Human Target was one of my favorite shows last year. I love the interaction between the three main actors and I thought it was maybe the most fun show on television. Was glad that it got renewed but everything since then has dampend by enthusiasm.
I had a feeling Fox would impose female characters on this show and I was right. Isla and Ames seem like they came straight out of some focus group. Why is is that no one ever thinks about adding a male to an all-female cast but when it's an all-male cast, studio execs and the PC crowd are tripping over themselves to "broaden the demographics"? The interaction between Valley, Bride, and Haley was perfect. It was a guy's show about three guys taking on their own missions and bantering along the way. At three regulars, it was a perfectly cast show.
The two new female regulars are just there to create tension for the sake of tension. Isla's interference in the second episode was annoying as hell although Winston pretty much telling her to fuck off was great. Ames, too, is annoying as hell. She's obnixious and is doing no favors for Guerrero's lone wolf character and quiet menace. Worse, it seems to be limiting Winston and Guerrero's bickering, which was a highlight of last season.
Replacing Bear McCreary and his Emmy Award nominating title score might is just as bad. McCreary is one of the best composers on television and his score for Human Target just got released to some great reviews. The movie-like, noirish score was perfect to Human Target. The fact that new showrunner Matt Miller got rid of him in order to bring him some generic pop music shows that he is a second-rate producer. He claimed that McCreary was busy and got another job but McCreary stated that he was not asked back. I believe him because Miller's got a hard-on for this kind of stuff. Not only is the new music bad but it's very intrusive. It often drowns out dialogue and what's going on in the scene, it completely beats you over the head with it. This change has been universally panned and rightly so.
He might claim otherwise but Miller clearly has no respect for what made this show work. Instead of altering his style a little to fit Human Target he has arrogantly altered Human Target to fit his style. The show didn't need "an injection of estrogen" as he has talked about. He's also talked about personalizing the stories to raise the emotional stakes. It's not a bad idea although I don't think every story needs a personal angle and I think you want to keep these characters a little mysterious. But apparently emotional stakes don't always mean logical stakes.
Take the second episode...Chance is sent to protect the wife of a man he killed seven years ago. That's a great idea for a story and a logical one. Despite turning over a new leaf, Chance was a bad man for many years who took many lives. But they tried to undercut the story by saying the husband was corrupt. The strangest part though is the wife tells him this doesn't make up for what he did. Now it's not strange that she believe that because it's true. It doesn't make up for Chance killing him. But if she so strongly believed this, why doesn't she call the police on Chance? Chance doesn't look like he'd fight a prosecution, he knows he was wrong. If you want emotional stakes to be raised, you've got to be realistic about it. If that woman felt so strongly, she should have reported Chance to the police.
The first two episodes haven't been awful mind you. The interaction between Chance, Winston, and Guerrero continues to be the absolute strength of the show. The idea behind the second episode's storyline was a good one as well. But the show has felt off to me and a little less fun. The new characters have been completely tacked on by Miller and the Fox PC crowd. Guerrero was portrayed the best in the first episode and he is a bad, bad man. But showing him torturing someone every episode or teasing it is like a joke that's being told over and over again. It isn't funny or badass if it happens every episode. Also, Chance's character seemed to be dumbed down in the second episode. Walking into traps, letting himself be seen on camera...I guess it's an extension of him being emotionally affected by the storyline but I don't want to see the character dumbed down.
To me, the things the show needed to improve last season was storyline depth and better villains. Depth in the storyline means that the stories needed to be a little less disposeable (but still fun) and tighter in the way they are carried out. Then there's the villains. Outside of Baptiste (who will be returning in episode four), none of them were particularly worthy adversaries. A guy like Chance needs a strong villain to work off of. You can't go 13-for-13 in this category but you need to produce better than the villain-of-the-week. Then there's the Old Man. The way Chance's boss was described in Season 1, you would have thought he was some kind of omnioptent monster, a guy you wouldn't want to come across. Instead we got a loudmouth who was taking order from some boring villain-of-the-week. Armand Assante is an awful actor and completely overacted in his appearance. I wasn't sorry to see him go.
I hope the show improves but with a second-rate producer in charge, no Bear McCreary, and studio-imposed characters onboard, I'm not going to hold my breath. At least there's always Season 1.
