Ah, out with the old, in with the new. The television season is dead, long live the next television season. And to prepare for it, I’m going to review new shows as the pilots become available.

Shark; CBS, Thursday, 10:00 PM

It’s really fun to watch James Woods work; I think as an actor he is considerably underrated. I’m worried, though, that this show isn’t going to get him the credit he deserves.

Jeri Ryan and James Woods make nice for the camera

Woods plays Sebastian Shark, a high-profile defense attorney constantly crossing swords with and consistently beating District Attorney Jess Devlin (Jeri Ryan, Star Trek Voyager), until the day he gets wife-beater Gordy Brock off on a charge of attempted murder, and six days later the wife is dead.

After weeks of moping, he is offered a job by the Mayor of LaLaLand – leading the high-profile case division of the DA’s office. After the expected balking, he takes the job, and throws himself into the job with the same gusto he devoted to his defense work.

Of course, the juniors in the department, misfits all, are unhappy about working with him, and DA Devlin isn’t happy about having to deal with him, either, so she sends him to the dankest office in the basement. But none of that matters to The Shark…winning is everything, and there are only three rules: trial is war and second place is death, truth is relative so pick one that works, and in a jury trial there are only twelve opinions that matter, and yours ain’t one of ‘em.

Their first case, the Dennison case, goes to trial in forty-eight hours, and it’s a loser. But Shark is determined to triumph; he tells his staff, “Your job is to win…justice is God’s problem.”At the same time he needs to deal with his sixteen-year-old daughter’s (Danielle Panabaker) custody hearing, where he is likely to lose her to her mother and New York.

Most of his discussions with his minions are filled with platitudes and such, but at its core this is a standard procedural, albeit with a somewhat twisted central character. And no one can chew scenery the way Woods can when given decent dialog to tear through like a stampeding locomotive. But throughout the trial, I was way ahead of Shark…for a smart guy, they seem to have made him a dullard when women tear up on the witness stand, to the point where he not only breaks his own rules, but also misses an obvious clue that hits the audience like a two-by-four. It’s never a good thing when your viewers know how it’s going to turn out long before your protagonist has the slightest clue.

And this is where the problem with this pilot rears its ugly head…while his character is written smart, the plot is pretty transparent, as if the writers spent all their time honing his dialog and none on the actual “mystery” of the piece. While it’s great fun to watch Woods work, and his supporting cast is fine, if the producers don’t get their act together and write decent plots for the show, this is going to tank faster than the Titanic.

And that would be unfair to the audience, since it’s really fun to watch James Woods work…

From Science Addiction: 95 Theses of Geek Activism

Ok, they aren’t all genius, but overall it’s pretty good.