The Unusuals

this show had it going, i saw the first couple of them and it was amusing enough to make you want more and more....great cast And even greater Script, though it started out as your Average Joe detective show , and it turned out to be much much more than just cops doing their work ,it can be predictable but it sure as hell funny , ..after i was watching it on a regular basis i discovered that the show had been canceled...What a waste to a great potential :(, well i hope that CBS or ABC or what ever , could bring it back...it has good ratings, great potential and everything required to make a show of the year, i just don't get it , anyways i say, enjoy the 10episodes to the fullest as u can,you never know when they might release a thing that good ever again!! :D .

So here is another one of those outstanding network TV shows canceled WAY before its time (after only 10 episodes?!? Can you say "Firefly"?). Around four months before Jeremy Renner's big breakthrough role starring in Kathryn Bigelow's award-winning "The Hurt Locker," I happened to be surfing TV channels one night and land on an unconventional cop show, written and created for ABC by Noah Hawley, who would proceed to make "Fargo" and "Legion" (two more brilliant cable TV series). While a plot synopsis doesn't promise that much to write home about: Amber Tamblyn plays a rookie detective thrown in head first to partner up with the more seasoned (and also somewhat resentful) cop Renner, given how long and hard he's worked to make detective, and whereupon equal parts danger and hilarity ensue (See what I mean about a plot synopsis?), it's the eccentric cast of characters who prove to have such compelling personalities (like that of the supporting actors Harold Perrineau and Adam Goldberg). I don't know why I should've been surprised that a major TV network would would premier a new series in April and ax it by June, but this show had vanished by the month before "The Hurt Locker" with Jeremy Renner premiered in theaters at the end of July 2009. And of course, Harold Perrineau would go on to be on ABC's "Lost," as all of the talented cast landed on their feet. But just like the rest of corporate America (and just like Fox with Firefly) nobody at ABC would or did admit that they'd had an interesting series with excellent writing and acting that they'd totally screwed up-right before its star became a major Hollywood force. Well, at least real-life super-hero Jeremy Renner has gone on to have lasting success/last laughs!

Over the years audiences have been treated to gritty, dark cop shows but ABC's new show "The Unusuals" is something really different. There's a heavy emphasis on dark humor and eccentricities that gave me a few laughs, but there's something going on beneath the surface and only by watching these characters will we ever find out. True, there are the inevitable crimes of the week that viewers will be treated to but it's the well acted characters, witty and funny dialog as well as the "unusual" situations that keep things interesting and I for one was getting into this show. It's already starting to grow on me. Not a show for the kiddies as there are sexual innuendo and some thematic elements, but it's good, real good. Although I like serious shows but every once in a while I'd watch something that's light-hearted, doesn't take itself too seriously, and overall, fun for an entire hour.

I discovered and bought ''The Unusuals'' DVD on Amazon a few days ago (10 October 2012, too late, unfortunately) because I (and my family!) am an absolute fan of Jeremy Renner (really great, charming, extraordinary, irresistible, deep and intense actor) and of Amber Tamblyn (also great, delightful and brilliant actress). I already watched the whole series twice in a week! Definitely, ''The Unusuals'' is one of my favorite series in my life (I am 48)! An outstanding casting (Renner, Tamblyn, Perrineau, Goldberg, Curnen, Lennox, Close, Kinney and so on, the performance of each actor and actress is always so right, perfect, natural); a fantastic mixture of drama, comedy, romanticism; a gripping, original, amusing, touching and dynamic script!!! So, I wonder WHY the series stopped????? It's a crime!!!!! I know that my complaint (sorry for my bad English) is probably just a message in a bottle in the ocean but PLEASE, I BEG YOU, at least make a FILM (with the same casting, of course...)!!! Do not let us down...

Having watched everything from LAW AND ORDER to NYPD BLUE, I have a pretty good idea by now how police procedural shows work. You get a sense of the personalities of the main characters while they solve a boatload of cases week after week, but since the shows are mostly about the cases and not about the characters, nuggets of information about the heroes' quirks, family lives and other intimate details are about as rare as actually finding a real cherry in a Hostess Cherry Fruit Pie. And then they're doled out maybe one or two every fifth or sixth episode.

Which is why THE UNUSUALS is so darn refreshing. Like a fighter who actually leads with his chin, this series wears its characters odd qualities on its sleeve. And what gets doled out just like those aforementioned cherries, are bits and pieces of a puzzle underneath all the weirdness: the real secrets these characters are hiding underneath the "WTF" moments.

I never watched a single episode of JOAN OF ARCADIA, but I was immediately intrigued with Amber Tamblyn, who plays Det. Casey Shraeger. What makes her "unusual": she's a trust- fund baby from a VERY wealthy blue-blood background, who has been working in Vice "on the stroll" for two years, when she's plucked off the streets from her hooker gig and teamed up with stoic Det. Jason Walsh, played by Jeremy Renner. (You may remember Renner as the heroic and doomed soldier from 28 WEEKS LATER.) Two of the things that make him "unusual": off-duty, he runs a hole-in-the-wall diner where he cooks and serves dishes you could never imagine yourself wanting to eat, and he has been covering for his corrupt partner, who suddenly ends up looking like a slab of beef in a slaughterhouse. Since said partner was also into hookers, hence his sudden, reluctant partnership with Shraeger.

In an inspired bit of casting, two of the most watchable "unusuals" seem to have the most conventional secrets in any cop show going this far over-the-top: Adam Goldberg (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN) and Harold Perrineau (LOST, OZ) play partnered Detectives Leo Banks and Eric Delahoy, respectively. Banks wears a bulletproof vest both on and off-duty (he's terrified that he will die at age 42), where Delahoy suddenly becomes a suicidal "super-cop", who isn't afraid to do anything that might get him killed (he has a brain tumor and has been given mere months to live, if he doesn't get the operation he's determined to avoid.)

Riding herd on these and several other off-beat personalities constantly clashing in the precinct is Sgt. Harvey Brown (OZ alum Terry Kinney), who has pulled Tamblyn's seemingly squeaky-clean character in for a very specific reason: to help him clean house. Not surprisingly enough, there are several cops in their shop who are on the take and worse, and he wants to expose and take them down before his superiors are motivated to do it for him. "Nothing is what it looks like," he warns her - or something to that effect.

If the show has any problems, which are definitely not with the strong ensemble cast, it's some of the cases piled on top of everything else to heighten the weirdness. No explanation is given as to why a perp is brought in wearing a hot dog suit, or why their caseloads include everything from a serial killer of neighborhood cats, to a dangerous gang that goes on a rampage which includes virtually every male member of the family, down to the youngest brother who is an honor student in high school (so why weren't the aunts, the mother and the grandmother in on it, too?)

The goings-on with the main characters would be more than enough to keep things interesting without any more embellishments, but in a blasted landscape littered with the corpses of shows long past their prime, being fed on by the fly-blown vultures of reality TV constructs, at least THE UNUSUALS is trying by daring to be...unusual. And it's for that reason I fear that this show will be over before it even gets the chance to find its feet and its potential audience.

But I really hope I'm wrong.