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.