More summer schlock

No time for Starter Wife today... but...

Traveler (ABC/10 p.m. Thursday): I've given it a second chance and it's still nothing special. It's a fugitive drama based on two friends framed for a terrorist bombing at an art gallery in New York by their best friend who was working a long con on them. Now, I don't watch Prison Break, but I imagine that this show may have the same feel as the post-breakout episodes of that show. Plus, the fact that the U.S. government sent a hitman to kill the two this week (and that the hitman so easily tricked his way into their defense/escape process) just makes no sense to me at all.

Pirate Master (CBS/8 p.m. Thursday): See, I like Survivor, and, as predicted, this is a Survivor knockoff (of course, that it's by the same producers makes that OK). It's not a great one, but it's not bad, and it's the only show of the five I've reviewed in the past two days that I'll be keeping up with throughout the summer. What I don't like is the contestants' tendency to play things up and not speak normally. That could get massively annoying. Otherwise, the voting setup (three go to jury, jury votes for one of those three or the captain to go home), and the overall Survivor feel of the show are big pluses.

Travelin' blues...

Not very many shows start out with the energy of Traveler -- and none of them go on to have the writing quality/dialogue of an 80s slasher or teen flick. The special effects aren't much better (on par with the Grey's Anatomy ferry crash).

It's supposed to be exciting. It's supposed to be compelling. And I couldn't care any less about these two doofs who got scammed into taking the fall for a terrorist bombing. I like Will Traveler more for pulling the long con on them. I like the useless girlfriend character even more -- characters like her are easy, obvious proof of how bad shows like this are. Her name was barely even touched on and she was just there to provide some facet of romance.

Then there's the fact that this is a finite story -- a story better told in a feature-length form (miniseries at best), like Prison Break that, after about the first 10 episodes becomes useless and forced, and you spend all of your time worried about what they're going to do next to needlessly drag the plotline on.

For this to continue, ABC's going to have to show me a big improvement in the next episode. They're shooting too hard for intrigue and excitement and ignoring any big picture that could be had. If American networks thought like British networks I'd have more confidence, but they're not. Even Lost being forced to stick around just a bit too long.

The show will be back at its regular time 10 p.m. May 30 on ABC.