Monarch

If you take Dynasty (new) and Nashville, mash it up and leave the good parts out, I imagine this is what you'd be left with.

It's just incredibly unbelievably cliche. I'm only 10mins in and I'm bored. This isn't typical. Do I keep watching or cut my losses and see if they prove me wrong? Jk, this show won't make it to another season, assuming it doesn't get cancelled mid-season.

It's bad guys. (And that kills me-I love 90s country through and through.)

Maybe DW Moffett will bring some life in? I love that guy! But seriously, not everyone in country music has an accent-in fact, most don't. There's good music played in the background, so that's a plus. Shania Twain, Martina McBride, Tanya Tucker, and Little Big Town make appearances, so there's that.

Because for the most part I have no use for modern C+W, I wouldn't have given this a second look if not for Trace Adkins' appearance on Real Time and Maher falling all over himself with praise. But to be honest, we barely made it through the opening credits before it was clear that it was going to be a sanitized, cookie-cutter, Hallmark-worthy torture session whose every moment made me want to watch the Righteous Gemstones instead. Maybe I shouldn't even be writing this; there's probably some unstated rule about how much of something you actually have to see before dismissing it as junk and putting on something else.

We know that Susan Sarandon still has it - she rocked Ray Donovan. So unless the age ceiling for Hollywood actresses that we keep hearing about has suddenly come down on her hard, I can't for the life of me figure out why she'd sign on to this turkey. Or maybe the producers, desperate to attach the name of an actual "serious actor" (rather than just an array of Nashville twangers), made her an offer she couldn't refuse.

In the end, it doesn't matter why. It has been seen and cannot be unseen. And if it goes on to earn praise from country music fans, it will, as a point of reference, tell you much more about them than about Monarch.

I hoped for a show that could top some of the flaws of the show Nashville. And as an Austin resident and kniwing that was the setting, how could this thing miss? In the first five minutes they take a guy ice fishing. To a glacier. On a helicopter. From Austin, TX. Airwolf was more realistic. I am shocked that a writer is too lazy or dumb to know anything about geography, but I guess I shouldn't be. Feels like it was written by a teenager with no real education that was told "you can do anything!" Aside from having value as a teaching item in the "here is what NOT to do as a writer" or maybe "Cliches 101", thus is truly worthless tv that probably will be cancelled after two episodes.

I guess Nashville has been off long enough that someone thought this show was ready to pick up the slack. It's possible the writers missed a few cliches but I would need to watch it again and take notes in order to be certain. And I'm not going to do that. Ever. I actually enjoy some of the actors and I experience a mix of sorrow and contempt for them signing on to this incredibly bad program. And I feel like a dolt for watching even the pilot.

Apparently I haven't written enough to justify having my opinion recorded at IMDB. So I'm going to type a few (45) more words until I meet their mythical minimum (Oh joy!).

The MONARCH premiere was exactly what I had expected it to be - mediocre and forgettable. Despite the star power of veteran Susan Sarandon, country star Trace Adkins, and the always likable and impressively talented Brits Anna Friel (Pushing Diasies) and Joshua Sasse (Galavant), the only glimmer of substance this pilot episode had was a well-done duet of the 1997 hit ballad, "How Do I Live." The introduction of its plots, subplots, and backstories, I could've easily lived without. This question remains: Do I want to continue watching a blasé series far too similar to other fleeting series like PROMISED LAND and FILTHY RICH simply because I like actors Sarandon, Friel, and Sasse -- despite the blatant fact that none of them could carry a Texas accent worth a darn? Moreover, do we really need another NASHVILLE? Hasn't this been done and done over dozens of times? "How do I live" without this series? My apologies to the fine cast, but the answer is...just fine!