Some
critics don't like Seven Days. Go figure. Maybe it's the science fiction
thing or maybe it's the upstart network thing. Whatever. Good reviews
are a dime a dozen. All you have to do is roam around my link
list, and you'll find folks who'll detail the better points of this
series. This page is reserved for nay-sayers. I find them entertaining.
This drama pilot is a time travel series (because Timecop was such a big hit?) starring Jonathan LaPaglia as a man who comes from the past to prevent tragedies in the future. Huh? Chris Crowe, of The Untouchables series, is executive producing.
The Scoop: Says creator Christopher Crowe, "One of the rules of the show is that the technology cannot be used promiscuously, because it's limited." Guess that rules out LaPaglia going back for seven swingin' days with Marilyn Monroe. "In the pilot," notes Crowe, "we go back because the President, the Vice President, and the Speaker of the House are killed in a terrorist attack. You always have this sort of built-in tension because you only have seven days." What Bill Clinton would give for this technology--oh, but Crowe said it can't be used promiscuously. Never mind. Bottom Line: We should probably have said Quantum Weak. Those seven days seem like a year over the course of an hour.
Reviewed by Ron Miller
Reviewed by Justin Mitchell and elsewhere on the MSNBC site: Prognosis: UPN has sunk a good deal of money into this science-fiction drama, and there is nothing else like it in its time slot. The show's toughest challenge will be to stay fresh. How many times can LaPaglia save the world?
The special effects are impressive for a television program and the show is paced nicely with just enough action. Unfortunately, the series is a bit thin in the explanation department, so don't think too deeply. Why seven days? It's something vague about power generators... Even aside from the technobabble, the plot has some very implausible moments, beginning with the selection of a mental patient and ending with a perplexing action sequence against the terrorists. Somehow during the fight, the government boys forget about the bomb? LaPaglia appears to have been cast more for his appeal to the female audience than any acting ability. He fails to deliver any real emotional depth, even during what should have been some fairly moving scenes. But, the gals should appreciate the large number of times he goes shirtless. Fortunately, the supporting cast is capable and keeps their pants on. "Seven Days" isn't momentous, but it is entertaining. In light of what else passes for television these days, that's a pretty good start. Reviewed by Kevin Wagner . . . Sounds a bit like last year's flop Timecop, no? Though its time-traveling premise may feel rehashed, Seven Days is a likable joyride across the fourth dimension. Jonathan LaPaglia (New York Undercover) is not as good an actor as his older brother Anthony (Murder One), but he's got the pretty-boy chops to make it in any time period. "A brash ex-CIA agent with a photographic memory, a high threshold for pain and a contempt for authority is plucked from a mental hospital to participate in a top-secret gov't project." Yes, but are they sending him to "The Village"? Patrick McGoohan, call your office. "7 Days." Wait, is that the amount of time UPN spent making a new series or the amount of time this new series will last on network? Maybe it's the seventh day in the week where you sit for hours and catch the latter half hour of shows like "Baywatch" and "Love Boat: The Next Wave" while channel surfing in a futile effort to find something worthwhile to watch. Joining the category of shows that we'd never admit to watching, UPN's "7 Days" closes the fall television season as a real winner in the stupid show category. It's a program in the tradition of other high tech shows that mix secret government activities, overused science fiction and very little logic, like "Viper" and (ugh!) "Team: Knight Rider." Jonathan LaPaglia stars as Frank Parker, a once high profile CIA spy now confined to a mental hospital after suffering a breakdown from a mission. He's the typical, generic Hollywood rebellious, hot shot soldier who can't stand orders but performs incredibly when it comes down to the job. Basically, he identifies well with the teen angst riddled 15-year-old males the show is targeting. The two-hour season premiere finds Parker in the hospital, while some (wait, let me guess) Russians attack the White House, kill the president and poison a nearby school where (another let me guess) Parker's young son attends. But remember the smart CIA always has a plan: transferring Parker to a base "somewhere in the Nevada desert," the CIA selects him to lead a mission to go back in time (hmmm, seven days perhaps?) to stop the tragic calamities. If Parker goes back and changes time, the must-have hot female character, scientist Olga Vukavitch (Justina Vail), informs him that "when you make even a tiny change to the past, everything that follows is also affected." Wow, what a new concept this time travel, even though Marty McFly taught us about it in 1985. New exciting ideas like this combine with many other intriguing concepts in "7 Days." Wonder where the CIA came up with the plans for time travel? Why the 1947 UFO Roswell crash, of course. Now please, this has got to be the most overexposed, overused, non-secretive idea Hollywood has had to link any type of government conspiracies or covert operations. Why do these shows always have government agencies filled with a nation's elite who are so stupid? If the CIA is so brilliantly talented to develop a time machine, isn't it plausible that they could prevent an attack on the White House by a small six-person "hardcore Marxist distant group?" When Parker eventually stops the bad guys (C'mon you really thought they'd get away?), he runs and picks up his son and hugs him, though he's been shot in his shoulder. If you can buy that, how about watching Military Adviser Donovan ("Seaquest: DSV"'s Don Franklin) take a grenade in the arm, bleed a little and shrug it off with a stoicism that would make comic book Sgt. Nick Fury proud. Yeah, this isn't plausible at all, but the real question of plausibility comes when Parker asks a CIA director in charge of the mission, "Why is it 7 days?" He replies, "It has to do with the size and power of the reactor, Mr. Parker. Do you want me to explain it? Obviously Parker says no because the writers composing the lines for these one-dimensional characters don't have a clue how to explain it. With "7 Days," all they show is good ol' American crap like "Independence Day" and "Armageddon," where the average, individualistic rebel saves the day and his country amidst his family and moving shots of the American flag. Haven't we seen enough of this patriotic tripe? Even if you haven't had your fill of mom's apple pie, God bless the USA someplace else. Visit more scenic spots in America than "somewhere, Nevada," like Dawson's Creek, Mass. (actually NC), or, if you're really desperate, "Beverly Hills 90210." Hopefully, in seven days, we'll never have to hear of this show again. In this action-adventure/fantasy/sci-fi-thriller/add-your-own hyphenate, Jonathan LaPaglia (the poor man's Anthony LaPaglia) plays a guy in a CIA mental hospital who's tabbed to save the U.S. from subversive nutballs. Hey, who better than the mentally ill to keep the nation from imploding? As implausible as this show is, however, it's one very slick puppy, even a riveting one at times. In the first episode, our psychologically unbalanced hero gets called into service after suicide commandos fire-bomb the President, Veep and Speaker of the House in one fell swoop, perhaps unaware that one needn't use explosives to bring down an administration but merely a buxom intern. Things improved from there, and the Quantum Leap/Time Tunnel-styled mayhem of 7 Days kinda ropes you in. LaPaglia is a great, complex hunk for the '90s: flirty, funny, homicidal, insane. Nice combo. (Okay, so this is a mixed review) An elite military intelligence unit is experimenting with a highly classified operation that allows one human being to turn back the clock seven days and undo present-day catastrophes. Is there still time to undo "Seven Days"? We didn't need to be a sci-fi purist to scoff at the fundamental premise: Tampering with the past is possible without throwing the universe into turmoil. But on this show you can go back in time, encounter a sexy Russian defector who doesn't know you from Adamski, and make time with her by saying "in the past -- er, in the future, you and I got kinda close." And not be blowing smoke. Or the cosmos. On the interminable two-hour pilot, hunky Parker (Jonathan LaPaglia) is selected to make the time trip to undo terrorists' already-happened assassination of the president, vice president and other national officials. Time seems to stand still for viewers as preparations are made. Then Parker takes off in a sort of giant Rubik's Cube. Upon his arrival, he alerts the associates who had given him the sendoff several days in the future. Together they nab the bad guys tout de suite. The anticlimactic climax entails a ridiculous chase on foot through the White House grounds, where you'd get 20 years for so much as littering. Of course, 20 years isn't what it used to be, thanks to this show. Neither is solid action drama. Reviewed by Frazier Moore "Seven Days," UPN. A CIA castoff named Frank Parker (Jonathan LaPaglia) must travel back in time to change events - including a presidential assassination --- that already have occurred. Hey, didn't "Star Trek" tell us not to do this? Guy appeal: High for LaPaglia. Reviewed by Kay McFadden From an otherwise positive review: . . . Seven Days puts its heroes through an adventure of immense, world-saving proportions, and I have to wonder...how in the world can they top it? Parker unbreaks the backbone of democracy in the pilot movie, but what will he do with each successive week? Go back in time and ensure that little Bobby's peewee baseball team wins the big game? Reviewed by Earl Green A special-ops unit send JL back in time -- wanna guess how long? -- to fix things. Uh, I've got this lawn mower . . . Reviewed by Dave Walker
Reviewed by Robert David Sullivan
If "7 Days" were half as exciting and interesting on film as its premise is on paper, UPN would have itself a decent new show. And if I were one-tenth as good a singer as Tony Bennett is, I'd be a thousand times better than I am. In both cases, reality just doesn't measure up to desire. "7 Days" is a science-fiction/action series built around a secret government gizmo that can send one person back in time exactly seven days. That one person --- we learn after a tiresome sequence of scenes in tonight's padded two-hour pilot episode --- is Frank Parker, a one-time ace CIA agent who flipped out when an assignment went terribly wrong. Parker, played by Jonathan LaPaglia, is pulled out of a secret mental institution for flipped-out former agents when the scientists and bureaucrats running the experimental time-travel project are called upon to do the impossible. It seems some renegade Russian terrorists have managed to assassinate the President, the Vice President and the Speaker of the House, along with the president of Russia, as part of a plot to destabilize both nations. Parker's job is to go seven days back in time and change the future: prevent the killings, save the country, yadda yadda. All this pretty much falls apart in the hackneyed, stereotyped details: There's sexual chemistry between Parker and a Russian scientist on the team (Justina Vail). There's the wise project chief (Norman Lloyd of "St. Elsewhere"), the geeky genius (Sam Whipple), the snarky bureaucrat (Nick Searcy). There's dialogue like Parker's line to the project's military liaison, his old pal, Donovan (Don Franklin): "Donovan," Parker says, "remember when I saved your life in Honduras?" I don't know whether to scowl with disappointment or just sigh at the show's predictability. Reviewed by Eric Mink And elsewhere in the News... This new sci-fi show is a time-travel series with a twist: the traveler in time, Jonathan LaPaglia, can travel back a maximum of only one week. So while he could, for example, go back in time in hopes of affecting the outcome of the National League division series, it's already to late for him to help Sammy Sosa take the home-run crown from Mark McGwire. The baseball angle has nothing to do with tonight's show - but it's a lot more interesting. This show, in idea and execution, is almost painful. Six days after it was accepted by UPN, someone should have gone back seven days and reversed the decision. Reviewed by David Bianculli
Would UPN executives have reworked the first hour of Seven Days, which seems to run almost that long? . . . Jonathan LaPaglia (New York Undercover, Deconstructing Harry) stars as Frank Parker, a CIA mental patient with a photographic memory, who becomes the guinea pig for the U.S. government's top-secret time machine in the two-hour premiere. Despite his abrasive personality, he's drafted for the experimental mission to undo the work of Chechnya terrorists who bomb the White House and kill the U.S. president and vice president, the Chechen president, and, coincidentally, Parker's son. The White House attack occurs early in the show, and what seems like eternity passes before Parker leaves the mental ward and reaches the Nevada military installation. (At least you'll have some clue what's happening after reading this review; many confused viewers will surf to another show.) It's almost an hour before he meets the show's supporting cast -- scientists Isaac Mentor (Norman Lloyd from St. Elsewhere) and Olga Vukavitch (Justina Vail from Jerry Maguire); chief military adviser Donovan (Don Franklin from Young Riders, seaQuest DSV); and shrill, cartoonish Nate Ramsey (Nick Searcy from Fried Green Tomatoes; The Fugitive; American Gothic) who objects to the selection of Parker. The big pay-off comes in the final half-hour, when Parker successfully travels back in time (surprised?) to avert the White House assault in the fall season's bloodiest shootout. Mr. LaPaglia has a nice edge as the tightly wound Parker, though creator Christopher Crowe (The Mean Season) doesn't give the other cast members much to work with. If Mr. Searcy could travel back in time, he would rewrite his dreadful dialogue. Seven Days also leaves viewers with too many unresolved questions, such as how an entire nation grieving for their deceased leaders gets instant amnesia from Parker's mission. As Parker says seeing the orb-shaped time machine: "Is there any chance this thing could actually work?" No way. TimeCop, ABC's drama last fall with a similar premise, was canceled by Christmas. Seven Days won't last seven months. Maybe not seven weeks. Reviewed by John Kiesewetter
Reviewed by Bruce R. Miller
My oh my, what a tangled web we weave. In ``7 Days'' (not to be confused with ``Seven Days in May,'' ``Seven'' or ``Six Days, Seven Nights''), Jonathan LaPaglia plays a guy in a CIA mental hospital who is naturally tabbed to save the United States, because who better than the mentally ill to keep the nation from imploding? The two-hour pilot of this UPN action-adventure hour is too busy hatching implausible schemes to care about making a whole lot of sense, but as preposterous TV premises go, ``7 Days'' is one slick puppy -- even a riveting one at times. Creator-executive producer-writer Christopher Crowe can reinvent the Cold War, kill off every high-ranking member of the executive branch and summon the spirit of ``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' in the space of 30 pulse-pounding minutes and keep you thinking, ``Hey, you never know.'' No small feat that. It's mostly the snazzy work of LaPaglia that gives ``7 Days'' its early fuel. He plays Frank Parker, a fallen CIA agent now being housed in some hi-tech sanitarium complete with its very own version of Nurse Ratched. His services are now needed after suicide commandos kill the president, vice president and speaker of the House in a bombing. So get this: with political chaos pummeling the land, the government has created a device that will send one human being back seven days in time. That human will be our psychologically deficient hero Parker because he has contempt for authority, is impervious to pain (he was tortured sitting inside a metal box in the Somalia sun for a week without squealing), has a photographic memory and cannot carry a tune. It's unclear why these qualities are especially attractive, but it is not for the audience to ask questions. The rationale appears to be this: if the guy dies, America has only lost a mental patient. Politically, at least, one has to admire the brilliance. Anyhow, Crowe's pilot teleplay seems to go on for, well, seven days, there's too much blood and it's sometimes difficult to get a handle on whether the mood is supposed to be light or grim. But John McPherson's high-voltage direction brings back a thrilling element too long lacking in primetime, and LaPaglia has the goods to be a compelling antihero for the '90s: flirty, hunky, silly, crazy. There is likewise the potential for a surrealistic romance to develop between Parker and a Russian defector scientist (Justina Vail) that would surely turn the Cold War hot. If the ``Quantum Leap''/``Time Tunnel''-styled mayhem of ``7 Days'' tends to border on the fantastic and the incomprehensible, well, at least it beats watching Abe Lincoln have telegraph sex. Reviewed by Ray Richmond
. . . Seven Days features Jonathan LaPaglia (weasely younger brother of Murder One's Anthony LaPaglia) as an off-kilter hero in the Mel Gibson Lethal Weapon mode. LaPaglia is the pilot of a government time machine called the Sphere, which can transport him back in time. The catch is that the time machine can only go back seven days, leaving LaPaglia and his compatriots in the difficult position of choosing whether to spend that time researching how to change the course of history or simply looking up the past Wednesday's Super Lotto numbers. If the premise made any sense, there wouldn't be a show. For instance, if you go back seven days in time to your office, wouldn't you run into yourself there? And then a month later, when you needed to go back in time to prevent your best friend from joining the Mercy Point fan club, wouldn't you run into two of yourself? One season into Seven Days, we'd have enough Jonathan LaPaglias to make a football team. What spares Seven Days from the fate of Timecop is its attitude. Seven Days doesn't want to be serious drama like Voyager, not even when the series' plots involve such laugh-riot topics as presidential assassinations and genocidal plagues. Instead, it's a laugh-and-shoot action show, with LaPaglia opting for fistfights and car chases over the poker-faced sobriety of his government colleagues. The plots aren't brilliant, but they're clever enough to keep you following along, and sprinkled throughout are little humorous tidbits that keep you amused between the show's action sequences. Seven Days will never be confused with classics of science fiction, but it's one of the better pieces of Silly Sci-Fi (for the kids or the adults) that I've seen in a while. It's Voyagers! without the damned kid. It's Early Edition with ticking bombs instead of sappy moralizing. It's MacGyver without the paper clips. Will Seven Days be a good match for Star Trek: Voyager? Not a chance. At least, not unless an alien intruder pumps laughing gas into the Voyager air supply. But for good, clean dumb fun -- and with the likes of Vengeance Unlimited, Buddy Faro, and Fantasy Island this year, I think I've spotted a trend -- Seven Days delivers more entertainment than Voyager ever will. Reviewed by Jason Snell
In fact, the level of gratuitous violence is so far off the charts that even the producers conceded this summer that it needed to be toned down. They followed through, revising the pilot slightly. A sample: A security guard who was chopped to bloody bits by a plane propeller is now merely shot to death. Still, Seven Days is easily the goriest newcomer of the season, surpassing even Vengeance Unlimited. In addition to numerous firefights and a combatant getting his neck snapped, viewers will be treated to the stomach-turning spectacle of dozens of murdered school children being placed in body bags. When you're on an "emerging" network, you do what it takes to emerge from the pack. . . . Reviewed by Tom Jicha
A step back for SF TV From early Twilight Zone tales through series like The Time Tunnel and Quantum Leap, television writers have always enjoyed the challenges and opportunities offered by time travel. While these programs frequently followed the exploits of lost or stranded individuals, Seven Days has omitted that narrative element, focusing instead on the plot and the script. That's unfortunate, because the plot and the script are two of Seven Days' major weaknesses. Although some of his snappish remarks occasionally seem forced, LaPaglia does a fine job as Parker, displaying a nice mixture of bewilderment and gung-ho spirit when presented with the unbelievable details of the time-travel scheme. Unfortunately, most of the other actors are forced to portray stock Hollywood roles such as the brainy scientist, the humanistic doctor, the skeptical government bureaucrat, etc. A paraplegic team member named Ballard, who inexplicably swings around the Back Step facility on a type of breeches buoy, offers some potentially humorous promise. The creators of the series also seem to have given little thought to the actual method of time travel, cavalierly indicating that the process was reverse-engineered from the infamous Roswell spaceship. And as if preventing a presidential assassination is not enough of a reason to venture into the past, Parker's estranged son is unexpectedly (and implausibly) threatened by the attack. This treacly twist, combined with stereotypical characters, run-of-the-mill repartee and a rather predictable plot, ensures that, at least for this debut adventure, Seven Days remains absolutely unexceptional science fiction television fare. At one point in the program Frank's ex-wife yells "Damn you, Parker. Everywhere you go things turn to crap!" While this is admittedly only the pilot episode, if the flimsy story and mediocre acting are any indication of the show's future, her statement could be sadly prophetic. Reviewed by Jeff Internet
Movie Database: User Comments Summary: An intriguing but limiting premise Going back in
time seven days to correct mistakes and prevent tragedies is a good
premise, but the series is in danger of becoming too set in a familiar
pattern. Still, most of the shows so far have been passably good,
and the cast is better than average. Jonathan LaPaglia may not have
much range or depth as an actor, but he's certainly in the running
for this year's "Robert Conrad Award." (That's an award given for
the TV-series actor who can most be counted on to remove his shirt
at least once during the course of the show. Previous winners include
Tom Selleck for "Magnum" and David Hasselhoff for "Baywatch.")
Note: These reviews come from WWW sources. Please send any "bad press" you see via e-mail.
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