jantoniou

The context for "Complications" seems wild: A stressed-out ER doctor out for a drive comes upon a drive-by shooting. He ultimately saves the boy who is shot and kills members of a rival "Loco" (read: Mexican) gang who are coming back to finish the job.

Turns out the boy is not just a random ghetto statistic: He is the son of a prominent imprisoned gang leader. The E.R. doc - Dr. John Ellison, played very well by Irish actor Jason O'Mara - is unwittingly drawn in to their world and ultimately lives or dies at their behest.

Dr. Ellison bouncing from one admittedly absurd scenario to another forces you to either embrace the show as an edge-of-your-seat action-drama show or reject it as a ridiculous farce. Some will certainly choose the latter. Any drama - nor comedies or kids' shows, either - is nothing without conflict and "Complications" has plenty of it.

"Complications" was created by Matt Nix, the creator of "Burn Notice," one of my favorite USA shows - though admittedly the premise of "Burn Notice" wore quite thin after a few seasons. To Nix's credit he pushed the show into fairly dark territory as the stock show formula of Michael saving X person from bad guys and getting some form of revenge got pretty dull.

Now that Dr. Ellison in "Complications" is being setup as a kind of gangland doctor one wonders if Nix will follow something of a similar formula with various scenarios involving he and numerous somewhat or entirely outlandish setups where only the doctor can help.

It's great to see Beth Riesgraf - the very quirky Parker from the wonderful and frequently overlooked show "Leverage" - as Ellison's wife. Nix also seems to be drawing on some "Burn Notice" regulars as well, notably Lauren Stamile as another E.R. doctor (IIRC she played an FBI agent who was at first against Michael in "Burn Notice" but ultimately worked with him).

Whether you love or hate this show - I'm close to "really like" - there is no denying the direction, writing, and acting are all very good. Unlike a lot of pilots and new shows the actors seem incredibly comfortable and believable in their respective roles. The plots are at times pretty absurd - why doesn't the doctor, for example, simply go to the cops if a gang leader is threatening his life and that of his family? - but they're also designed quite well to keep you interested in the story. I have to wonder what direction they'll be taking next.

There's always been something a bit... quirky... about George Miller's film making sensibilities. Call it "Australian" if you will or perhaps it's just a comic book feel but from my admittedly American perspective, all the "Mad Max" series felt a bit different than the traditional uber-violent, slick high-action popcorn flicks. The "Die Hards," "Terminators," and so on.

This has been its - and Miller's - big strengths. He's got a feel for a strange back story and somewhat absurdist characterization and a deranged aesthetic that drew me to the Mad Max series originally.

"The Road Warrior" was undoubtedly the high point of this series. Though always a lone-wolf anti-hero, Mel Gibson's Max was far more interesting and likable and the central action set pieces brilliantly and tightly executed. Miller was at the top of his game back then.

"Fury Road" has given Miller a much wider brush to execute the strange and quirky sensibility and that feels like its key fault to me. It's the "too much budget" syndrome and it's afflicted many a movie that was great precisely because it didn't have a massive budget. 30+ years and $150M+ to spend hasn't exactly been kind to this series.

Tom Hardy is scarcely registering a pulse as Max. Does he utter more than 12 barely intelligible words throughout the film? In a film with "Mad Max" in the title I can hardly tell that Mad Max was even there. He could have been replaced by almost any other character in the movie. Nicholas Hoult's Nux - a vastly more interesting character - for example. Or Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiousa, who may have more screen time than Tom Hardy.

Over-the-top violence and excess is a trademark of this series. To not go in expecting this is absurd. The problem is that the violence feels like an intentionally garish suit that Miller has put on. The absurd audio-visual assault of the first 5-10 minutes of the film, for example, feels precisely this way. What's Miller going for here? What part of the plot and story is he trying to lay out and advance, exactly? Nothing, really, I'd argue. It's there purely to prepare your mind for the ensuing craziness, sort of like a shock treatment.

I was very excited when I first saw the "Fury Road" trailers. YES! Another Mad Max movie, finally. But Miller over-sold his story and vision in the end. He had way, way too much money to spend. I would have bought it more if he and Hardy hadn't decided to make Max this very distant, almost mute character. Max is NOT a traditional hero, to be sure, but he has a moral center most of us can attach to. I won't say this center was entirely lost here but I felt little emotion toward Max at the end. That likability was there throughout the series - from the first Mad Max to the Road Warrior to Thunderdome.

It's sadly missing here.

Several episodes into this first season I'm not 100% certain where "Halt and Catch Fire" is going and quite what it's about - but to a degree that feels all right. Most new TV shows take some time to get their full dose of oxygen and "HACF" is no different.

Is it a show about the building of one of the first IBM clones? Yes, but - to mix my metaphors - only peripherally.

Is it a show about the characters, their demons, desires, and inner motivations? Yes and I think this is its main thrust with the early PC revolution being merely its setting, a modern device that provides a backdrop for the drama.

Is it a show about business? To a degree, yes. We get a limited view into the world of business and how deals are struck (though with a bit of Hollywood writing glossed and slapped on). But, again, this serves principally as a backdrop for the drama.

Invariably any show worth its salt will live or die by its ability to convincingly portray drama - the writing, acting, and setting will compel the story forward by giving us interesting stories, characters, and plots.

Does "HACF" meet some or all of these criteria week after week? Mostly - but I'm not 100% convinced a large audience will find how they develop stories and characters interesting enough.

Lee Pace - a really superb actor who walks away with most of the episodes (though Toby Huss as Cardiff Electronics' CEO John Bosworth is a funny and shameless scene-stealer who makes it look rather effortless) - plays Joe McMillan and is arguably the best character on the show. Mysterious, charismatic, and vaguely poetic, we find in McMillan a born salesman who has turned his career into a high art form. On the flip side he appears erratic, a bit bizarre, and at times perhaps somewhat violent (to himself, at least).

The character that on the surface is supposed to be the diametric opposite of McMillan - Scoot McNairy's electronics genius Gordon Clark - turns out to have a very similar personality to McMillan in certain respects. Though he lacks the external eloquence and charisma of McMillan, Gordon is struggling at least as much with his inner demons. He feels in almost equal measures to be approaching running off the rails in his work and personal life.

The show develops McMillan's love interest and subordinate genius programmer Cameron Howe - the fairly game young actress MacKenzie Davis - but while an adequate foil for McMillan I'm not drawn into her character that deeply. I think there is great potential there but she's not hugely engaging yet.

Other tangential plots include Gordon's pretty wife who appears to be bent on straying into infidelity, eternal conflicts between Cameron+Joe and Gordon, a long-lost love interest of Joe's, and the perpetually precarious financial state of Cardiff Electronics whom they all work for and are trying to fund their own from-scratch PC clone. Yes, in a land far, far away there weren't thousands of PC electronics vendors yet.

As a product of the early PC revolution who was a teenager in the '80s and who got a "beige box" PC clone (10Mhz NEC V10 CPU chip, 640K of RAM, and 2x360K DSDD floppy drives) when I was 15, a big, nostalgic part of me wants "Halt and Catch Fire" to, well, catch fire. The backdrop of the PC revolution brings back a lot of memories for me. The confident "ka-thunk" of the old rock-solid power supply toggle switches and distinctive sound of a PC of that era booting up tickles long-buried memories hidden somewhere in my cerebral cortex. The floppy drives, monochrome screens, and decisive click of the old mechanical keyboards (now back in vogue, especially for gamers) that were built like tanks are all hallmarks of a bygone age of computing that us (relative) old-timers are deeply fond of.

Whether such an era plays with a wider audience is an open and answered question, even if such a setting is merely a means to an end. Writing compelling and interesting drama is a profound challenge and I have the deepest respect for those attempting it. "Halt and Catch Fire" has promise but my sense is it needs to find a way to keep its central story arc - the building of the PC clone - as engaging as the characters they've been developing. My feeling is everything interesting about the show will follow from that basic premise that they've already setup.