Rachel Bellwoar reviews the first episode of Lethal Weapon season 1…
The Lethal Weapon franchise (and action movies, overall) have never been known for their subtlety. Lethal Weapon, the TV show, seems to take that note one step further, by repeatedly pushing the same points throughout the course of its “Pilot.” Take cop and family man, Roger Murtaugh’s, recent heart attack. Introduced by the camera panning up from his chest scar, a heart monitor bracelet beeps emphatically throughout his first days back on the job. His new partner, cop-with-a-death-wish and source of the beeping, Martin Riggs, questions whether he should consider retirement. It’s supposed to be an ironic line coming from his mouth, but if the beeping is meant to be anything more than a punchline, he’s right.
Riggs’ introduction is worse. Having sped up the results of a car chase, by making an impossible shot at the bad guys’ car (TV Riggs’ background is as a Navy Seal but this would’ve sold better with film Riggs’ past as a Vietnam marksman) he rushes to the hospital, flowers in hand, to make it in time for his child’s birth. The tragedy he meets with instead is that his wife and child have been killed in a car crash driving in. What should be the defining moment of this sequence gets overshadowed by visual cues letting us know that tragedy has occurred. Slow-motion running. The camera circling around Riggs’ head, to reflect his life spiraling out of control. A bloody necklace as her personal effects. When we see him again after a six month time jump, his new tattoo of her name on his arm is the first sight that greets us.
But surely action sets will redeem the overselling of these dramatic points, you hope. Not quite. A hostage situation done off book is an entertaining, if familiar, formula but is also about the only highlight this episode has to offer. Clearly another car chase, where the pair land themselves on a race track, is meant to be the showstopper but once the initial racers zoom by, feels pretty ordinary as far as car chases go. Really, the surprise was that such a quick transition, from being on the streets to the track, was possible, and in the moment this sudden change of location takes too long to process.
Some people like figuring out an episode’s case-of-the-week before the main characters do. Here hints are dropped so obviously you have no choice in the matter. In the end, the reason for giving Lethal Weapon a shot is what the show has most in its favor, and that’s the casting of Clayne Crawford and Damon Wayans in Mel Gibson and Danny Glover’s original roles. For anyone who’s seen Crawford’s indelible work on Rectify, a show whose final season airs next month, the idea of him getting to take on such a different, mainstream role was exciting. Wayans, meanwhile, is a proven master at playing irritation comically, and a nice inside joke has him cutting Riggs off before finishing one of Glover’s famous lines, “I’m too old for this shit.”
Unfortunately, 2016 is too old for a remake of a film that has already inspired many shows and films in its likeness. Lethal Weapon simply goes all the way by taking the property’s title as well.
Rachel Bellwoar
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published September 22, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
