where it can't infect anyone with its shoddy and unfunny perspective on urban living arrangements. It's as saccharine and artificial as the cream puffs in the painfully dumb "gunfight" that comprises the pilot's conclusion.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Price is Right Million Dollar Spectacular (CBS); Farmer Wants a Wife (CW); Wife Swap (ABC); So You Think You Can Dance (FOX; 8-10 pm)

9 pm: Criminal Minds (CBS); Dateline (NBC); Farmer Wants a Wife (CW); Supernanny (ABC)

10 pm: CSI: New York (CBS); Dateline (NBC); Men in Trees (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

9 pm: MI-5 on BBC America.

If you missed MI-5 (aka Spooks) when it aired on A&E a few years back, you can catch it tonight on BBC America. On tonight's installment ("The Special, Part Two"), Adam rescues Tash (Martine McCutcheon) from the terrorists and realizes he must unmask the mole within MI-5.

10 pm: Top Chef on Bravo.

On tonight's episode ("High Steaks"), the chefs have to clean and butcher a slab of meat during a Quickfire Challenge and then work on the line in a restaurant, creating a series of dishes that exceed chef Tom Colicchio's expectations, and Rick Tramonto of Osteria Di Tramonto, Gale's Coffee Bar, Tramonto's Steak & Seafood, and RT Lounge turns up as a guest judge.

Where Pilots Go to Die: An "Ultra" Letdown

Welcome back to another installment of "Where Pilots Go to Die." Last time, I took a look at the CW's underwater drama Aquaman/Mercy Reef which failed to make it onto the CW's fall schedule. I have a fascination with series that don't go any further than the pilot stage. So imagine my excitement when a copy of CBS's dead pilot Ultra ended up in my greedy little hands.

When I first heard of the project a few months ago, I was surprised to learn that CBS was developing a series based on Jonathan and Joshua Luna's superb comic of the same name ("Ultra: Seven Days"). I was even more surprised to discover that other than sharing a title, the two projects had nothing in common whatsoever...
The Luna Brothers' "Ultra: Seven Days" (pictured below) is a smart, edgy, sophisticated comic that's rather like Sex and the City... with superpowers. It recounts the story of Pearl Penalosa, a sexy Latina superhero with the codename of Ultra, as she saves the day and tries to find love in the big city. In this comic, superheroes are more akin to supermodels, with multi-million dollar endorsement deals, savvy agents, and magazine covers. They're celebrities in the biggest, splashiest sense of the word and Pearl and her two fellow superhero best friends--activist Cowgirl and slutty Aphrodite--are the biggest celebrities of all. But Pearl is torn between her duty as a super and her need to find that one true love of her life. And when a fortune teller predicts that Pearl will find love within seven days, she ends up on a quest that redefines who Pearl and Ultra really are. It's a brilliant reflection on rampant consumerism and celebrity in 21st century America, a sometimes raunchy romantic drama, and a ripping yarn to boot.

I was worried, and with good cause. How would this work on television? On CBS? Doesn't anyone remember the last time CBS attempted a superhero series? (Namely, the early 1990's Flash series, starring John Wesley Shipp, who would later be known to teenagers everywhere as Dawson's Dad.) So I was curious to see how the Luna Brothers' work had translated to the small screen and sat down with the 27-minute cut that was available for screening.

Written by Barbara Hall, CBS' Ultra is rather like Hall's last series, Joan of Arcadia. Except that this time, the lead doesn't speak to God (just to the audience) and has the more traditional superpowers of super-strength, heightened senses, and telekinesis. (Really, telekinesis? Um, why?) From the start, I'm a little concerned by Hall's decision to basically throw out the plot and characters of the Luna Brothers' work and instead create a show that revolves around a rather mundane female superhero who has no real connection to the sexy, strong, and sassy Latina superhero Ultra. First off, Ultra's not Latina in the show nor is she named Pearl. Instead, our lead is Penny (Lena Headey, above), a poor and vaguely Southern girl from an abusive and rag-clad family who escaped to Manhattan. I love Lena Headey and while it wouldn't bother me at all to have her as the lead of a series (really, it would be a pleasure), she's not Ultra or Pearl.

I'm not quite sure why Hall and the producers opted to take "Penny" away from her more ethnic roots and turn her into some Southern Gothic urchin. Flashback scenes--accompanied by copious, exposition-laden voiceover--seek to establish Penny as a survivor; we see her first as a bedraggled little kid who hurls herself off of a tall wooden structure and walks away unscathed but she's unable to prevent her leering father from beating up her creepy, emotionless mother. Later as a teenager, Penny suddenly has developed a Southern accent and dreams Big Dreams about becoming a writer, unaware that the boy with her wants nothing more from her than sex. We're told later by Cryptic Man (Coupling's Melty Man himself, Richard Coyle) that most superpowers develop as the result of a bad childhood. Whah huh? So neglect and abuse bring about an evolutionary leap? Color me confused.

Instead of jumping into Penny/Ultra's story in the swing of things, we're instead treated to what amounts to a rather ho-hum origin story, replete with B-grade special effects of explosions. While the Luna Brothers had created an entire world for Pearl/Ultra to have as a playground, Penny's world seems drably similar to our own. The main action of the plot begins after Penny has graduated from NYU and has dreams of being a novelist. But instead she's working a trivial job and living in a grubby underground apartment. And then one day, her amazing abilities suddenly seem to manifest themselves while she brushes her teeth (yes, you read that correctly). She's able to move her water glass around in the air... with her mind! Oooh. And then when she's nearly mugged in the street, she picks up her attacker and throws him through the air... with her strength! She's superhuman! And before you know it, she's contacted by the mysterious Cryptic Man (Coyle), a fellow superhuman with confusing shapeshifting abilities that seem more like teleportation to me, who urges her to see the even more mysterious person called The Scientist (Peter Dinklage, slumming it here), who determines that Penny is in fact special!

When Penny manages to save a number of people from a disastrous traffic accident, she instantly becomes a bit of a minor celebrity, lands an agent, and receives a "cape" from Cryptic Man (really a white sheet) with the name "Ultra" emblazoned--well, written--in silver all around the edges. Her agent then assists her in designing a "costume" to accompany her "cape." The end result looks more like a member of the heavenly choir crossed with... Pocahontas? While I didn't think the producers would necessarily be able to use Ultra's purple and white costume from the comic, I was hoping they would have come up with something that looked a little more television-friendly and realistic. (No X-Men-style black leather here, kids, it's the bedding department of Bed, Bath, and Beyond.) Penny does a commercial hawking some fizzy drink in which she pretends to fly (unlike the comic, this Ultra can't fly, or couldn't yet anyway), and soon acquires a villain of sorts in her deranged stalker, Veronique Nemesis (Marissa Jaret Winokur), a human with delusions that she has superpowers and a fixation on Penny... one which ends in blood when Veronique casually shoots her on a New York City street.

No sign of Ultra's friends Cowgirl and Aphrodite, though some research turned up that actresses Majandra Delfino (Roswell) and Aimee Garcia (George Lopez) were cast as Penny's friends Suzette and Kyra and would have eventually developed powers of their own. They did not however appear in the 27-minute cut that I watched.

It's sad when you see a pilot with fantastic actors working with material so far beneath themselves. Headey, Coyle, and Dinklage are all superb actors, but they can't overcome the truly awful writing, mind-numbingly painful voiceover, and way too earnest tone of the piece. Ultra lacks any of the off-kilter (and sometimes blue) humor of the comic as well as the innate "smartness" of the subject matter. "Ultra" the comic was a glorious combination of superheroics, soap opera, and self-aware humor; that this pilot shares a similar title only makes me question why Hall didn't just create her own twenty-something female superhero for a softer-than-brie drama instead of filleting everything that made this franchise unique and compelling.

Ultimately, I couldn't really see how Ultra would have worked on CBS amid all the crime procedurals and juggernaut reality shows, nor on the CW, which briefly considered picking up the series. At least I still have my dog-eared copy of the Luna Brothers' "Ultra."And in the end, maybe that's for the best as the world doesn't need another sub-par superhero. Especially one that's as much of an ultra-letdown as this one.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers (CBS; 8-11 pm); Blue Collar TV/Blue Collar TV (WB); George Lopez/Freddie (ABC); So You Think You Can Dance (FOX; 8-10 pm); Black Knight (UPN; 8-10 pm)

9 pm: Dateline (NBC; 9-10 pm); One Tree Hill (WB); Lost (ABC)

10 pm: Commander in Chief (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

10 pm: Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America (9 pm ET).

If Monday night's Hell's Kitchen wasn't enough Gordon Ramsay for you, here's your chance to catch him again. On tonight's episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares ("D-Place"), Gordon takes on the failing D-Place restaurant, where the food is disastrous, the staff is at one another's throats, and the owners have sunk nearly $300,000 of their own money into the rapidly sinking restaurant. Will Gordon be able to knock some sense into their heads and save the restaurant?

Where Pilots Go to Die: "Aquaman" Drowns in Shallow Waters

I was planning on writing about ABC's new drama Six Degrees today, but last night I saw something so awful, so unintentionally hilarious that I needed--no, was forced--to share it with all of you. I looked into the darkness of the abyss where pilots go to die and the darkness looked back at me... and I laughed.

Yes, my friends, I am talking about the aborted CW pilot, Mercy Reef, a.k.a. The Reef, a.k.a. Aquaman, which recounts, as the tagline puts it, "The Legend of Aquaman." Helpful, that. Like Smallville before it, this pilot attempted to put a youthful spin on the origin story of another DC Comics superhero, this time the somewhat openly mocked Aquaman.

Let me begin by saying that I have nothing against Aquaman as a character. He's from the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, can swim really fast, and can communicate with sea creatures. I know all about how DC tried to toughen him up a bit and give him a rather, um, macho overhaul by having him lose his hand... which was soon replaced by a big harpoon and later a "water hand" (don't ask). I loved how Entourage's Vince was playing A.C. in a feature film directed by James Cameron last season. I even loved Aquaman in Mark Waid's brilliant series "Justice League: Year One."

That said, I have no idea why anyone--least of all Smallville's creators Al Gough and Miles Millar--would want to center a live-action television series around the swimming sensation. While I don't watch Smallville, I can definitely see the appeal of a teenage Superman. A teenage Batman? I'd love to see Bruce Wayne fighting crime as a wealthy, orphaned punk. As for others I'd sooner see ahead in the line of Aquaman? How about a teen version of Green Arrow or Green Lantern? Or hey, thinking on that tack, a version of The Bold and the Brave for the Noxema set? But Aquaman?

Mercy Reef/Aquaman (call it what you will) is bad... laughably bad. This version of the story of Aquaman brings us a nearly-twenty-year-old Arthur "A.C." Curry (Justin Hartley, who replaced Will Toale in the role), the survivor of a plane crash in the Bermuda Triangle that ten years earlier killed his beautiful and blonde mother (an underwater scuffle with a sea siren sort of sealed the deal). After the death of his mother and his rescue at sea, A.C. was raised by his rather gruff military officer father Tom Curry (Lou Diamond Phillips, slumming it here). Unaware that he is actually the heir to the throne of Atlantis (a prince called Oren), A.C. spends his time freeing dolphins and getting into trouble, that is, when he's not running the dive shop and bar he owns, called--snicker--The Old Man and the Sea. But his good pal Eva (Amber McDonald), who runs the dive shop/bar hybrid with A.C., tries her best to keep him out of trouble. But A.C. is no normal kid: he can swim--really fast--underwater and hold his breath for long periods of time and he has some sort of empathic connection with sea life.

But then weird things start happening: lights in the sky, big storms that don't show up on any conventional radars, weird, watery gateways to Atlantis open, and a stranger named McCaffrey (Ving Rhames) approaches A.C. and knows all about him. The military is doing some odd investigation into the Bermuda Triangle and some big muckety-muck assigns Air Force Lt. Rachel Torres (Denise Quinones) to do a fly-over (why?) but as she does, the weird gateway thingie opens and smashes her jet, causing her to fall into the ocean. Lucky for her, A.C. was swimming underneath her and he saves her life.

Meanwhile, a young man is found floating on a piece of flotsam and rescued by Tom Curry, but he has a message for Oren (that's A.C., remember): they're coming. And like A.C. and his dead momma, this kid has a rather cheesy seahorse necklace on too. The military determines that the kid is actually someone who disappeared 60 years ago in the Bermuda Triangle, but he hasn't aged... Dun Dun Dun! He's been in Atlantis the whole time but now there's some sort of danger he needs to warn the prodigal prince about and--guess what--trouble followed him to the surface world in the form of Nadia (the incredibly annoying Adrianne Palicki), the very same sea siren who killed his mother (who might just be Amelia Earhart--wait, what?). Nadia and A.C. scuffle and he's saved by the arrival of the mysterious McCaffrey.

McCaffrey is another Atlantean exile and he wants to teach A.C. about his heritage, but first they have to defeat the evil Nadia--who had just skewered Eva in an earlier scene and killed the poor Atlantean messenger--which seems pretty easy, considering she's a deep sea baddy with a hypnotic gaze and really big teeth and claws. Afterwards, McCaffrey invites A.C. to his lighthouse, where he'll begin training him. And his first assignment: read Shakespeare's "Henry IV." Damn, but A.C.'s "not much of a reader." They laugh and we're expected to believe that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Aw.

Besides for the fact that the script's dialogue is so atrocious, the pilot's big weakness is in its cast, which is truly awful. As the lead, Hartley is especially cringe-worthy and his delivery is so wooden that you begin to hope that that next scene would focus on someone else. While the vacant eyes and bare chest school of acting may have worked on Passions, it takes more than just beefcake to make a series lead. (Seriously, if Hartley is this bad, I shudder to think what Toale, whom he replaced, was like.) I normally love Ving Rhames. This guy is The Man. Tough, gruff, with a trademark deadpan humor, he added needed spark to all three Mission: Impossible features. But here, it's as though he's reading from a Teleprompter; all his lines are delivered in the same monotone fashion. And poor Lou Diamond Phillips seems like he's sleepwalking through his scenes. But the worst has got to be the little kid and the mom from the pilot's opening scene, which had me rolling on the floor. Note to all producers: if you're going to cast a child actor, pick one that can actually ACT and not just look like a younger version of the lead.

In the version of the pilot I saw, the special effects were unfinished but for the most part were well done and expensive-looking, more like something you'd typically find in a feature film than in a teen drama. The scene with A.C. swimming in the ocean with the dolphins was especially breathtakingly beautiful; that said, the effects in scenes where he swims really fast were terrible and reminded me of CBS's short-lived series The Flash. (There must be a better way to show his speed in the water.)

Ultimately, it's no wonder that Aquaman wasn't picked up to series. Between the lousy script and the even lousier acting, I can understand why the CW wouldn't pony up the cash for what would have proved to be a very expensive series. I get why a youth-skewing network would want to set a series in and around the ocean, but it should be for a better reason that just an excuse to have the guys walk around shirtless and the girls in skimpy bikinis. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, from a viewer's standpoint.) And while Superman and Batman have huge mainstream fan bases, Aquaman is a niche character that few people, beyond the character's comic readers, really have an affinity for. (Lest we forget, remember the fiasco that was the WB's Birds of Prey?) Supes and Bats are national icons, instantly recognizable by millions, whose stories have captured the imagination of countless people for nearly a century. Superhero TV series either need that level of visibility in order to thrive or need to subvert that dominant paradigm (Buffy being the perfect example of that: blonde cheerleader by day, super-strong vampire slayer by night).

But, unfortunately, I'm going to have to toss Aquaman back in the sea; this vapid pilot is simply no great catch.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Gameshow Marathon (CBS); The Office/The Office (NBC); Smallville (WB); 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee (ABC; 8-10 pm); That '70s Show/That '70s Show (FOX); Everybody Hates Chris/Love, Inc. (UPN)

9 pm: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS); The Office/The Office (NBC); Supernatural (WB); So You Think You Can Dance (FOX); Eve/Cuts (UPN)

10 pm: Without a Trace (CBS); ER (NBC); Primetime (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

8-10 pm: The Office.

Oh, NBC, I take back all the awful things I said about you. Okay, well, not all of them. But it's a step in the right direction to schedule a mini-marathon of four back-to-back episodes of The Office. At 8 pm, it's "Fire," the episode where a fire breaks out in the Dunder-Mifflin office kitchen and forces the employees to evacuate to the parking lot. Next up at 8:30 pm, it's "The Client," the episode where Michael impresses Jan with his people skills in front of a prospective client. At 9 pm, it's "Performance Review," wherein Michael steals the employee suggestion box in order to impress Jan with his ideas. And rounding out the evening, it's "Email Surveillance," the episode where Michael begins to spy on the Dunder-Mifflin workers' email and somehow manages to upset everyone.

10 pm: 5 Takes: Pacific Rim on the Travel Channel.

New night, new time, new episodes. The 5 Takes gang returns with a new batch of episodes, this time from New Zealand. In tonight's installment ("Queenstown"), the gang sets out for the resort town of Queenstown, which coincidentally is the extreme sports capital of New Zealand. Hmmm, I predict Josh will enjoy some bungey jumping while Gabe samples some of the region's pinot noir.

10 pm-Midnight: Waking the Dead on BBC America (or 9 pm for you East Coasters).

The fifth season of one of my favorite British crime dramas continues. On tonight's episode ("Subterraneans"), the body of a missing millionaire businessman is found in an underground cellar, one year after he disappeared. In a rather odd twist, the kidnapper never made any demands and the victim appears to have committed suicide... Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.