J.J. Abrams Sucks

Posted at 12:30 PM Jan 07, 2009

By Andy Beckerman



J.J. Abrams has some hard nuts to crack. While shows like Lost and Alias have their moments, and Mission Impossible III was about as tolerable as that series is going to get (and let's be honest, largely thanks to Philip Seymour Hoffman), most everything else he's touched has transmuted to gangrened gumbo. Though as the industry buzzes, one might think that gumbo was gold-flavored. However, for all his vaunted Midasing of TV and film properties, in the frankest of light, his ideas are really rather subpar, and since this isn't golf, that ain't good.

Or to be more accurate than a so-called smart bomb, let's narrow in a little further so that the good parts of Abrams aren't sprayed everywhere like civilian viscera. It's not particularly that his ideas are bad. Secret-agent turns double on an Illuminati-like organization, plane crashes on mysterious island, government investigators examine a giant pseudo-scientific conspiracy. These are well-wrought. However, the execution, like that of a Hamas rebel, is so sloppily performed that anyone or thing in the slightest proximity is obliterated in a blaze of ineptitude and violent ignorance.

Take Fringe for example, an amiable next-gen X-Files pastiche with some bits of '70s paranoia jammed in for effect. First, why hire an Australian who has to put all her acting skill into affecting an American accent rather than emoting? Did anyone learn anything from the Bionic Woman debacle? That may be the least of the problems , as cardboard characterizations, stilted dialogue, simpleminded writing and so on (excepting John Noble) drag down the worthwhile core idea into an endless quagmire from which it can't escape.

It may not be entirely Abrams' fault, as the network process generally renders any interesting idea impotent as a sad frat brah. However, it seems aesthetically unforgivable that show after show is composed so blandly time and time and time, ad infinitum. Surely, if Abrams was more than just a passable creator, one of those shows would excel past the stage of "watchable."

On the other hand, I'm an incredible letch, and Uhura takes her shirt off in the new Star Trek film, so whatevs, man.