Fall Premiere Pilot Review: Unforgettable (B-)
Unforgettable (CBS)
I’m really not a fan of police procedurals. I usually can’t get over the glorification of the American Justice System. The cops and the prosecutors are usually depicted as “good guys” who protect us from all the horrible, vile people in the world. This is such a conservative, skewed worldview that is perpetuated in the abundance of cop shows. These weekly crime shows also tend to have an extraordinary amount of violence against women, dead women, and evil murdering women as a way to maintain sensationalism. Clearly I didn’t go into this show with much optimism. And while this episode didn’t begin with violence, we were quickly following a story about solving the murder of a dead woman.
What I found however was a pretty interesting female lead. I didn’t care for the sexy-badass-with-a-gun number in the beginning, but once we focused on protagonist Carrie Wells, there was a bit more complexity. I was also impressed with how the actor, Poppy Montgomery, avoided the usual pit falls for “strong women characters” by not playing the tough, badass, tortured, pessimistic, misanthropic woman. She conveyed a message more akin to “yeah, things are a little rough for me, but I’m still functional and I’m actively working on taking care of myself.”
Clearly, she’s going to rejoin the police force and be guided by her ex-husband to figure out her big haunting past, which I suppose would be expected. But how much more interesting would this show be if Carrie found a female sidekick and solved problems for folks around her (kind of what Lost Girls is trying to do without the creepy soul sucking).
I’ll probably watch a few more episodes
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Source: feministfrequency.com
