(Do you see what I did there? I’m so damn droll.)
I was pretty satisfied with last night’s ‘sneak preview’ of The Human Target, a comic character previously played by Rick Springfield* (!) in a 1992 show. Here main character Christopher Chance is played by Mark Valley (Boston Legal, Fringe), who brings both humor and a nicely old-fashioned square jaw to the role.
[*This thus is the second TV character later played by another actor. Springfield starred in the pilot movie, but not the eventual series, of the vampire cop show Forever Knight.]Chance’s gig is to go undercover around people whose lives have been threatened. He hangs out around them and draws out the killers, and then deals with them. I was pretty pleased to see this meant killing some of them; I don’t need my heroes to be kill-crazy but I do like a bit of good mayhem occasionally. And one demise, following a nicely brutal From Russia With Love-esque fight in a train car, was nicely gruesome.
It’s too bad that the commercials blew the best lines, but the writing was fairly tight. Valley again is right in the ballpark for Chance, and the supporting cast is strong, although frankly Chi McBride will never be a favorite of mine. However, former Rorschach and future Freddy Krueger Jackie Earley Haley is really fun to watch as an investigator and apparently ex-hitman with a psycho streak. It’s just too bad that his character will be constantly clucked over by McBride.
Anyway, a pretty good start. I never got around to watching 24, so it’s good to have a strong action show on the air. Hopefully they can keep the quality up. Another episode plays on Wednesday (good thing they moved Mythbusters!). It certainly can’t hurt the show’s ratings that it appears after American Idol.
