Michael C. Hall of 'Dexter'

 

Credit: Showtime

It's been a busy day of live-blogging. Two "Breaking Dawn" press conferences. One really super panel for HBO's "Game of Thrones."

Now? Showtime takes up the whole late-afternoon with panels for "Dexter," "Homeland" and "Shameless." "Dexter" is a Comic-Con staple at this point, but it'll be interesting to see how Con audiences respond to the other two... 

6:15 p.m. Not surprisingly, Showtime put "Shameless" and "Homeland" first, keeping people around until "Dexter."

6:30 p.m. The "Homeland" panel ends with Morena Baccarin taking a picture of us.

6:31 p.m. "Dexter" likes having associated games. This fall, the new game "Slice of Life" will premiere.

6:33 p.m. Time to watch the first trailer for the new season of "Dexter." We start with Dexter getting ready to do his Dexter thing to a religious fundamentalist. Cut to "Person Jesus" as an always-awesome music cue. Brief glimpse of Edward James Olmos. Brief glimpse of Mos Def. Brief glimpse of Colin Hanks. Not sure I got much of a feeling for the season. But it was still creepy.

6:37 p.m. Lame Casey Anthony joke from moderator Ralph Garman.

6:38 p.m. Huge applause for C.S. Lee. He's Harry Tang, darnit. 

6:38 p.m. "I can neither confirm nor deny any involvement in the 'Dexter' television program," says Colin Hanks, who will be playing a character named Travis Marshall. "You're going to see some stuff this season that you have not seen in previous seasons. It's going to be exciting and I may or may not be a part of it," says Hanks, who calls working on "Dexter" a treat

6:40 p.m. Harrison's getting older. "He's a lot heavier," Michael C. Hall says. He says that the actors playing Harrison have learned the concept of "No." Hall says that "a big engine" at the beginning of the season is Harrison evolving from infancy into a little boy. Dexter decides he has to give Harrison some sort of "spiritual grounding."

6:41 p.m. Producer Sara Colleton says that part of this season's journey for "Dexter" and Dexter involves our anti-hero's attempts to define faith. "It's done in true 'Dexter' style, so it's a lot of fun and it's through is prism," Colleton says.

6:43 p.m. Hall says that last season's Lumen storyline allowed Dexter to atone for his guilt involving Rita's death. Hall teases that this season picks up a year later and Dexter is "back to his killing ways."

6:44 p.m. James Remar says that Harry spends much of the season as a sounding board or a Devil's advocate. "Harry's there," he says.

6:45 p.m. "Matsuka loves you too," C.S. Lee says to the pleased crowd. He teases that Matsuka has some interns this season, "women and men." There's a Facebook tie-in to the intern search. Naturally. "He possibly, maybe, probably does get into some trouble with some interns," Lee says.

6:47 p.m. The first audience question is if The Trinity Killer will ever return. The "Dexter" team is confused. "You've gotta pick and choose your ghosts," Hall says, though he admits he'd love to find a way to work again with John Lithgow.

6:48 p.m. Dexter will be concerned that Harrison will inherit certain traits. Which we knew. Or maybe I'm just confusing it with the Arlene's Devil Baby subplot on "True Blood" this season. 

6:49 p.m. "Fortunately, we've achieved a certain amount of cache with the show," says Scott Buck of attracting guest stars.

6:50 p.m. Will they be touching on anymore of the books? They have to answer this one every year. Sara Colleton explains, as she always does, that they only acquired the rights to the first book and that they've evolved their own Dexter from there. "We don't even need the books," she says.

6:50 p.m. Which seasons were their favorites? "My favorite season is yet to come, because Matsuka and Debra have yet to get married," Lee says. Nobody else gets to answer.

6:51 p.m. There's a question that has the entire audience thinking the fan wants Dexter to kill Godzilla. But instead she wants Dexter to kill a general from Burma.

6:53 p.m. "Dexter" is an improvisation-free zone.

6:53 p.m. Is Michael C. Hall concerned that "Dexter" is educating future serial killers? "I don't think the show is any kind of manual," Hall says, pointing out that there are always plot holes. "He obviously has the power of invisibility. He can turn himself into smoke. There's all sorts of things we don't see. No. I don't think the show is any kind of guidebook on how to do it. It's more of a fantasy."

6:54 p.m. "Deb is very smart, but Dexter's smarter," Buck says regarding the obligatory question about whether/if Deb is about to find out about Dexter.

6:55 p.m. Question from East Long Beach, where the show films. Everybody's excited by the names of locations. "We've eaten all the meat off the bone of Long Beach," Hall admits.

6:58 p.m. "I'd like to thank my fellow actors for all of the inorganic pauses Dexter takes," jokes Hall of the character's frequent internal monologues. 

6:58 p.m. "My question is for C.S. Lewis..." Everybody laughs at the fan. The fan seems unaware that anything was misspoken.

7:00 p.m. MOS DEF is in the audience! Asking a question! He's wondering if he can join the panel on stage. I believe he's just Mos now. Anyway, he comes up on stage. 

7:00 p.m. Do people give Hall funny looks at the super market? "I give it back to them and I've gotten a lot of free groceries as a result."

7:01 p.m. What can Mos tell us about his character, Brother Sam? "I could, but then Dexter would kill me."

7:01 p.m. I've heard Hall give the answer about his compulsions, which don't involve actually committing murder himself, at least a half-dozen times.

7:01 p.m. Nobody has an end date in mind for "Dexter." Hall adds, "But that time will come. Everything has to end."

7:05 p.m. Will there be a "Dexter"/"Burn Notice" crossover? No.

7:06 p.m. Lee does Matsuka's funny nervous-laugh and incites the crowd to join in. This is just zipping along. Lots of one-word answers. Or one-laugh answers.

7:07 p.m. Would Lee be interested in Matsuka having a romantic relationship? "Well, according to Matsuka, his ways are romantic," Lee says. An impressive number of questions for C.S. Lee. But nobody has asked him if he's going to return to "Chuck" for its final season.

7:09 p.m. Hall says that although Dexter isn't pining over Lumen, the character's "appetite to connect in a legitimate way" remains intact. Hall notes that Dexter makes his closest connections to people when he's about to kill somebody.

7:11 p.m. "I like to draw from some of my friends who have similar qualities. I won't name them. They know who they are," C.S. Lee says of how he finds his inner Matsuka.

7:11 p.m. Yes, Trinity killed Rita. Apparently some people thought there was ambiguity there.

7:12 p.m. What's the vibe on set? "I've been having fun," Mos says. "I've been having a good time," Hanks says, though he admits that he's done most of his shooting with Olmos and not much with Hall at all. 

7:15 p.m. Wow. A second mention of "Gamer." I shouldn't be surprised. And yet... Hall says he'd love to find more roles with a body-count of zero.

7:15 p.m. Supergirl loves Hall and she was very depressed with Rita died. She asks a valid question: Will Astor and Cody be back? "I think a really legitimate connection has been formed with those kids... They definitely remain within his awareness. I can't say for sure we'll see them, but we'll probably hear about them," Hall says.

7:19 p.m. "I think Matsuka, if he ever found out, he'd be so scared that he'd laugh and pass out," Lee says of his character's possible reaction to Dexter's secret.

7:20 p.m. Hall's secret to keeping the two kids who play Harrison "in the zone"? He drives them around the set in a golf cart. 

7:22 p.m. Mos Def swears and Colin Hanks has to point out the "Some members will be under the age of 18" warning on the back of their placards. Mos doesn't have a placard, so it's OK.

7:23 p.m. Another enthusiastic reference to "Gamer." 

7:24 p.m. An audience member in a Mos Def shirt wants to know how Mos Def got the job. "I practice voodoo," Mos replies. He's joking. The reality? They called his agent and pitched him on a story arc. "All jokes aside, I was really honored and blessed," Mos says, calling himself a fan of the show since Day 1. "If I wasn't up here, I'd probably be out there asking the same questions," Mos says. 

That's all, folks... 

Emilia Clarke of 'Game of Thrones'

 

Credit: HBO

SAN DIEGO - Howdy, folks. After a morning detour live-blogging "Breaking Dawn" press conferences over at the the Bayfront Hilton, I've settled into my place in Ballroom 20, where I'll be live-blogging TV panels for the next three days.

Up first this afternoon? "Game of Thrones."

Click through for all of the Season 2 teases and Season 1 spoilers, all as moderated by George R.R. Martin.

Elizabeth Reaser and some new 'Breaking Dawn' additions

 

Credit: Summit

We had a change of schedule...

9:12 a.m. Ashley Greene says she's "amused an entertained by the people in the streets." This is not her first Comic-Con, duh.

9:13 a.m. The first thing Ashley Greene did when she was cast was call her parents. "I hadn't read the books, so I didn't really know the scope of what I was getting into," Elisabeth Reaser says. Nikki agrees that it "developed and unfolded," but that none of them really knew what they were getting into. Julia Jones was cast after the first movie, so she knew what she was getting into.

9:15 a.m. What was the last day of being on set like? Well, they all had different last shooting days. Many of the Cullens, in fact, shot their last scenes after director Bill Condon was gone. "It's just so weird to end something. And five movies, I don't think it had hit any of us yet," Reaser says, though she says she knew they'd still be promoting it for several years.

9:17 a.m. "Who knows? Fans are certainly passionate about it, so there's definitely an opportunity for it," Ashley says of the possibility for more "Twilight" stories after this. But Reaser quickly adds that she thinks Stephanie Meyer is done with them.

9:18 a.m. "I think they find some sort of middle ground. They learn to understand each other," Nikki Reed says of the relationship between Bella and Rosalie.

9:19 a.m "The nice part of this being on film is that Alice will live on forever and Alice will always have a piece of my heart," Greene says.

9:20 a.m. Favorite lines? "I was a bit theatrical back then," says Nikki Reed, who claims she didn't realize how funny that line was. Reaser laments that a sexy scene between her character and Peter Facinelli's character was cut from the first movie. "Leah has some awesomely mean one-liners," Jones says of Leah Clearwater.

9:22 a.m. "I was always a fan of vampires," Reaser says and Greene agrees. "I just didn't think much about them. I wasn't a fan, but I wasn't not a fan," Nikki says of her relationship with vampires. "I was nerdy in a totally different way," says Julia Jones. Boo Boo Stewart says he's always been into fantasy stuff. 

9:23 a.m. What was it like shooting the wedding scene? "I always think wedding scenes are weird. You're sitting there watching somebody walk down the aisle, but not really," says Greene, who says that group scenes are her favorite and she compares it to the vampire baseball scene. "I want to tell you how amazing it was, but I can't really tell you anything about it," Reaser teases. "I just thought it was really cold outside," Boo Boo Stewart remembers.

9:25 a.m. How would they like to do Comic-Con if they could wander around incognito? "I thought about dressing up this time and just running around," Ashley says of Comic-Con. "I want to dress up as Batman," says Reaser. "I'd have to go as a zombie... I love Halloween and dressing up," Boo Boo says. "I'd just like to see you guys," Julia Jones says.

9:26 a.m. Is there anything they'd camp out for? "I haven't had something like that and that's why I have a large amount of respect for our fans. It's amazing that they've found something they're so passionate about," Greene says. Reaser says that she'd camp out for the White Stripes, but only if she knew the band was visiting and she could be in a safari tent. Boo Boo says he'd camp out for "Lord of the Rings."

9:28 a.m. "The Egyptians were cool... There were all of these international vampires wandering around," Reaser says of the new vampires in "Breaking Dawn. "There were those nutty Romanian guys. They're outfits were all S&M inspired," says Reed, who also references Lee Pace as a new face she liked. Boo Boo was star-struck by Maggie Grace and not because of "Lost." He apparently was a big fan of "Taken."

9:30 a.m. A Brazilian reporter asks how they liked Brazil. But "only the lovers" got to go to Brazil.

9:31 a.m. Did they take anything from the set when they were don? "I took some socks, but that was only because I needed a pair," Reaser says. "I took American Apparel sweatpants," Greene says. "I took a ton of makeup," Julia says. Reed says she felt guilty about taking things, but Kristen Stewart took Reed's baseball shoes from the first movie and gave them to her. "I took a lot of craft service," Boo Boo says.

9:32 a.m. Julia Jones says she once met at a fan at a con who was wearing a costume covered in feathers and covered in bruises, dressed as Bella... after the wedding night. If you know what I mean. 

9:33 a.m. Elizabeth says it used to freak her out when fans would want to come up to her to talk about "the young mens' bodies," specifically Tyler when he was still underage.

9:34 a.m. That's it for this press conference...

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson of 'Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn'

 

Credit: Summit

Welcome dear friends to the "Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1" press conference with Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner and Bill Condon, taking place on Thursday (July 21) morning at the Bayfront Hilton at San Diego's Comic-Con.

In the past, wifi in this hotel has been a nightmare, but assuming it holds up, I'll be live-blogging up a storm.

After the recording of this podcast, things got violent between Dan and Alan at HitFix's Comic-Con Kickoff Party.

 

Credit: LA Photo Party

As always, you can subscribe to The Firewall & Iceberg Podcast over at the iTunes Store, where you can also rate us and comment on us. [Or you can always follow our RSS Feed.] 

Sarah Jones and Jorge Garcia of 'Alcatraz'

 

Credit: James Dittiger/FOX

[In case you've Forgotten, and as I will continue to mention each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews will be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots.]

Show: "Alcatraz" (FOX)
The Pitch: I guess it's just "Escape from Alcatraz" meets "Lost" with a little "Reaper," but not the funny parts or the Devil parts of "Reaper."
Quick Response: This is another of those midseason dramas -- like "The River" -- that I'm writing about ahead of a slew of fall pilots simply because it's going to be screened at Comic-Con in a few days, so I might as well get my reaction up. If I complained that "Person of Interest" might not be J.J. Abrams-y enough, nobody is going to have that concern with the Liz Sarnoff-scripted "Alcatraz." I thought the pilot was clunky -- lots and lots of dialogue that either repeats things we were already told or articulates things totally self-evident from the visuals -- but I respect its forward-looking clarity. After seeing the pilot, I know exactly what "Alcatraz" is on a week-to-week procedural basis: Which hardened criminal who disappeared in 1963 (complete with flashbacks) will magically appear in 2011, what will his agenda be and how will our team of heroes stop him? [They're kinda collecting lost souls, "Reaper"-style. But only kinda.] And I also know exactly what the ongoing questions of "Alcatraz" are: Where did these criminals go? Who's bringing them back? And why are they being brought back? And which of our characters have altruistic agendas and who's harboring darkness? I can't guarantee that any of the answers to those questions will be worth the effort, but at least this isn't one of those pilots that has me writing, "I liked the first hour, but I don't see what the series is." Here, I was tepid on the pilot, but I have no doubt of how the series should be structured going forward. That's a good thing and a bad thing. The "Alcatraz" pilot feels spectacularly pilot-y, in that it cares more about setting a foundation and getting it set in 43 minutes than it cares about smoothing out the seams, covering up the cracks and finessing characters. I know what "Alcatraz" is going to be as a series because the pilot focuses on *that* over telling a good story in its opening hour. Director Danny Cannon strives to cover a lot of those gaps with flash and nicely rendered production design, especially when depicting both the operational Alcatraz of 1960 and the current tourist attraction. It looks like an expensive pilot. There are people in "Alcatraz" who I really like. As a genius professor with a specific interest in The Rock, Jorge Garcia gets to be funny and amiable without even a trace of Hurley popping up. It's a great role for him. There's an intriguing role for Sam Neill and I'm always happy to have Parminder Nagra on my TV (except when it required me to watch "E.R." in the later years). In the pilot, Robert Forster is utterly wasted, but hopefully somebody will realize that their show somehow landed one of the best character actors in the business and that failure to use him would be a crime. Leading lady Sarah Jones has been really good in disparate roles in the past (compare "Big Love" to "Sons of Anarchy" to "The Riches"), but she's saddled with the worst of the "Well, duh" dialogue in the pilot. She'll be fine if the material is fine. All of the actors will. Having thrown all of these nuts and bolts on the table in Episode 1, "Alcatraz" will have to start building.
Desire To Watch Again: I covered the disadvantages of this kind of premise-driven pilot, but the advantage is that since I know what the series is, I have no nervousness about sustainability in Episode 2. So sure... count me in for another week or two.

Take Me To The Pilots '11: CBS' 'Person of Interest'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's ' 'The River'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's 'Last Man Standing'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: CBS' 'Two Broke Girls'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: NBC's 'Up All Night'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's 'Revenge'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's 'Once Upon a Time'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: NBC's 'Awake'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: FOX's 'I Hate My Teenage Daughter'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: The CW's 'The Secret Circle'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: CBS' 'Unforgettable'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: NBC's 'The Playboy Club'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's 'Charlie's Angels'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: NBC's 'Grimm'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: FOX's 'New Girl'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: The CW's 'Hart of Dixie'
Take Me To The Pilots ' 11: ABC's 'Apartment 23'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: CBS' 'A Gifted Man'
All of last year's Take Me To The Pilots installments.

Ashley Rickards of 'Awkward'

 

Credit: MTV

Perhaps it's just my way of celebrating my last year in the network's core demographic, but I feel like I've been watching more MTV this summer than any time since college.

That isn't really saying all that much.

Mostly, in fact, it just means that against my better judgment, I've continued to watch "Teen Wolf" long past when any reasonable person would have thrown his hands in the air and stepped away.

In early interviews, series creator Jeff Davis promised that there would eventually be plenty of humor. On the assumption that he meant "intentional humor," that's a vow that hasn't come true. "Teen Wolf" remains leaden and mopey and I'm not sure that leading man Tyler Posey has more than one facial expression. Amazingly, we're seven episodes in and the main character hasn't fully wolfed out and, in fact, we've seen only the bare minimum of footage involving fully transformed werewolves (and what we've seen hasn't exactly been a tantalizing advertisement for more). There have been a lot of glowing eyes, growing claws and hormonal glowering. So much glowering. All anybody does on "Teen Wolf" is glower, with the possible exception of female leads Holland Roden and Crystal Reed, who flirt winningly and sometimes cry.

And yet "Teen Wolf" has exhibited a decent ability to deliver a vaguely suspenseful set piece, even if they're mostly generated by an aggressive and overbearing musical score. And nobody's played lacrosse for weeks, though there was some werewolf bowling a couple episodes ago.

It's still a bad show. 

It still shouldn't be called "Teen Wolf."

But the danger of the summer months is that I commit to shows like this and then I find it hard to shake them, even if I'm not enjoying them. 

The result of watching an hour of "Teen Wolf" each week -- other than the laundry I get folded or the Emmy photo galleries I was able to build -- is that I've tragically become able to identify at least one Teen Mom and I've seen the same one or two ads for "Awkward" over and over and over again, enough to get good and predisposed to dislike MTV's new 11 p.m. comedy.

The purpose of this introduction is two-fold: The first was to note that "Teen Wolf" hasn't gotten better and the second was to set the conditions under which I watched two episodes of "Awkward" and found myself pleasantly amused. If you can exactly reproduce those circumstances, you too could find yourself chuckling at this proudly lewd and rude and big-hearted comedy. If not? Your results may vary.

Full review after the break...

Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson of 'Person of Interest'

 

Credit: CBS

[In case you've Forgotten, and as I will continue to mention each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews will be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots.]

Show: "Person of Interest" (CBS)
The Pitch: "It's Jesus and Ben Linus in a CBS procedural version of Wim Wenders' 'The End of Violence.' The kids will love it!" Alternatively, "It's Batman, if Batman were catatonic and Benjamin Linus were Alfred." Alternatively, "It's a CBS procedural version of 'Midnight Cowboy' with Jim Caviezel as Joe Buck, Michael Emerson as Ratso."
Quick Response: Expectations are a bitch. Sit me down to watch something like "Unforgettable" and I don't expect it to be anything other than a garden variety CBS procedural and then when that's what it is? That's what it is. But if you sit me down in front of a J.J. Abrams-produced drama written by Jonah Nolan, I'm going to expect it to have a little heft. I'm going to expect it to have layers. I'm going to want it to be different from anything I've seen before. Instead, we've got something like the sort of procedural Philip K. Dick would have written, but only if he was in real economic trouble and he didn't want to waste any of his good ideas. This being an Abrams production, you keep waiting for the big mythology to set in, or for the Grand Questions to be asked. Nope. There a Machine. And it's spitting out future-crime data. And you're either going to be intrigued by The Machine or you're going to think The Machine isn't, on its own, enough to build a series around. You need characters. I can't tell you if Jim Caviezel is playing a big joke on viewers. He delivers every line, including a droning opening voiceover, in a flat, lifeless monotone and he sleepwalks through every second of the pilot, including his several action scenes. He's a black hole. He's dead air. But part of me thinks that this was a choice Caviezel made, an interpretation on playing a shell-shocked character with little to live for. If so, it's a bad choice and a director needed to coach sparks of life into the performance, at least one or two. Michael Emerson is twitchy and somewhat interesting as the mysterious Finch, but this isn't a character designed to be a series leading man and Caviezel forces that focus over to Emerson by default. The series needs somebody "normal," the counterpoint to the two oddball leads, even if it's just a prominent tertiary character. That is why Taraji P. Henson is so welcome for the three minutes she's on screen. She's just playing a cop who suspects there's something odd about Caviezel's character (because he's a zombie), but she's the only person in the pilot who speaks at a normal volume and in declarative, non-cryptic sentences. She's a human in a pilot that's lacking anything resembling a recognizable human. The series would be well advised not to waste too much time bringing Henson into the loop. Make her part of the team and then the weirdos can be as weird as they like. "Person of Interest" is yet another CBS drama pilot to make good use of New York City. And Natalie Zea, guest star in the pilot, makes all things better.
Desire To Watch Again: Oddly, my desire to watch "Person of Interest" again is high. But part of that is because I can't believe that the series could be as sterile and disconnected as the pilot was. I'm also gonna be mighty interested to see how audiences at Comic-Con respond to "Person of Interest" later this week.

Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's ' 'The River'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's 'Last Man Standing'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: CBS' 'Two Broke Girls'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: NBC's 'Up All Night'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's 'Revenge'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's 'Once Upon a Time'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: NBC's 'Awake'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: FOX's 'I Hate My Teenage Daughter'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: The CW's 'The Secret Circle'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: CBS' 'Unforgettable'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: NBC's 'The Playboy Club'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's 'Charlie's Angels'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: NBC's 'Grimm'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: FOX's 'New Girl'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: The CW's 'Hart of Dixie'
Take Me To The Pilots ' 11: ABC's 'Apartment 23'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: CBS' 'A Gifted Man'
All of last year's Take Me To The Pilots installments.

The cast of ABC's 'The River'

 

Credit: ABC

[In case you've Forgotten, and as I will continue to mention each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews will be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots.]

Show: "The River" (ABC, midseason)
The Pitch: "Paranormal Activity" meets "Wild Kingdom" meets "Keep the River on Your Left"
Quick Response: "The River" isn't premiering until midseason, but ABC is sneaking the pilot at Comic-Con this week and it's going to get a ton of buzz, so I might as well have my gut reaction on the record ahead of time. It's my guess that people at Comic-Con are going to go nuts over "The River." It's 44 minutes of tense, visceral found-footage horror and its format and feel are pretty uncommon (if not nearly unprecedented), at least so far as I can think of, for TV. It's full of jump-in-your-seat moments and I think that watching "The River" in a big crowd of people who don't know what's coming next is probably the perfect way to experience it. It won't feel the same at home in your living room and -- this is the bigger concern --  it won't feel the same on a weekly basis. It can't, can it? CBS tried doing a slasher-film-per-week with "Harper's Island" and while that one-and-done dud produced occasional schlocky scares, it failed in its mission to sustain any kind of suspense over 13 weeks. "The River" packs a lot of frights into its pilot and I know why it intrigued ABC, but I finished the pilot wishing I could watch the next 44 minute installment, wrap up the story and be done. I didn't find myself thinking that these were characters I necessarily wanted to be with every week or that this aesthetic -- documentary-style, mixed film stocks, lots of shakiness, etc -- was going to be a rewarding one, especially once the directors become less gifted than Jaume Collet-Serra, the location settings become less distinctive and the folks in post-production realize how hard it is to make this mixture of formats pay dividends each and every week. But it's only partially my job to project forward. The rest is to admit that the sense of unease set in almost immediately on "The River" and it's mostly unrelenting. There are also very sturdy actors anchoring this drama, including Bruce Greenwood, Leslie Hope, Paul Blackthorne and Thomas Kretschmann, though my feeling was that this was largely a cast of actors and characters who would be first to die if this were a real horror film. In the female lead, I'm very pleased to welcome "Lone Star" veteran Eloise Mumford back to my TV, combining just the right amount of toughness, emotionalism and sexiness. I had a far bigger problem with the leading man, Joe Anderson, who is so badly hamstrung by his failed American accent that he makes the already tenuous and wooden dialogue -- "Science isn't a great big wonder anymore," his character stupidly observes early on. "There are no huge discoveries left." -- sound even worse. He could just have been uncomfortable in the pilot and he could improve, but he's a real stumbling block here.
Desire To Watch Again: There are enough mysteries introduced by the end of the pilot to string most viewers along. Me, I'm eager to keep up with this series for one reason: ABC is playing up the involvement of the suddenly TV-ubiquitous Steven Spielberg and "Paranormal Activity" creator Oren Peli, but I'm more intrigued by showrunner Michael Green, the man behind the all-too-quickly-canceled "Kings." Green gives me hope that in addition to the style that "The River" has aplenty, some substance might filter through eventually.

Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's 'Last Man Standing'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: CBS' 'Two Broke Girls'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: NBC's 'Up All Night'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's 'Revenge'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's 'Once Upon a Time'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: NBC's 'Awake'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: FOX's 'I Hate My Teenage Daughter'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: The CW's 'The Secret Circle'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: CBS' 'Unforgettable'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: NBC's 'The Playboy Club'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: ABC's 'Charlie's Angels'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: NBC's 'Grimm'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: FOX's 'New Girl'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: The CW's 'Hart of Dixie'
Take Me To The Pilots ' 11: ABC's 'Apartment 23'
Take Me To The Pilots '11: CBS' 'A Gifted Man'
All of last year's Take Me To The Pilots installments.