The double-edged sword of having a WFH job is that I can run the TV in the background all day and let The Algorithm do its thing without thinking about it. There is an unlimited supply of series that aren’t particularly “bad,” but also aren’t particularly “good,” perfect for running as background noise, like the gentle, distracting murmur of co-workers complaining about things as they hover somewhere near a coffee machine.
No, I don’t miss having an office to go to at all. Why do you ask?
Anyway. Once you let one hour-long, action/dramedy series play out, the algorithm assumes that’s what you want to watch and will keep serving them to you until you’re sick of them and switch things up with horror movies.
After I binged the most recent season of Leverage: Redemption, Prime decided I should watch all of the other projects Dean Devlin has produced. That’s a lot of projects that I’ve already watched most of anyway. Shut up, so have you.
It did surface one show I was surprised I missed. Almost Paradise released two seasons starting in 2020 that I’ve never watched a single episode of. And I don’t know how that’s possible, considering we were all locked in our houses for most of 2020 and 2021. What else was I doing? (The answer is puzzles and killing sourdough starters.)
Almost Paradise stars Christian Kane, who plays the same character he plays in Leverage and The Librarians. In this show, he’s a former DEA Agent galumping his way through Cebu City like a grumpy rhino, solving crimes with the local PD.
One of the lessons I learned from The Algorithm is that Dean Devlin loves working with Christian Kane. That’s him in the header picture. The headlock he’s got on Kane is both physical and metaphorical.
Who can blame him? I’ve loved Kane since Angel. He’s a trained martial artist who does some of his own stunts and helps choreograph fight sequences. It’s super fun watching him fight people in all of the Dean Devlin shows.
Watching Almost Paradise triggered The Algorithm to serve me some other action/dramedy series that I’ve already watched. And I realized all three of these are basically the same show, about the same kind of guy.
The Glades ran for four seasons starting in 2010. It’s about Jim Longworth (Matt Passmore), a cop who becomes persona non grata in Chicago. He moves to Florida to annoy everyone on a small-town police force by acting like they’re all too incompetent to solve crimes without him. The series was canceled and ended in a cliffhanger with the protagonist lying shot on his girlfriend’s porch. You’re welcome for saving you from watching any of that.
The Finder was a spin-off of Bones that only lasted one season in 2012. It starred Geoff Stults as someone who can find anything. (OK, sure.) But it also had Michael Clarke Duncan playing his high-intellect muscle, and that was pretty great. The show might have lasted a little longer if Duncan hadn’t passed away in 2012.
Spiritual descendants of Burn Notice, all three of those shows are about wise-cracking white guys in tropical locations running circles around local law enforcement. I give the credit of Burn Notice’s longevity (seven seasons beginning in 2007) to the chemistry between the main cast: Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, and Bruce Campbell. Listen, if you can get Campbell in your cast, do it. He’s got undeniable mojo. If you can’t get the vibe right with the cast, the show isn’t going to last.
Similarly, some action/adventure shows tried to emulate Leverage (five seasons beginning in 2008) that failed in the most predictable ways by either taking themselves too seriously or not finding the right ensemble.
Whiskey Cavalier is probably the most entertaining of them. It got one season in 2019, and that was plenty. It’s the show Lauren Cohan left The Walking Dead for over a pay dispute. It also starred Scott Foley as an overly sensitive FBI agent and Tyler James Williams (Abbott Elementary) as their quippy Tech Guy. Everybody Loves Tyler, but his character in this is no match for Aldis Hodge’s Hardison, and I’m not even going to apologize for the comparison. It also featured Josh Hopkins (ol’ Dime Eyes from Cougar Town) as Foley’s BFF and the team’s handler. Nothing of value was lost when this show ended. Plus, it freed up Williams for Abbott Elementary. So thanks for being aggressively mediocre, Whiskey Cavalier!
If you squint your eyes you might mistake Human Target (two seasons beginning in 2010) for either Whiskey Cavalier or The Finder. The casts are similar, and there’s not a human being on earth who can differentiate plot points between those shows. If there are any. With apologies to Chi McBride, I did not make it through many episodes of this one. RIP to this one-season (2010) show.
There is no end to the number of streaming shows that fall under the same, or an incredibly similar, umbrella. Going back to the 1980s Magnum, P.I., we’ve been watching white dudes work out their issues as crime fighters and mystery solvers with a group of plucky sidekicks representing various minority groups. And the thing that came to mind when I proofread this article was that the meme about men doing anything besides going to therapy also applies to television shows. If the protagonists of any of these shows had gone to therapy instead of uprooting their lives, moving to a new location, and putting their lives in danger on a weekly basis, none of these shows would have happened.
But then what would I watch while I’m working?
