Customer Reviews

Pilot

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A witty, intelligent portrayal of a man's mind disintegrating due to a traumatic experience. That the man in question was portrayed by Jeff Goldblum was a bonus, as Mr. Goldblum is one of the few actors who could take such a serious subject and make it humorous and...all right, I'll say it--quirky. He is a quirky actor, and not for everyone's taste, but if you do enjoy his style, you'll enjoy Raines, because it's Jeff Goldblum at about his quirky best.

It's a shame the show had such a limited run, but it was (in my opinion) the victim of a disastrously inept advertising campaign that let people think it was just another show about a psychic detective who talks to ghosts. What people didn't understand was that the "ghosts" were only manifestations of Raines overstressed mind. The great joy of this show was watching the actors have fun weaving the imaginary characters in and out of the "real" action.

My favorite episodes were "Reconstructing Alice", which pitted Jeff Goldblum against a hilarious Laurie Metcalf, and "Inner Child" where Raines is nearly pushed over the edge of sanity by the death of a little girl. Other actors who were exceptional were: Dov Davidoff, Zoe Stone Molloy, Nicole Sullivan, and Madeleine Stowe.

A Big 5 Stars for this one!!!!
Raines is a clever, intelligently written and unique twist on cop dramas with some great laughs thrown in for the bargin. As a lifelong Goldblum fan, I consider this is his very best work and his most intriquing character!

Even the show's opening title credits sequence is inventive and well done. The opening shot in the pilot will have you hooked from the beginning- where during Jeff's narration explaining why he wanted to become a detective you watch the blending of a classic Hollywood movie image of a night time crime scene with a 1940's starlet lying next the swimming pool of a Hollywood mansion that slowly morphs into a daylight shot with a modern day male victim in her place.

To his dismay, Raines sees and interacts with hallucinations of the dead victims which appear to him from the moment he first sees them at a crime scene. But unlike "Medium" and "The Ghost Whisperer" these are not ghosts, they are only manifestations of the living victims which his (possibly unbalanced) mind has created and since they only exist within his head, they can't tell him anything about themselves or the case which he doesn't already know.

As he learns more about them during the course of a case, their characters become more in depth. They haunt him mercilessly and often comically (Laurie Metcalf's homeless woman's character is a brilliant performamce!) driving him crazy and all along he worries that maybe he is having a relapse of a previous mental breakdown, or possibly even going insane. He knows the only way to silence them once and for all is to solve their murders thus setting them and his own mind free in the process.

Raines often meets up with his former partner, (who appears to now be retired from a work related injury) and now spends his days hanging out on a bench at Venice beach, to talk over his fears that maybe his mind is slipping, and share some of the details of whatever case currently has him stumped, but his partner also has a secret (that perhaps has something to do with that previous mental breakdown Raines has suffered).

Once you know the premise, you'll see why the opening title credits sequence is so well done, showing him driving through familiar recognizable streets of Hollywood at night staring straight ahead as the camera pans around the car from different angles revealing flashes of brief glimpses of different people riding along in the car with him, each of them a "victim" begging for his help to solve their murder.

One of the great mistakes NBC ever made was to cancel this brilliant one of a kind gem of a show before it even had a chance to get started. A huge loss for us all, but at least we got to enjoy these few episodes we have! A must see for all those who like mystery and crime programs and a super must see to all those who admire the work of Mr. Goldblum!! Certainly worth adding them to your video collection!!!

Only the good die young...I'm speaking of TV shows. I don't know what the problem was, but this was an excellent show that rivals Mentalist and Criminal Minds (my two favorite shows), and it should have made it. What was everyone watching when this show ran? Has everyone had a sip of the dumb-show-juice? I wish they could have kept this show in production. It was original, funny, sad, and Goldblum finally found a character that suited his type perfectly.

Sad.

I'll buy this season from Amazon to show my support. I wish there had been more.

Boo hoo (don't play that violin for me, though!!)
Ellen C Maze

POSSIBLE SPOILER AT THE END OF REVIEW: This is an intelligent TV series made very watchable because of Jeff Goldblum. I have no idea why this series didn't take off except to say that Americans are too used to being 'dumbed down' in their entertainment (can you say reality TV?). Watching Goldblum's character struggle with his emotional burdens was heart-wrenching. The ending of the first episode of this series was stunning and still gives me chills. Fine acting in a very under-rated and imaginative series.