I know there are a lot of new shows coming to us this fall but the new cop
drama Life On Mars premieres tonight. I read a few brief reviews and there is
a lot of positive buzz about this show so I think I may check it out, thought I
would see if anyone else was going to do the same. I have a game tonight but
plan on using the DVR and at least give it a shot later on.

Cast includes Michael Imperioli and Harvey Keitel and is set in 1970s New York.
Premise is that a current day cop has an accident while chasing a crook and
is hit by a car, when he wakes up he is a cop in the 70's. Sort of an odd start
but I can see how a cop going back 35 years could use current knowledge to his
advantage and of course all the 70's looks should be interesting.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

let me know how it is, i'm watching the office and stuff...

looks a little too high concept but may have promise.

Great watch .
Good story line , keeps you guessing .Strong performances .
Good use of period music and style.They even use 70s' camera work, good look and feel .
I am hooked on it , can not waittill next episode

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"

Almost forget , when he first goes back .He looks up and he sees something huge that's missing from our time .Man ,moving scene

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"

Zach,
I am confused.
What do you mean by the term "high concept?"
I thought it meant something with an extremely simple plot.
Explain, please.

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Host of the weekly "We Fish ASA" podcast
Weekly columnist for the Northwest Herald
Bi-monthly columnist for Illinois Outdoor News magazine
Former host of The Outdoors Experience on WIND and The Great Outdoors on CLTV
http://www.wefishasa.com

I was kind of excited for this show so I got up and watched it before getting into the office
this morning. What would I do without my DVR? Anyway, this show definitely has promise.
I would have to agree with Chas about the camera work and even the 70's shots in some
scenes are a bit more grainy to give it that "older" look. Storyline has quite a bit of promise, it
is always hard to tell what a series is going to be like from the pilot since they try to squeeze
so much into it and get characters introduced and everything. I thought the acting was pretty
good overall. Never seen the lead actor before but Keitel plays the Sargeant badass who bends
if not breaks all the rules. Imperioli plays a wise-cracking hard ass with a handlebar mustache.
The costumes are good if not a bit comical and many of the scenes appeared to be shot on
the streets of New York a la 1973. Great use of 1970's tunes, I am not sure if that is how it will
be in every episode, I would think that would be expensive for the rights to all the songs but it
was a great touch. I will definitely give this series a few more hours of my time to see how things
pan out.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

high concept doesn't mean complicated, in fact, it is exactly a simple plot. it's a term used in the industry for pitching purposes. something you can explain in a few sentences or less. so in this case, you'd say...modern day hard boiled cop transported to 1970's.

Anyone else know what I am talking about what he saw in the start of his "trip"?

Imperioli is a great talent ,hardly recognize him .Kietiel is awesome ,his jumpsuit when you first see him is freaking hilarious !
Grechen Mol as usual is simply gorgeous .
They only thing I really do not liek is the heavy handedness of well in the future we are so much more civilized and advanced . I did like the bone they threw to the fact that even though back then things were harsher , things got done, not as much crime as we see it now .

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"

As soon as I heard the plot for this show, I just knew there'd be an obligitory shot of the WTC. Did give me goosebumps though.

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"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." ~ H.L. Mencken

I saw it. They did a good job with the little things like having everyone smoke wherever and whenever they wanted, and they have the clothes, sets and music down. It might get interesting just as an antithesis of all these CI type of cop shows on now. They don't have the technology, so they have to solve crimes the old fashioned way.

I don't know, I wasn't all that impressed with the show and I disagree with you about Gretchen Mol - she doesn't do it for me. This pilot episode was OK because he was such a fish out of water and freaked out most of the time, but after a while he has to get acclimated, and I don't see a lot of possibilities after that. I wonder if they'll have a 70's shtick. Cockatoo, lollipop or Honey Bear anyone?

Honey Bear? I think you mean Huggy Bear. Unless you meant Cheryl Burton.

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"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." ~ H.L. Mencken

Right!

Yeah,I am waiting to see how they will deal with race on the show .It is gonna be an interesting and hard to do a true representation in our PC world on how things where back then .
I did like how every one was smoking everywhere .You notice in the morgue when Imperioli swept ashes off the body lol .Funny as hell .

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"

Saw a commercial this morning pushing episode 2 of this series and claiming that
week 1 drew over 15 million viewers. That is a pretty nice start for a new show
but it will be interesting to see if it can maintain momentum through this month.
Anyone who missed it and are interested can apparently watch the 1st episode
on the ABC website somehow. I will check out episode two tomorrow evening.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Actually looked at the Nielsens to see how other shows did last week and it only shows that they
pulled in 11.5 million. I could have sworn I heard 15 million on the commercial, just trying to be
factually correct. Not sure how they could be off by 3.5 million viewers.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

ABC has done some thing really cool
Check this out
http://abc.go.com/primetime/lifeonmars/index?pn=radio

Plus they are showing what music plays in each episode on the web site .Really ,really cool

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"

I haven't watched the show, so maybe this is a dumb question, but how do they work in the "transported back in time" angle each week? Or was it a week 1 gimmick to get people to watch a 70's cop show? I actually think I would have been more likely to watch the show if it didn't have the "back in time" aspect to it.

Its like this .
'Main is hit by a car and he wakes up in the 70. He seems to be there butthey hint that it might be a coma dream .It is an interesting show .How he acts and what his values are compared to the popel from back then .They have tackled most of the major issues but on so far .i want to see how they do it .The way they treat suspects is hysterical to see how he reacts to the interrogation methods .

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"

I missed the second episode but caught the last one. The way they are currently working the angle is that he must be back for a reason, he isn't sure what it is right now but he needs to figure out why he is back there and that will be his ticket home. Kind of a really long drawn out Quantum Leap without the character there to help him out. I too may have been just as interested with the cast they have to watch a straight 70's cop show but he is able to use his current knowledge to help cases along. So far it is a fast paced show with a nice neat bow on the end of each episode, I personally would like to see them with a bit more difficulty catching the bad guy. Still worth checking out and not too late to catch on if you want to give it a roll.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

there was one thing that bothered me and points to him being in a coma .According to all time travel theories is something called temporal Paradox .You can not be in the same place as yourself at the same time .It happen when he and his child self stared at each other at the end of last episode . I am leaning to believe he is in a coma and this is all a dream .

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"

You could be right Chas, if the show warrants an additional season they could probably drag it out a
bit and if it is a coma, which you could certainly be right about, they could continue the series in a
current day setting, although putting a cast together like they have now would be quite difficult. I am
not totally sold that this is going to continue to be good but at least right now it is better than average.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

It may b e out there but it seems to me kinda like a Wizard of Oz thing .He wakes up then the people from his dream are based on real people .
This is one of my must watch this year .I have only a few now and none of them are 1/2 hour sitcoms.right now for me it's This ,Bones,Sons of Anarchy and NCIS .other than that not much interests me except I been watching a ton of History Chanel.Took in 10 hours of Gangland this weekend .It is interesting the difference between the old gangmember and the new ones

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"

this is my show of the year ,I love Sons of anarchy but this is better .The one thing as of this episode it shows it is a dream .Thats only bad thing ,the rest is incredible .
I did notice the Lt isn't as corrupt as he puts out to be , he had all that money never spent it . Great show . If SOA works out and does not lose steam it is going to be hard to pick best new show

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"

Finally saw last weeks episode and it was a pretty good one. I am coming around to the thought that he is actually in a coma. Only thing I wasn't sure of was that he refused to see himself when he is at his mother's apartment. Plus, there is no proof that the kid that looked at him at the end of the one episode with the Knicks gear on was actually him, although the way it was presented, it was kind of implied. Still has a pretty good soundtrack and love the costumes and characters. Gretchen Mol looked great at that club dancing.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

be glad gizmo abrams isn't behind this show...otherwise it'd be taken into a direction of different dimensions, wormholes, and possibly some kind of limbo spacefield that would involve every character actually being someone else, killed, in some other space time continuum, and their parents would all be involved with each other in some way.

i mean the show is called "life on mars" after all.

Good point, it is a strangely titled series I will give you that. W_Z are you still following that new Abrams show and not liking the direction it is going?

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

heh, no. i tried giving "fringe" a second shot and 10 minutes into it i shut it off. it was just bad, and from what i've seen on previews for upcoming shows, it just looks terrible. and it's gotten bad reviews all around, so i don't think i'm missing out on anything.

Plus I am not happy with that this jerkwad is doing to the Star Trek movie. I might have to forget everything I know about Trek in order to watch it with out screaming at the screen

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"

I was giving Fringe a shot and not too impressed but the episode where they introduced the weird guy that is everywhere was a pretty good episode I thought and bought them a few more weeks from me. It has some interesting aspects but still feels like a bad X-Files knock-off at this point. But, I used to like X-Files.

[/full on Nerd Alert] I'm excited, well, excited might be a bit strong, but interested in seeing the new Star Trek movie. I grew up watching that franchise and would really like to see it return with quality. [Nerd Alert over]

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You know me like that.

My good Dr ,
they are messing with everything you know of Star Trek. They are all in The Academy st the same time . Kirk is the first Capt of the Enterprise. Romulans all over the place . I am excited as well but it is terrible what they are messing with the Canon . The casting looks incredible .

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"