Gilligan making an entire series out of the old one-off piss-take episodes he used to do for the X-Files. Riffing on / referencing cop shows from Barney Miller to Homicide/the Wire and even an episode that plays off his Breaking Bad series for lulz [ Maple syrup cartel ].

The guy from the Allstate 'Mayhem' spots, Dean Winters, stars in it and they inject a mayhem style bit or two each episode (so far).

Kal Penn plays Mayhem's somewhat displaced partner (by an exiled to Battle Creek FBI agent played by Josh D something).

Kal Penn as a police officer buying medical weed from a Michigan dispensary is interesting to see on what I assume is a network prime-time TV show. (downloaded from the torrent sites).

I gave this show a chance because its Gilligan, but its terible. I believe Gilligan wrote this many years ago and it was rejected.

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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

Gilligan doesn't have the easy time-filler of the New Mexico landscape; so Gilligan or whomever is writing has to fill all the screen time with dialogue. On Breaking Bad they spend a lot of screen time tracking vehicles just driving through the New Mexico landscape; or characters just standing around staring at each other/off into space and not saying anything; or the wife just sitting at a table for a few minutes looking pained and then the scene ending without her saying anything. What dialogue there is in Breaking Bad is highly effective and note-perfect. But it's more meaningful one-liners in Breaking Bad than the snappy back-and-forth patter required to carry a show like Battle Creek.

Battle Creek looks super cheap. I understand gone are the days when 16 million people watched X-Files every week and so the X-Files producers had a huge budget for every episode. But they are going dirt cheap on Battle Creek.

If they had to shoot Breaking Bad or the X-Files on what appears to be a single tear-down-and-put-up-the-next-scene set on a badly lit soundstage...? Beyond that it's barely watchable so far. Critics have been solicitious of it, possibly hedging against the slim-possibility of it finding its footing and taking off (doubtful).