have been watching kings, a show that started out promising but very quickly devolved into nonsense. the conceit was cool: a modern-day retelling of the biblical stories of the kingdom of israel with ian mcshane as king saul/silas and christopher egan (who?) as david. the producers also started out on the right foot, i think, by selling the show to nbc, and investing a ton of energy in art direction: everything is starkly lit and carefully crafted without having the awful glossiness and glare that the particular style often falls prey to. there are also some quite lovely moments in the pilot -- for instance, a scene where david confesses to his dying brother that the act that made him a hero (standing up to a 'goliath' tank) was not what it seemed ("everyone thinks i'm brave, but i'm not..."), prompting his brother's last words to him: "be brave now".

unfortunately, the pilot is more or less where the loveliness ends. it very quickly becomes apparent in subsequent episodes that the show has a number of fatal flaws. first, chris egan can't really act, and you can almost picture the vets of the production (mcshane and susanna thompson especially) getting increasingly frustrated with that. i mean, look at alias. lena olin, victor garber and ron rifkin combined couldn't combat the awfulness that was jennifer garner's "acting". second, the writers resort very quickly to the preposterous situations that should be reserved as last-resort ratings grabs or season cliffhangers at worst, with members of the royal family exposing themselves to deadly viruses and generally running all over creation trying to get themselves killed. i mean, c'mon. little common sense goes a long way.

which brings us to the biggest problem with this show. it doesn't seem like the producers/creators spent any amount of time thinking through how an absolute monarchy in a modern technological society would work. (or if they did, they needed better consultants. were you really short of unemployed history phds?) that was the coolest part of the show for me when i started watching -- how does this system run? unfortunately, it doesn't seem like the writers intended to go anywhere with the idea, choosing instead to spend time on pretentious symbolism, ridiculous lessons in "theology", and the cringe-worthy love affair between david and the king's daughter.

sigh. on to the next heartbreak