After months of seemingly incessant hype My Own Worst Enemy finally made its debut on NBC Monday night. And all things considered it wasn’t bad at all.
The central conceit…that the super-efficient, cold-blooded spy Edward has as his cover the identity of the mild-mannered family man Henry…works as long as you can suspend disbelief to an extent. (Henry is, we are told, a construct…a second personality deliberately created by a shadowy government agency run by the formidable Alfre Woodard.)
Henry and Edward (a nod to the classic literary split personality Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Edward Hyde) live very different lives, of course…a situation that works well enough until the barriers between the two personalities start to break down (Henry comes out in the middle of a tense assassin gig and, quite predictably, he freaks out and almost gets killed.)
Christian Slater is the glue that holds this show together working his butt off to make both Henry and Edward come to life…his Edward is cool and ruthless while his Henry is caring and befuddled by the very strange situation that he finds himself in.
Enemy is an interesting, fast-paced, fairly unique blend of espionage, action/adventure, psychological drama, and even some comedy that has gotten off to a very entertaining start. And in this rather anemic new TV season that’s a good thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment