belated review: Jean-Claude van Johnson

This pains me. I really, really wish I could recommend Jean-Claude van Johnson, because I admire its writing so much. But I have to be honest, and reluctantly admit that there's a difference between "admire" and "enjoy."

Let's get the concept of the series out of the way: Jean-Claude van Damme stars as a fictionalized version of himself. Even though he's still cranking out action films on a fairly regular basis in real life, the show depicts him as a retired has-been. "My name is Jean-Claude van Damme," the first line of the series says, "and I used to be super-famous." The show gets a lot of mileage out of the "used to be" part of that sentence.

But here's the twist that forms the core concept of the series: According to this story, van Damme's movie career has always just been a cover for a second career, in which he was a super-spy for an independent espionage agency. The spy version of van Damme is known as "Jean-Claude van Johnson," not exactly an alias, so much as a way for people who know him to distinguish between when he's being an actor, and when he's being a spy.

A chance encounter with his great lost love, who still works for that same agency, motivates him to get back in the game, which means trying to simultaneously get back in peak physical condition so he can still be an effective spy, while he also struggles to revive his fledgling movie career. It helps that many (but notably not all) of the people working on his movies are a part of his support team in the espionage job, most notably his field handler and movie agent Jane, played by Phylicia Rashad in a fun supporting role.

The writing is clever, creative, original, and pleasantly goes in directions you wouldn't expect. I liked how lines that seem like overly obvious jabs at Hollywood in general and van Damme's movie career in particular have a way of coming back later; what seems like a dumb joke often turns out to be just the set-up for an actually funny pay-off later on. On an admiration level, I particularly liked a sequence in which Jean-Claude van Johnson goes to great lengths to avoid being discovered while infiltrating an enemy base, but when he's discovered, he's shocked to learn that no one is surprised by his presence; everyone seems to think he belongs there. This sequence culminates in an encounter/ explanation that serves as both punchline for what has preceded, and also a highly clever dialogue that calls back to a number of earlier lines and scenes. Yes, I admired all of this a great deal.

But yet it somehow still didn't work, and I can't quite figure out why. I kept thinking things like, "this is funny," and "that's hilarious!" but they were thoughts more than emotional reaction. The show never really struck my funny-bone, and the reason eludes me. The cast is good, the writing excellent, the presentation professional. And yet . . . when the pilot episode ended, I had enjoyed it in a way, but had no desire at all to see any further episodes. I am mystified.

Belated Review: Candle Cove

All episodes of the SyFy Channel's semi-anthology series Channel Zero are now available on demand, so I just finished watching season one, also known as "Candle Cove." The story is based on a 1-page-long short story by Kris Straub. If you're assuming that the writers must have had to stretch out a 1-page story quite a bit to make it the source of an entire season's worth of television, you ain't wrong.

The original story concerned a children's series of the same name, a series that was particularly creepy and disturbing considering its targeted age group. I have mixed feelings about the original short story. On the one hand, it's a creative and intriguing concept, brilliantly presented not in typical prose format, but rather as a series of entries in an online message board. But the ending is far, far too abrupt and undeveloped, with Straub taking obvious pride in an intriguing twist ending that really shouldn't have been the end at all.

So no, the writers of the TV series didn't have much to work with, and they were forced to add a lot of elements to expand it into a whole season of television. As horror, they invest a lot in the admittedly very creepy puppet character Jawbone, and in various, mostly visually effective monsters that lurk about menacingly. As narrative, the writers take the central conceit and make it the center of a multi-layered mystery. The main character here is Doctor Mike Painter, a child psychologist who has recently gained some renown due to a surprisingly successful new book. The story is set into motion when Mike Painter returns to his childhood home-town after decades of absence, only to find that the long-ago series Candle Cove, which played a central role in his childhood, has mysteriously returned to the airwaves, and is affecting the children watching it in disturbing ways.

There's a lot of potential in this set-up, but the writers bumble the presentation in a number of ways. Characters repeatedly jump to odd conclusions and make foolish choices, and the police are far too quick to falsely suspect Mike of criminal activity, especially when you consider that the sheriff and one of his deputies are supposed to be old friends of Mike's. It gets to the point where you repeatedly exclaim, "why would he do that?" "Why would he say that?" Why would he think that?" And so on.

My wife and I also got tired of just how many times the show pulled an already tired cliche, showing something dramatic and horrific, and then, guess what, it was just a dream! Seriously, the show really needs to lay off on the whole "just a dream" gimmick.

The next season is based on a different short story, one which I admire greatly, "The No-End House." I am both looking forward to seeing a dramatization of the story, but also, in light of the many missteps from the first season, kind of nervous that they'll screw it all up royally. We'll see.