Reviews

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Lovely Brittany at TvOvermind is doing a lot of reviews of Shane’s telefilms… She posted the reviews for first two episodes of “Once and again” and also a re-review of Nikita’s first episode and she really changed her opinion about Shane…

Once & Again 1.01 “Boy Meets Girl” Rewind Recap
My third spotlight here at Rewind Recaps goes to ABC’s Once & Again, the critically acclaimed blended-family drama that aired from 1999 to 2002. I’ll admit that I didn’t watch O&A when it aired, but between the critical acclaim and a cast that boasts a number of faces familiar to me, I couldn’t help but take a look.
You’ve seen most of these people before, and probably not given them their due. The show is fronted by Sela Ward (CSI: NY) and Billy Campbell (The 4400), but there’s also a much younger Shane West (Nikita) and Evan Rachel Wood (Thirteen), plus veteran actors Jeffrey Nordling (24), Susanna Thompson (NCIS) and Marin Hinkle (Two and a Half Men). Put them all together in one show, and you have a recipe for something good.

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Once & Again 1.02 “Let’s Spend The Night Together” Rewind Recap
When last I left Once & Again, I was cheering that Rick and Lily had finally gotten together. Now, they’re having to try and fit their budding relationship into the overstuffed calendars that come with being working parents. I would not want to be either of them. (I’m somewhat proud to say that my parents never went to a single parent-teacher conference and maybe one back to school night, and only because I asked. They were not the type to bother.) Lily can’t even get Jake out of her kitchen, though since we’re talking about Jeffrey Nordling, I would not complain.
I finally get to see the show’s credit sequence for the first time, and I have to say that it amuses me that the clips do not correspond with the actors being credited. If you didn’t already know who plays what character, you would never figure it out by watching the opening titles. I think it’s a bit weird, but no one asked me.

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Nikita 1.01 “Pilot” Re-Review
With tonight’s episode of Nikita being a rerun, I decided to take a second look at the pilot and re-evaluate my first impressions, to see if things looked any different now. For the most part, I found myself sticking by what I said in my original review, but there were some aspects which became much clearer the second time around.
As I said then, the pilot episode is definitely a pilot. It’s clunky, expository, and only a so-so episode on the whole – but that’s what a pilot is. It has to spend most of its running time explaining to you who these people are and why you should care, and Nikita got the first part down, but not so much the second. I didn’t then and don’t now consider that a failure, considering that I can count on one hand the number of pilot episodes I’ve actually enjoyed (three: Sports Night, Third Watch, and Human Target, and even the latter didn’t really click until episode two). This isn’t Nikita‘s best episode and it shouldn’t have been expected to be.

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Read the first Nikita’s pilot review