Raines: Dead Reckonings
Friday, March 23rd, 2007Posted by Kevin Forest Moreau
View all posts by Kevin Forest Moreau
Raines
NBC
Rating: 3.7
At first glance, you want to slap the cuffs on NBC’s new crime drama Raines and book its creators for excessive recycling. It’s impossible to watch the commercials, or five minutes of the show itself, without your knee beginning to twitch, impatient to kick Raines to the curb. On the surface, it’s a shameless mix of two of the more popular formulas in heavy rotation: The “I see dead people” mystery (Medium, Ghost Whisperer) and the “Difficult-to-Get-Along-With, Idiosyncratic Leading Man” drama (Monk, House, Shark, etc).
But that knee-jerk summation captures only the form of the show, not its substance. Because Raines uses those elements to create something, if not entirely new, then at least intriguing enough to more than make up for the nagging sense of déjà vu. (more…)