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ELI STONE - One More Try

A lot of stuff happened in “One More Try,” this week’s Eli Stone episode, in both the storyline and format of the show.   Let’s get to it:

We got to see “old Eli,” the heartless attorney, revisit an old case that he won on behalf of a car manufacturer through some underhanded tactics. There’s a great court scene where Eli rips into this poor woman on the witness stand and then we cut to naïve junior attorney Maggie Dekker, who is totally teary-eyed and heartbroken. You can tell she just wants to cry, “Eli, no! This isn’t how it’s supposed to work! The law’s supposed to help people, Eli!” She’s so young and starry-eyed, that Maggie.

It had to happen sooner or later. Eli hallucinates an elaborate song and dance number in court, which makes him look barking mad and unfit to practice law. Next episode: a disbarment hearing! Will they call Eli’s brother up on the stand? If so, will he perjure himself to save his brother?

What else? It turns out Martin Posner, Jordan's smug right-hand man, is guilty of paying off a witness to keep his mouth shut. How does Eli know this? Because Patty used to go out with him five year ago! What did she ever see in the guy?  Eww.

Weirdly, actor Marc Vann appeared both on tonight's Eli Stone as a whistleblower who took Posner's bribe and fled to Hawaii, and on tonight's episode of Lost as the doctor onboard the freighter. 

The long-awaited sexual tension between Maggie and Eli Stone has apparently arrived. They had a moment in the doorway where she brushed some non-existent lint from his lapel and they shared a thing, some kind of love radar signal. We’ll see how this plays out – if he does like her, Eli’s going to have to not be so mean to her all the time.

It does look like the format of Eli Stone is changing, with more emphasis on the supporting cast. Keith Bennett from the previous episode joins the cast, as we knew he would, and Eli’s ex-fiance Taylor joins the firm as an associate.  Once again they had a second court case handled by supporting characters in addition to Eli’s main case. It’s not quite an ensemble piece, but they’re noticeably focusing on other characters more. It takes some of the weight off Eli while simultaneously opening up the opportunities to do lots of different kinds of stories.   I think this diffusion of  narrative focus is a natural part of the life cycle of a TV series.

My take on it is that the producers of Eli Stone are so confident they’re getting picked up again by ABC that they are laying the groundwork for several seasons worth of shows.  One can hope.

--Dave Campbell

ELI STONE - Coma a go-go

“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” was this week’s aptly titled Eli Stone episode, in which our prophetic attorney answers a call for help from a guy inside in his TV set. The man in the TV turns out to be Coma Guy, a patient of Eli’s brother Nathan’s who has just miraculously popped out of a five-year coma and become a celebrity. But does Coma Guy need Eli’s legal expertise, or some other kind of help? 

Turns out Coma Guy has lost his wife to his best friend and business partner, who took their company public while Coma Guy was earning his nickname. The poor dude wakes up with no wife and no company, and although he pulled in $10 mil from the IPO, he wants his old life back. Eli gets the crazy idea that the only way to do this is to challenge the marriage annulment, so they sue the church. Comedy ensues. 

This episode was a bit of a departure from the Eli Stone paradigm in that it had a “B” storyline featuring Eli’s boss Jordan (Victor Garber), who is defending an esteemed black lawyer from charges of discrimination by a young black attorney who didn’t get hired by the esteemed black lawyer’s firm. It was great seeing Jordan flex some legal muscle and I could watch Victor Garber read a take-out menu and find it entertaining, but the “B” storyline seemed really out of place.  Apparently the entire subplot was a way to introduce the young black attorney into the cast, because although he loses the case, Jordan is so impressed that he offers the guy a job. Now I have to learn the guy’s name – silly me I didn’t write it down on my official Live from L.A. notepad (which has an attractive beige and mud-brown design).

I won’t bother recapping what happens with Coma Guy, because if you haven’t seen it you can check it out on ABC’s Eli Stone page. Let’s just say that things don’t work out the way Eli expects. 

What else happened? Maggie gets progressively less annoying each week, and is starting to suspect that something is wrong with Eli. She is kind of cute – perhaps they’re setting her up as a parallel love interest? Would that be a bad thing?  Oh, and the expository voice-over narration at the beginning of the show turns out to be Eli trying to return his engagement ring at a jewelry store. Very clever.  Ah yes, the on-again-off-again relationship between Eli and his fiancée Taylor may be on again. Who can say? I’ve actually warmed up to Taylor, who knows about Eli’s brain aneurysm but still is willing to commit to a long-term relationship with the guy because she loves him so much, which is sweet.

--Dave Campbell

ELI STONE - A Question of Balance

I’m liking Eli Stone more and more with each episode.  It seems like with this week’s episode “Father Figure” they’ve really hit their stride and have struck a perfect balance between humor and pathos.

The writing on this episode was particularly good.  The opening voiceover seems like a traditional recap narrative from Eli, until you find out that he’s actually talking to a tow-truck driver that’s taking his car, The Millennium Falcon.  That was clever.  The banter between Eli and his admin Patti was very funny this week; they have a unique relationship that transcends the boss/employee dynamic.  I enjoy how Patti often sabotages Eli for his own good, like when she invites Eli’s old flame (from the pilot episode) to his engagement party. 

One of the things I think they’re doing well on Eli Stone is creating a user-friendly episodic nature with their case/vision of the week format while simultaneously creating a larger overall story that progresses in a logical and sometimes sad direction.  In this episode (SPOILER!) Eli’s memories of the destructive impact his father’s mental illness and visions had on his family drives him to break off the engagement with Taylor, who is heart broken.  It was a bummer, but it totally makes sense – Eli loves her too much to put her through the kind of hell his family went through.

I also think they’ve hit upon a nice compromise in terms of tone when it comes to Eli’s visions.  Often Eli gets hit by these hallucinations at the worst possible times and his embarrassment is played for laughs, but this episode drove home how dangerous his visions are for him personally and professionally – particularly the scene where he freaks out and ends up in the cake at his engagement party, right in front of his family, friends, and Jordan, Eli’s boss and future father-in-law.  The guy’s going to be out of a job and alone if things keep up at this rate.

This brings me to a question I have about his visions.  Often when he snaps out of it he realizes that he’s dancing to George Michael in public or dodging a biplane on a busy street.  But this episode he actually interacts and speaks with the WWII soldier during the (awesome) battle hallucination.  So when he loses it at the engagement party, do all the guests see him shouting at non-existent G.I.s?  Taylor and his brother excuse Eli’s episode as an engagement anxiety attack, but would Jordan really buy that after watching Eli screaming at the phantom soldier and flinching from invisible explosions?  Just something I was wondering.

Here’s hoping that a) ABC renews this mid-season series and orders some more episodes and b) that the writers can keep delivering well-crafted scripts that balance whimsy with doom. 

-- Dave Campbell

ELI STONE - Comb-over or not? You make the call!

All right, at the risk of seeming incredibly petty and superficial, I put to you, gentle reader, the following question:   Does Eli Stone have a comb-over?

I seriously can't tell if he just has a Young Republican hairstyle or if he is attempting to mask a receding hairline by growing it long on top and then swooshing the extra hair down over his forehead.  In the interest of full disclosure, I am losing my hair at an alarming rate - I have a Michael Chiklis hairline.  So I'm not mocking ol' Eli Stone, for I would pay good money to have his hair.

Any thoughts on this important issue?

ELI STONE - Now with 100% more Ted Nugent!

So I was pleasantly surprised by the second episode of Eli Stone.

Previously I had moaned about how I didn’t feel enough inner conflict between the ruthless, materialistic lawyer that Eli was and the more enlightened humanitarian he was becoming. Happily, in the second episode Eli Stone is much more of a jerk. Phew.

Because really, that should kinda be one of the main sources of dramatic tension in Eli Stone, right? It’s about an unlikely prophet, a man whose visions force him to act in ways that he otherwise would not have, a guy who is literally being forced by the cosmos to be a better person. Unless we see Eli acting like a self-absorbed, cynical jerk, unless we see him resisting this higher calling, there’s no conflict. It’s just Touched by an Angel with a law degree, and nobody wants to see that.

In this episode as Eli returns to San Francisco from his trip to the Himalayas to scatter his dad’s ashes, he’s relieved that he hasn’t heard any music that’s not really there or experienced any visions of George Michael. He’s done with that stuff. Of course, fate has other plans and he’s soon prodded by his visions and a chirpy, idealistic associate named Maggie into a quixotic case against his better judgment.

Quixotic. That’s a great word, isn’t it?  It's not every day you get an opportunity to legitimately use a $5 word like that.

The other thing that was pleasantly surprising was Taylor, Eli’s fiancé, played by Natasha Henstridge (the evil alien chick from Species). Taylor is a more well-rounded and nuanced character in this episode. I was all ready to hate Taylor when she nearly dumped Eli after discovering he had this brain aneurysm, but in this episode she’s actually… kind of nice. Plus, Taylor has fabulous hair.

I’m not so crazy about Maggie Decker, the wide-eyed and inexperienced junior associate at Eli’s firm who, gosh darn it, believes in him. She’s cute, but her inexperience and goofiness is so broadly played that it was just annoying. She needs to dial it back a little, am I right?

Incidentally, this episode was titled “Freedom,” after the George Michael song that features prominently throughout the show. All the episodes are named after George Michael or Wham songs, as near as I can tell. Coming up, “Father Figure” and “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” For reals.

Sooner or later Eli Stone is going to run out of George Michael songs and they’re going to have to go with some other artist. I think they should base the second season of Eli Stone on the hard-rockin’ music of Ted Nugent, the Motor City Madman. ABC could pull in a whole new demographic to the show.

OK, bad idea.  Who would be a better choice than The Nuge once Eli Stone runs out of George Michael songs?  You make the call.

-Dave Campbell

ELI STONE - You Got Your Field of Dreams in My Jerry Maguire!

There was a quick, brutally funny moment in the beginning of the premiere episode of Eli Stone that almost made me spit out my phad thai.

In a voice-over, the title character gives us a quick sketch of Who He Was Before: a ruthless, driven attorney who worshipped at the holy trinity of “Armani, accessories, and ambition.” As Eli is narrating, we see a shot of him in a courtroom absolutely hammering on a witness… and the camera pans to reveal that he’s screaming at a frightened little old lady.

That cracked me up, but then, I’m totally mean.

The edginess in that opening sequence is only occasionally glimpsed through the rest of the episode, but it’s a great contrast to the magical-realism and whimsy that follows.

In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the nutshell: Our materialistic Mr. Stone undergoes a crisis of conscience and faith triggered by hallucinations of singer George Michael, who appears in the dead of night dancing and singing on Eli’s coffee table. The visual and auditory hallucinations get more pronounced and disruptive, but are all rather harmless. It would be a different show entirely if Eli saw dead people.

It turns out Eli’s non-creepy visions are either caused by an inoperable brain aneurysm, or he’s a prophet receiving transmissions from a higher power – it depends on who you ask. Regardless of the reason, Eli chooses to use his visions as a catalyst for a profound moral and spiritual change in his life, and he changes overnight from a heartless attorney into a champion of the underdog. That’s the crux of the show.

In other words, Eli Stone is sort of a fusion of the yuppie redemption of Jerry Maguire with the vision quest of Field of Dreams, with a little sprinkling of Ally McBeal over the top.

I did want to see more of an internal struggle with Eli Stone the character. Despite the setup of the episode, Eli slips easily into the crusader role demanded by his visions, which makes it seems like, materialism aside, he was a pretty decent guy to begin with. I would have liked to see more of a character arc and more inner conflict as Eli rejects The Dark Side of The Force, so to speak.  I guess I basically wanted more scenes of Eli acting like a rhymes-with-stickhead.

On the other hand, this is a one-hour TV show, things have to move fast fast fast.  Plus, the job of a pilot episode like this is to quickly establish the status quo, not drag out the main character’s transformation.

And as far as establishing the premise and setting the tone, the first episode did a pretty good job. Eli’s case/crusade this time involves an old flame who is suing a pharmaceutical company because she believes the mercury-based preservative used in one of their vaccines was the cause of her son’s autism. At first Eli is on the other side of the table from Old Flame, because his firm represents the pharmaceutical giant. Through the intervention of George Michael (St. George?) and some clever negotiating, Eli manages to represent the woman and her kid against his own firm in court, where he kicks butt - legally speaking of course.

The vaccine/autism plotline generated quite a bit of controversy before Eli Stone had even aired, and I have nothing intelligent to add to the debate about the safety of vaccines. But I can imagine that more than a few folks who tuned in because of their interest in the controversy were surprised by how little time was spent on that plot thread, relatively speaking.

That’s because Eli Stone isn’t a courtroom procedural, it’s a character-driven show that uses courtroom elements to bump up the drama and to illustrate change and conflict within our hero. The legal element of the show is interesting primarily in what it reveals about Eli, which is the way it should be.

British actor Johnny Lee Miller (Sickboy from Trainspotting!) anchors the show with his portrayal of Eli as alternatively cocksure and bewildered. The supporting cast is equally good – I particularly enjoyed Loretta Devine as Eli’s sardonic administrative assistant and James Saito as Dr. Chen, Eli’s acupuncturist and spiritual guru. Dr. Chen, who is not what he first appears, has the best line of the episode:  “You must make peace with George Michael.”

I think there’s some wisdom there. Wouldn’t we all be a little happier if we could just make peace with George Michael? 

Now let’s see if I can make peace with Eli Stone – the show is well-written and acted, they’re not afraid to use special effects, and the more I think about it, the more it seems like a superhero story without the hitting.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  I’ll stick around.

-Dave Campbell