Thu 25 Apr 2019
BOOMTOWN. “Pilot.” NBC, 29 September 2002. Donnie Wahlberg, Neal McDonough, Mykelti Williamson, Gary Basaraba, Lana Parrilla, Jason Gedrick, Nina Garbiras. Creator-screenwriter: Graham Yost. Director: Jon Avnet.
The movie Pulp Fiction (1994) showed that film audiences could accept movies that were not shown in linear fashion. That audiences could follow stories that curled back, overlapped itself, and jumped ahead again — if done well, and Pulp Fiction most certainly was.
But TV audiences, apparently, were a harder sell. Despite the approval of critics, ratings for the first season were low and the cast was considerably reshuffled for a quickly aborted second season, which also lost the basic concept of a single crime per episode being investigated from different perspectives and time frames.
I’ve only seen this, the first episode of season one, and I found it very well done. I had no trouble following the story, but a second time through made it abundantly clear how well the script was written and directed.
The story is about the drive-by Los Angeles (Boomtown) shooting of two young schoolgirls. On the scene and tackling the case from a wide array of differing angles are the D.A., a female reporter) also the D.A.’s secret girl friend, a female paramedic, and three police officers, of whom Donnie Wahlberg appears to be the primary lead in the rest of the series as well.
Each one of the above has their own back story, much of which is shown, albeit sometimes briefly, as the investigation unfolds. It makes for a bit of a clutter in this, the opening episode, but making the characters individuals rather than faceless ciphers also makes for very enjoyable watching.
April 25th, 2019 at 10:56 pm
Season One is truly outstanding. I own the DVDs for Season one and bought the truncated (and lesser)”Season Two DVDs on the collectors market
Mykelti Williamson as “Fearless” is, I think, the breakout performance.
April 25th, 2019 at 11:32 pm
I’m happy to know that the rest of the first season was as good as this pilot episode was, something that doesn’t always happen.
I watched this pilot episode over a year ago, wrote this review and stored it away until I could watch more of the series, to have some context as to where it ended up going. Somehow though I misplaced the set of DVDs before I was able to.
When I found this review in an old WordPerfect file, I decided not to wait any longer before posting it. But I hope I can also find that set of DVDs sometime soon, too!
April 26th, 2019 at 12:07 am
The series is on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIEn6r0mYYk
The cast has gone on to much success. Graham Yost also did JUSTIFIED and nearly all the cast were hired for roles with that series.
I need to watch it but never seem to have the time or be in the mood.
April 26th, 2019 at 7:39 pm
No one mentioned it, but do they resolve the initial plot eventually or is it another of those open ended series that never provided a real ending?
April 26th, 2019 at 8:17 pm
Actually, I did address that in my review, when I referred to “the basic concept of a single crime per episode.”
On the other hand, some series do have an overall underlying story line (arc) that continues throughout a season, while at the same time the weekly crimes involved are wrapped up in single one and done episodes.
I don’t think that’s the case here, except in a most general way, but not having seen more than the first episode, I could easily be wrong about that.
June 2nd, 2020 at 9:14 pm
Was there an episode with a cricket bat, or was that a different series?
June 2nd, 2020 at 9:15 pm
I’ll have to let someone else answer that. The pilot is the only episode I’ve watched so far.