An Orphan Walks Into a Bar

[readerjane]

I was disappointed in the pilot episode of The Finder.

Two things had set my expectations quite high: one that The Finder is created by Hart Hanson, amazing showrunner for Bones. The second thing was that the spinoff episode on Bones (also called "The Finder") had been wonderful. The dynamic between main character Walter Sherman and supporting characters Leo Knox (Walter's legal-advisor-with-muscles) and Ike Latulippe (bartender for Walter's saloon) had just sparkled. I loved the setting and the quirky nature of that trio, and was looking forward to experiencing their own adventures when they weren't sharing center stage with Booth & Brennan, even while I enjoyed their interaction with the Bones team.

I can't understand why Hart broke up that amazing trio. Saffron Burrows' character Ike has been swapped out for, apparently, two characters: Isabel Zambada, who shoulders the grownup parts of Ike's role, and Willa Monday, who inherits the spunky parts. This is not an improvement.

In the spinoff episode, Ike and Leo were both staunch friends of Walter, who tolerated his irritating quirks but supported him in his business and looked out for him. I didn't get the impression from that spinoff episode that Ike and Walter were or would be paired. Will have to watch that ep again, but I don't remember seeing any signs of The Lean. Isabel is definitely paired with Walter, but since Isabel is a Deputy U.S. Marshall, what we have now is just another quirky investigator / stable law enforcer duo. And that's been done SO many times.

Michael Clarke Duncan is still present playing Leo. I enjoy watching MCD in anything -- his voice is a basso delight, and his smile lights up the screen. But there's a lot less of the things I enjoyed about Leo in the spinoff ep: less play with the irony of him being "legal advisor" who warns Walter when Walter's doing something that could get him arrested, and less of the philosophical side I'd been looking forward to seeing more of.

And Willa Monday... WTF? A delinquent teenager who's secretly from a family of gypsies, placed at Walter's bar for her probation job while out of juvenile detention? First off, NO government agency would place a teenage girl in the care of two single men, would they?? Also, the standard for secret gypsy characters is set pretty high, and this writing doesn't measure up. Actress Maddie Hasson is doing fine with what she's given, but what she's being given is awfully thin and awfully artificial. ETA: Meant to add, Willa is saddled with a cranky probation officer who is bent on finding an excuse to dump Willa back in juvie, and seems to be in the plot merely to create sympathy for Willa. Meh.

Last, there's Walter himself. The basics of his character are the same in the pilot as in the spinoff ep. Wounded veteran, has a mystic-seeming ability to locate things or people which seems to be the result of his brain damage but which he sees as a gift. In the pilot ep Leo and Isabel talk about Walter's fixation with never failing a challenge and how it will affect him if he ever does fail. That's just talk, though -- in the spinoff ep we saw how the damage was affecting Walter's life: it made him sort of obsessive, even about trivial things, and his resulting behavior alienated him from a lot of the people around him. In the spinoff ep, what I saw was Leo and Ike forgiving Walter's occasional rudeness in pursuit of his cases, not because Walter's injury made him disabled or because his success rate was perfect, but because they both loved him and worried about him. That wasn't coming through with Leo and Isabel in the pilot.

I'm not ready to give up on this story yet. Hart Hanson has a mountain of credit in my books, and I'll gladly give his new show plenty of time to win me over.

If I wasn't already a Hart fan, though, and had come to this pilot ep cold, I'm not sure I would have bothered. Interestingly, I recently watched the pilot ep of Bones with my son. There as when I first saw it, I'm plunged immediately into the story, latching onto the characters without hesitation. The Finder has a ways to go.

Comments

[rynogeny]

I agree that the trio dynamic worked better, but the character of Ike fared really, really badly with test audiences. A lot of people hated her, and apart from her accent, I could never understand why. (It didn't bother me, but it drove the Brits crazy because I guess it came across as a Brit faking a Brit accent. Or something.)

I'm a little confused by Isabella. I know Hart said he didn't want to do another another will they/won't they, so I'm not sure what that means in the context of this relationship. I didn't see any real chemistry there, so I'm hoping it going to mean light flirting and friendship and nothing else.

And Willa completely baffles me. Her story interests me the least, but I'm willing to see what happens - and I'm hopeful at some point they'll explain why she's living in a trailer by herself and working in a bar.

But Walter and Leo's relationship is continuing to draw me. I love MCD, and I love his loyalty to Walter. (And Walter's to him.)

I'm fascinated by the idea that people don't always want what he finds and/or are often really looking for something other than what they have him search for - though I hope they don't bash us over the head with one of those two ideas every week.

I like the humor and heart of it, I guess, which is one of the things that draws me to Bones. Leo and Walter's interactions with the son - and what was revealed all through the story about the father/son relationship - moved me. (Though granted, it wasn't terribly original.)

(Along those lines, I wonder sometimes about Hart's relationship with his parents. From what he's said, he was quite close to both of them (I think his mom is still alive) but parent/adult child dynamics seem to figure into his stories on a regular basis.)

As to the telling rather than showing and the things they didn't explain (like Willa) ...that's what I'm most willing to wait for. Pilots are often problematic because they've got too much they're trying to do, so...

[readerjane]

(I didn't see any real chemistry there, so I'm hoping it going to mean light flirting and friendship and nothing else.)

I don't see any chemistry either. But given that before Willa and the boy were attacked outside the trailer, Walter and Isabel were cooking supper together in his kitchen, and she sipped the wine and said "if I have another glass of this I'll have to stay over," and he immediately poured her more -- given the way they were laughing about it, and the fact Isabel was trouserless when she ran to rescue Willa, I'd say there's no will-they about it. They are.

(I hope they don't bash us over the head with one of those two ideas every week.)

I do too, but they were bashing hard with nearly everything I might have liked this week. I felt like we were being hit over the head with Walter's and Leo's friendship, with the whole need-to-please-his-father subplot, with Willa's story... and I can't figure out why, because Hart is more than capable of telling each of those stories with subtlety and power.

(Pilots are often problematic because they've got too much they're trying to do, so...)

I was telling myself that too, but then myself countered that these characters were better introduced on Bones when they had only a half of an episode to present themselves. Patience, self! This is the warmup period. Not every story is brilliant right out of the gate.

The one thing I absolutely loved, and I ought to have listed this against my list of complaints before... sight gags might not contribute much to the plot, but this one was absolutely brilliant. I LOVED the footstep robot. Laughed harder than I did since Joss subverted the [spoiler] trope in the trailer for Cabin in the Woods. That robot was a wonderful moment.

[readerjane]

(It didn't bother me, but it drove the Brits crazy because I guess it came across as a Brit faking a Brit accent. Or something.)

Meant to respond to this -- I'd thought from the spinoff ep that Ike was supposed to be an Australian. I guess the accent was pretty ambiguous. *g*