“Cane” — Pilot
There are very few aspect of Cane I dislike. It’s a good premise, a wealthy Cuban family decides if it wants to abandon its sugar business in favor of the more glamorous rum business, complete with some shady dealings, murderous intrigue, and inner circle power plays. The acting is top notch (or at least upper-notch). Jimmy Smits heads a cast of some of the best Latin-American actors working today (most notably, Frank, who was played by Nestor Carbonell — “Scott” this past season on Lost). Visually it’s quite stunning. The colors are bright and saturated — lots of greens and blues and oranges. The dialogue, while often expository in this opening episode, always seems naturalistic. The action is constantly moving forward but is never rushed. More after the jump…
The complaints are few. The show has a tendency to flash back to the past using the super-cliché, dropped frame, color shifted, blurriness that we’ve come to expect in most timeline-play (see also: Damages). I know the past is suppose to be the big mystery here (or rather a mystery here), but there are more inventive ways to show this – like by doing nothing and letting the audience figure it out. Outside of Smits and Carbonell no one in the cast jumps out or is particularly interesting. This isn’t to say that every character needs to be facing life or death consequences right off the bat, but there needs to be something that defines them. The daughter, Katie, is suppose to be 17, but looks about 32. This is more of a widespread television problem than something exclusive to Cane, but still.
Again, the positives outweigh the negatives, but after one episode I just wasn’t all that interested in coming back for more. I’d like to think this would change with weeks to come, but with five hours of my Tuesday already dedicated to other fare, it makes it really hard to press record for another week. The thing is, Cane is precisely the kind of show that is missing from television right now. Well, perhaps not missing, but certainly underrepresented. There is something classical about the family drama. I suppose this is already being represented on shows like Brothers and Sisters on ABC, but Cane has appeal because of its scale. It wants to be an epic. Obviously its sights are more in line with The Godfather or The Sopranos than Six Feet Under. I’m going to play this one by ear and see how I feel come next Tuesday. I want to watch, but it simply isn’t a show that oozes appeal (for me at least).
One last note: What’s up with CBS’s insistence on showing their dramas in full-screen format for those people without HD sets despite the fact that most of these shows are now shot in 16:9 anyway? Annoying? Yes.
