Countdown

What’s The Show? Countdown, Amazon’s attempt to get into the 24 market long, long after that seems like a Sensible Thing To Do.

What’s It All About JG? Starring, let’s say, Jensen Ackles as Detective Mark Meachum, Countdown asks a searingly pointed question – what if thrillers just somehow aren’t dumb enough yet? This one posits a threat which is going to be like 9/11 and Chernobyl, which is quite the thing – Meachum and a collection of the sort of people you always see in this type of thriller have joined a special task force dedicated to stopping whoever it is that’s planning this dastardly and nefarious deed. Not just any task force, see. A special one. Which means they get to do stunts and hacking and jumping and broom-broom fast driving, all while trying to prevent LA being turned into a fair approximation of the dark side of the moon. Oh and then also a potential presidential assassination that needs to be stopped as well, for reasons that seem to have less to do with the story and more to do with having something to do in the last three episodes after inconveniently wrapping up the plot far too early and also curing Meachum. Good luck with all that!

Why Did You Give It A Go? Well, mostly because I really like Jensen Ackles. That’s pretty much it, to be honest. I watched 24 back in the day and mostly enjoyed it on and off until it went quite spectacularly off the rails (around season 7, if memory serves, though I am not going back to check) so I have history with silly thrillers. Ackles is, of course, mostly known for playing Dean on Supernatural and yes, I’ve just always enjoyed his performance. So the idea of “24 But Starring Dean Off Of Supernatural” was simply too much for me to resist. So here we are.

Is It Any Good? Oh good grief no! Of course it isn’t! It’s 24 But Starring Dean Off Of Supernatural for some reason, what did you expect? This show is just so spectacularly dumb it’s honestly sometimes quite breathtaking. The first episode is generally not good, either in a straightforwardly well written way (which it very much isn’t) or in a so-bad-it’s-good way. But once you get past that crappy first episode, the show hits its groove of action (well, “action”), quippy one liners (well, “quippy”), threats (well, “threats”) to the local population, romance (well, “romance”) between a couple of characters, and so on. You get the idea. There’s a sense this show was less written, more plugged into Microsoft Project and just left to get on with it.

I mean, look at the entire premise of the show. A Chernobyl-level event in LA and another 9/11, all while Our Hero is battling a seemingly terminal brain tumor! Because Chernobyl / 9/11 just wasn’t enough drama, I guess! And yet, the show decides this still isn’t enough so, after carefully wrapping up all its plot points (including the whole terminal brain tumour thing) it takes a dog-leg in the last three episodes so the President is apparently under threat of assassination too. Wisely, they don’t tell us which president it is, presumably on the grounds that if it’s the current incumbent, we might end up being on the side of the assassin. Anyway, that’s a lot of of plot to fit into thirteen episodes and right enough, the show can’t manage to do that. Especially weird is the choice to just conclude everything, then spend another episode getting the band back together for the assassin plot, then not having enough time to round that out.

Still, you certainly can’t complain that the series runs of out things to do, that’s for sure. I mean, it’s really got it all. Scrolling bars as the hacker character might not grab all the data in time! Personal tragedies all round! A dead kid run over by a drunk driver so now the Dad teaches Little League (mentioned once then never referred to again)! Someone with a drug habit they’re doing a not-very-good job at hiding! Eastern European Bad Guys (though at least they are from an Actual Place rather than the People’s Free Republic of Absurdistan)! A hunky doctor who stands in the path of true love! It’s the sort of show that, if it has a scene set in London, feels the need to slap the word LONDON in massive letters over some stock footage of Big Ben and the London Eye, lest we mistake it for Moscow or something. Yet other places which are comparatively obscure also get the Big Letter Treatment as well. It’s not good!

There’s also a “rock” soundtrack that even a show like Lucifer might find a bit over the top. Maybe they’re real songs from bands that I just don’t know – Shazam was unhelpful in this regard – but they all sound like they come from a compilation called Now That’s What I Call Generic Stock Music Vol 7: Trash Rock Edition. Except sometimes there will be, I dunno, “Ace of Spades” by Motorhead for some reason. The rawwk soundtrack kicks in at exactly the moment you’d expect when the action fires up and fades out when there’s any danger of it leading to excess royalty payments. It’s hilarious.

The politics, such as they are, could be torn apart by a seven-year-old. It’s not as nakedly right-wing as 24 often fell into the trap of being but it’s still a show who’s basic premise is that we should invest in and trust the instruments of government and they should be allowed do Whatever It Takes to save the day. It’s a show called Countdown, so needless to say there’s a literal ticking clock over the opening titles (yes, just like 24) but other than at the end of the second-last episode as part of a preview of the finale, there isn’t actually a countdown featured. Great work, guys! At least 24 had the decency to take place over 24 hours and thus have some kind of connection to its title, even if it meant everywhere in LA was about thirty minutes drive from everywhere else.

So is it any good? Not remotely. Not even close. This show actively makes me stupider as I watch it and I cannot imagine that being different for anyone else. This is a profoundly dumb show. You may now hold for the “but…”.

How Many Of These Did You Watch? For this show, the whole of the first season, which is thirteen episodes. Thirteen dumb, stupid episodes. I’ve also seen every episode of Supernatural, for what that’s worth, and though I tried with The Boys – again, entirely for Jensen Ackles – it’s very much Not A Show For Me.

Would You Recommend It? Friends, I love it. It’s exactly my level of dumb action shit with just barely enough coherence to keep it hanging together. As mentioned, it’s not openly fascist in the way that big chunks of 24 are and it manages to be good fun with some decent chases, stunts, and special effects. Jensen Ackles is pretty much holding the whole thing together through strength of personality alone and more or less pulling it off. He’s perfectly suited for all this nonsense, he rolls his eyes and says “son of a bitch” in the right ways, and has just the right amount of, “really, series?” going on without it actively pulling you out of the show. I mean, sure, he’s just playing it as Dean But Swears A Bit but it works. He remains incredibly watchable and if he’s not the most versatile actor in the world, he is at least extremely good at what he does.

The rest of the cast are the dictionary definition of “functional”. Nobody’s actively bad and everyone fulfils their roles of exceedingly programmatic characters exactly as much as they need to. A hacker has exactly one personalty trait – they’re the hacker. The gruff but well-meaning boss is gruff but well-meaning. A big muscle daddy is a big muscle daddy. Ackles’s Meachum is a bit of a Loose Canon but Get Things Done. His sort-of love interest, Special Agent Amber Oliveras, played with glaringly unflinching competence and not one millimeter more by Jessica Camacho has just about rapport with Ackles to make it look like they could convincingly be in to each other, were it not for that hunky doctor – the one who cured Meachum, oh irony! If a sleazy politician looks guilty, you’d better believe they’re guilty. If a bad guy looks like a bad guy, you’d better believe he’s a bad guy. Almost nobody – not Meachum as the nominal lead character nor anyone else – has a single characteristic that doesn’t in some way relate directly to the plot of the show, except sometimes someone will get one characteristic (like the dead kid) which is just dropped in randomly and connects to and elucidates nothing at all. I hate to say it again but it’s all just hilarious. Stupidly, laughably hilarious and I just take great pleasure in watching it.

Let’s be clear though – this is not, in any sense, a good show. It’s absolute, complete trash. I don’t care, love it anyway. It’s just so completely committed to its own sense of idiotic self that I can’t help love it, like a puppy that doesn’t know when to stop humping the couch. I can’t, for a very, very large number of reasons, give this show a good score but by god I had a fun time watching it. If MST3K did TV shows, this one would be a prime candidate. Season Two hasn’t, at time of writing, been announced but you had better believe I’m hoping it comes back. I need this idiocy in my life.

Score on the Doors? I mean, realistically and with some understanding of how basic dramas function 4/10

In terms of how much pleasure I got out of watching it? 7/10 Ackles deserves a better series than this to show him off but in the meantime, there’s no conundrum – I’m sticking with Countdown.