Sux Degrees

Oh! Check out that pun I made! That title was just too clever for itself, wasn't it?

Last night I watched the new ABC series Six Degrees. Going in I was skeptical yet optimistic. After all, we're talking about a J.J. Abrams concept here. He's the man behind Alias. Lost. MI:3 if you're into that sort of thing. And then there was also Felicity.

So the show opened with Erika Christensen disrobing in the middle of Manhattan and then hopping the nearest garbage truck or something. Before you get too excited, might I remind you that network television has conservative standards. Think Janet Jackson. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The story jumped around a lot, trying a little too hard to connect the six central characters. It was toward the beginning here that the credits brought to my attention the fact that the pilot wasn't actually written by Abrams, which makes me wonder how he ended up with the creator credit.

So now my already mild expectations dropped a little more. So Mae, who opted out of her top in a drunken stupor, ended up in the big house. Jay Hernandez, otherwise known as Carlos, was the generous (read: horny) cop who got her a break. Not before a creepy phone call does she track down Hope Davis' Laura to become the new live-in nanny, for you see, she has this secret box and some guy hunting her down.

During Laura's pedicure, we meet Bridget Moynahan, or Whitney, an uptown, yuppie, go-getter who launches into a bitchfest only minutes before learning her boss called her in to promote her. People and their problems. Now it's Whitney who tracks down an out-of-work photographer called Steven, portrayed here by Campbell Scott, whose work tickles her fancy. But he's got his own problems and calls her small-minded. I don't know, either.

I think Steven then took a ride in a fancy cab driven by Dorian Missick's Damian which is when we find out he has a serious gambling problem. Not the photographer, the taxi driver. And then he picks up our generous (now read: stalker) cop friend, Carlos, who has been diligently searching for the hard-to-find Mae. His buddy gives him what I would consider more than a nickel's worth of advice: don't look for dates in the holding tank.

But he doesn't listen and anyway, Damian gets beat up and Carlos helps him out and so now they are buddies. At which point Damian takes a job with his brother as a killa' to pay off his hefty debts. And his next hit: Mae. The circle of life continues.

So my brief and quite possibly lopsided synopsis aside, the show was less than what I would've expected from the creator of Lost and Alias. I'm willing to look beyond the pilot and give the second episode a chance. But all I can really say is that it's not looking good.

Therefore, I will not in the near future post a propaganda bulletin suggesting strongly or otherwise that you watch this show.

In the meantime, watch Studio 60!