Some critics don't like The Sentinel. Go figure. Good reviews are a dime a dozen. All you have to do is roam around my link list, and you'll find plenty of folks who'll detail the better points of this series. This page is reserved for nay-sayers. I find them entertaining.
Science Fiction Weekly
The Sentinel puts a fresh twist on the well-trodden
cop-with-superpowers theme. Ellison's abilities have a reasonably
believable basis in reality, and they are backed by subtle special
effects that do a good job demonstrating his powers. The effects
also give viewers a chance to see what it might be like to experience
Ellison's hyper senses, a convincing touch. The show quickly
develops a good sense of mystery about what actually happened to
Ellison and what the extent of his powers might be.
Unfortunately, what should be the show's strongest link is its
biggest handicap. Burgi does a terrible job portraying Ellison as the
angst-ridden loner, and the show's writers do nothing to help him.
The Sentinel is supposed to be a sympathetic character struggling
with strange and new powers that hurt as often as help. But Ellison
inspires no sympathy with his erratic behavior and borderline
psychotic actions -- he is unlikable at best, and at times downright
mean.
The rest of the cast turns in a thoroughly mediocre performance, and
the pilot's mad bomber storyline manages to be cliched even as it's
underplayed. Although this makes for a weak premiere, The Sentinel
has enough going for it that it could develop into an interesting
series. Its saving grace -- if it has one -- will clearly be the
development of Burgi and the character he portrays.
Neat idea and a fun title, but a lousy premiere. Still, I thought
enough of it that I'll be checking back in a few episodes to see how
it's doing once some of the rough edges are worn down.
Review by Craig E. Engler
SciFi Universe
... The idea of a person with enhanced capabilities is a TV staple from
Bewitched to The Six Million Dollar Man to The Flash. It's fun for the average Joe to fantasize about being able to turn over bulldozers
or listen in on conversations a half mile away - but the idea of acute senses evokes more of a "huh" than a "wow!"...
But too much of The Sentinel comes off as a mishmash of visual elements from the latest summer action movies - in addition to the opening, there's a building explosion right out of Die Hard III and some bus shots that could have been lifted from Speed. ...
The producers seem drawn to the ultra brawny type: Burgi looks like an American Gladiator and engages in standard police procedure like jumping thirty feet from a bridge to a moving bus without getting so much as a skinned knee. ...
Garett Maggart, as the Sentinel's winsome young Generation X sidekick Blair Sandburg, ranks as just about the most insufferable television character I've encountered this decade -- and his whole relationship with Burgi is inexcusably contrieved. It's one thing when you have a character turn into a werewolf and then that character accidentally run into someone who knows all sorts of arcane facts about werewolves. You can believe that there are probably plenty of weirdos like that around, particularly in California (although The Sentinel takes place in post trendy Washington State). But when you toss out something as esoteric as the Sentinel concept (allegedly an idea copped from the explorer Sir Richard Burton -- a nice touch) and have an expert on the topic appear out of nowhere, you're stretching even TV-grade credibility. ...
All this might not matter if the actors and characters in The Sentinel were watchable. In television, it's the people that matter, not the High Concept. But The Sentinel's actors seem to be going through the motions and the characterizations are the stuff of direct-to-video action films. When Young and Curtis engage in teasing inter-office banter it sounds about as authentic as an AT&T commercial. And Maggart scrapes the bottom of the barrel in spunky sidekicks: you keep rooting for Burgi to deck him.
Review by Jeff Bond
Seeing Through TV
... It's got all the usual gunplay, some fun special effects, and some absolute stupidity (why don't the police just break down and pay the ***damn $6.95/month for Caller-ID?) Oh, and there was a brilliant scene in last week's episode where Ellison used his super-sensitive fingers to read an imprinted address off a blank pad of paper. I guess nobody had a pencil.
There just isn't enough bad TV like it. Not anymore. Not since
Manimal.
Review by Ken Shapiro
Detroit News
The Sentinel has a very busy plot because it's trying to squeeze in just about every action adventure ever made: The Six Million Dollar Man, Quantum
Leap, Speed, Die Hard, Superman, True Lies. ...
All that's missing is Joe Friday in the Temple of Doom. ...
Since every mannish super-hero needs a boyish sidekick, Burgi is
reluctantly paired with a wisecracking anthropology student (Garett
Maggart) who suggests Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys after a little Prozac. While Maggart considers Burgi "a behavorial throwback to a pre-civilized breed of man," Burgi calls Maggart "a neo-hippie witch-doctor punk."
Imagine Moonlighting without the estrogen.
Meanwhile, Maggart brings out Burgi's "latent" and "suppressed" powers. To affirm their heterosexuality, Burgi has an ex-wife (Carolyn Plummer), Maggart scopes babes and Burgi's boss (Bruce A. Young) is a recently detached workaholic: "The only thing I want more than my divorce papers is an arrest."
Still, Burgi and Maggart talk like ex-cons who once played house:
If The Sentinel were as freaky as it sounds, it wouldn't have to
copy anybody. It would be so cool Bruce Willis couldn't touch it.
Review by Michael McWilliams
Los Angeles Times
The buzz-haired, thick-jawed, Marine-like hero of The Sentinel spent
1 1/2 years in a Peruvian rain forest, during which he somehow
developed super-senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch that
he now employs as a police detective.
Even with all that hypersensitivity, however, he's unaware that the
new UPN series he's in is a clunker. ...
Ellison acquires a funny little crime-fighting pal in hippie-like
anthropologist Blair Sandburg (Garett Maggart)--will these two
opposites ever be able to work together?--and reunites in an
intimate way with his ex-wife, police forensics expert Carolyn
Plummer (Kelly Curtis), en route to a weak plot payoff that has you
lamenting that the Switchman didn't detonate the script.
Still worse is next week's preposterous tale, which finds Ellison and
his boss, Capt. Simon Banks (Bruce A. Young), on a bold, two-man
mission against a gang of ruthless terrorists who have occupied
police headquarters and taken hostages to force the release of two of
their jailed comrades. Why not occupy the White House too?
This violent lunacy might work with a comic super-villain a la
Batman, but the terrorist chief here is such a humorless yutz that
you feel like a double-yutz just for watching.
Review by Howard Rosenberg
Starburst
As mentioned last time, This new TV season in America has a lot of new
fantasy-oriented shows. Some of them have been doing remarkably well too.
One such is the second season of The Sentinel. It would hardly be a
success on one of the larger networks, but it's one of the mainstays now of
the young UPN network.
The show is about detective, James Ellison (Richard Burgi) with enhanced abilities. All of his senses are in overdrive, which can be a blessing or a curse. Helping him to try and understand and control these powers is
Blair Sandburg (Garrett Maggart). Oversseing Ellison's cases is his boss,
Captain Simon Banks (Bruce A. Young). The first season was mostly
derivative plots (pick any recent successful film), and Season Two seems to be building on the same premise. We've had South American drug lords with hidden jungle bases, pop singers threatened by stalkers.... In other words, more recycled plots. Richard Burgi is okay in the lead role, and Garrett Maggart is both funny and believable as the over-eager student of Ellison's powers. But the show as a whole doesn't grab you, unless you love to sit and watch a steady diet of explosions.
Thanks to Kathy in Australia for forwarding this to me.
Mr. Showbiz
Concept: Army captain turned police detective James Ellison (Burgi) isn't your average donut-eating member of the Cascade, Washington, police: His five senses are heightened far beyond the average human's. (It all has to do with an eighteen-month trip to the jungle). But anyway, the renegade detective allows a grad student (Garett Maggart)--desperate for a unique thesis project--to join him in action in exchange for advice on dealing with his disturbing gifts.
Critique: In its second season, this effects-laden police drama will have the anthropology student and Ellison trouncing assorted serial bombers and domestic militia groups. The pairing of a crusty old guy with a trusting and uninitiated young guy gives this show a familiar feel, despite its action and pseudo-scientific elements. Though the show has spawned a number of excellent German Web sites, the well-chiseled Burgi and the vaguely rakish Maggart have yet to develop a legion of devotional fan pages, which makes one wonder if the show will ever take off in a big way.
TV Guide
The Sydney Morning Herald
"Even if your eyes are watering and your senses are downright jaded, you should have no difficulty detecting another load of prime tripe emerging from Vancouver's TV industry and slipping over the border into Ellison's supposed police patch in Washington State.
"In the first of tonight's double serve, Ellison lets a wanted man slip from the FBI's grasp and generally takes so long in aiming his handgun that any half competent gang of armed baddies would have given him the old gruyere cheese treatment before he got his first shot away."
Review by Robin Oliver
(Thanks Ursula)
The Star (Malaysia)
A Cop With Super Senses
Soldier Jim Ellison (Richard Burgi) has acute sense of hearing, sharpened taste bud, 20/20 eye sight, an enviable olfactory and a magical sense of touch. And he gets all these when he's left all alone for 18 months at the Peruvian rainforest after his doomed mission takes the pre-destined path and none of his other team-mates make it.
Since Ellison has his senses and nothing else to depend on for his survival in the jungle, he develops them-without realizing it.(yeah, right!)- to the level that surpasses the normal. Only after he gets out of the rainforest and rejoins the police force did he learn of his extra talent and that it has a name.
An anthropology graduate student, Blair Sandburg (Garett Maggart), tells him that eh has developed the powers not unlike the mythical sentinel of uncivilized cultures of a rainforest tribe. Too good to be true, there's a disadvantage to his gift. When one of the senses dominates, it triggers him to "lose" the other four, making him very vulnerable to the dangers of the outside world. When he uses his eyesight to mark his target, he does not realize he's about to be hit by a moving bus.
So, Sandburg strikes a deal with Ellison --- Sandburg will help Ellison understand and utilize his new-found abilities. In exchange, Ellison allows himself to be observed by Sandburg as a material for his thesis.
This is pretty much the premise for The Sentinel which also co-stars, Bruce A.Young (as Ellison's boss Captain Simon Banks) and Kelly Curtis (police forensic expert Carolyn Plummer who happens to be Ellison's ex-wife).
Sounds interesting? It is for the first two or three episodes. They explore things like Ellison being able to hear the bomb ticking away two or three blocks away and then there is the time when he depends on the smell of gun powder to locate a man, Another fine example is he could hear conversation three floors up and thus has an upper hand in a hostage situation.
But there is one episode which Ellison wants to eavesdrop on the mob so he stakes out near the dude's building with some hi-tech equipment. Eh? If this guy has super hearing, why resort to these petty devices? And how about the fact that he can immediately identify the species of flowers just by touching and smelling an object made from them?
Okay, I agree he can smell stuff that would otherwise escape normal people like us, but how can he name the flowers/plants or whatever without the information in his head? And why is Sandburg always doing Ellison's job? In most of the episodes, it's Sandburg who comes to the rescue. When robbery takes place in the middle of the street, Ellison is so busy ducking bullets that he does nothing to stop the thieves. At least Sandburg uses his brains to even the score for the good guys.
In another episode, it's Sandburg (again) who solves a case while Ellison's neck-deep trying to sort out his problematic temporary partner. It seems like Sandburg should be made the hero instead of Ellison who's all muscle and nothing much except being pretty stiff in his acting (though nobody can come close to Keanu Reeves). And the man is tactless when dealing when dealing with people. He thinks growling and giving a nasty look with his icy-blue eye would suffice. Another irritating point is Ellison's boss, Banks. he's a by-the-book guy who is forever whining about something other and demanding that someone explains to him "what is going on". And I don't want to touch on the relationship between Ellison and his ex-wife.
The production notes stated that the series has "an array of technical effects". So far, the only obvious effects is when Ellison homes in on a target using one of his senses, Another point the producers have got it wrong about The Sentinel is that it's a detective story tampered with humor." Well, to and exaggerated way, no thanks to the corny conversations and plots. But then again we can really expect much because the show is created and produced by the same guys who came up with "The Flash," Danny Bilson and Paul Demeo.
According to Bilson, "we are looking to create a series that was more in the vein of a Die Hard or Lethal Weapon three and incorporated a novel, technical approach, with fast-paced plots, solid leads...and was fun to watch."
Hey, don't insult Die hard or Lethal Weapon because personally I like these two movies.
It's such a waste that MetroVision has given this show a prime-time slot (right after The Simpsons, too) when Star Trek:Voyager, Star Trek:The Next Generation, The Stars, Chinese X-Files and The Planets are screened either too early or too late. And surfing the Net, it's amazing to discover that there are websites for this show.
Review by Mumtaj Begum
(Thanks, Case Jones!)
Note: These reviews come from posts on the Sentinel Mailing List and from WWW sources. Please send any "bad press" you see via e-mail.
Updated: 3 March 98
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