A show doesn’t have to be great to be worth watching. There’s joy to be had in the pleasant routine of basic-ness. It’s why people love NCIS and The Big Bang Theory. These shows don’t aim to provoke; they merely entertain. They’re comfortingly contained and know their limits. They don’t haunt you after the credits roll, but they’re good enough to make an impression and keep you tuning in week after week.
Second Chance wishes it were that memorable.
The new Fox drama follows Jimmy Pritchard (Robert Kazinsky), a 75-year-old corrupt former sheriff with a bad attitude and even worse moral judgment. After being shot and killed, Jimmy is brought back to life in a thirtysomething’s body by Mary (Dilshad Vadsaria) and Otto Goodwin (Adhir Kaylan), wealthy tech genius twins who aim to use Jimmy’s special regenerative blood to cure Mary’s cancer. And, because this is network television, what Jimmy decides to do with his newfound youth (and superhuman strength) is solve crimes – specifically crimes his estranged FBI agent son Duval (Tim DeKay) is working on.
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There is a lot going on in this show: a FrankenCop, futuristic tech, complicated family dynamics, magic blood, super-strength and elaborate cases of the week. Yet Second Chance- the show formerly known as The Frankenstein Code and Lookinglass – manages to take all these ingredients and produce something so bland that it’s hard to even form a strong opinion on the series.
It’s not that Second Chance is offensively bad television. It’s just… there. If it had come out a few years ago, that may have been good enough for many viewers. But with the abundance of quality television out there – including many network TV procedurals – it seems silly to waste your time on mediocrity when you still have so many episodes of The Good Wife on your DVR and Netflix has every episode of The X-Files available.
But hey, if you want to give Second Chance a shot, go for it. And who knows? You might even remember it afterwards.
