Body of Proof - Season 1

I caught the pilot episode and yes, it does have a "Quincy ME" flavor with an attitude.  Hope it does well.

 

Did ABC cancel Detroit 1-8-7?  They sure went out with a lot of loose threads and story lines hanging out there in the "season finale."  A real Godfather-like final 15 minutes.  Pity if it's gone.

 

If so, thanks once again ABC for nothing!

187 is dead. I thought the acting in body of proof was really poor

Same here, 187 was my favorite show of the year.

 

I watched Body of Proof and will continue to do so as I like Dana Delaney.  She looks pretty good for a 55 year old woman.

 

Maybe they can do a Body of Proof/Castle crossover where they investigate a homicide on Wisteria Lane.

My house got broken into today, and I wasn't sleeping, so I finally caught up on the pilot to this. Lot of potential, even though the premise is very female-driven, man-hating Lifetime Original-esque. All of the men are morons or outright villainous, except the medical investigator who is the idealized Perfect Man with the looks of a young Simon Baker. The assistant chief is an Amos-n-Andy-esque caricature, the dweeby other ME seems barely competent, and her ex-husband seems to be doing his very best to make their daughter hate her for no discernible reason. The lead detective shows the most promise; while he's a testosterone-driven stooge for most of the pilot, he keeps up with Delany's lead better than most.

 

Hopefully future episodes flesh out the supporting cast more, which is well-cast. I'm definitely around in the short term, even though it's always going to end up on the DVR backlog.

Quote:

I immediately thought of a young Kenneth Branagh.
 

 

 

I'm starting to like this series more and more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crawdaddy

I like the show but part of that is because of Dana Delaney and Jeri Ryan. The non believer Cop says the same thing everything every episode, I don't believe you, lets close the case.

That's going to get old.

Well if Body of Proof has a Quincy, M.E. feel to it, then I'm going to check out the show if it does get shown in the UK (think Alibi have picked it up). What I would like to see, if it gets renewed, is for Detroit 1-8-7 to do a crossover with Body of Proof.

This show is beginning to remind me of "House",  only with corpses. The biggest improvement since the pilot is the way all of the coroner's office staff are shown to be competent professionals. The black cop and Jeri Ryan's boss character still need to be fleshed out, but I'm really liking the rest of the cast.

 

Does Body of Proof have much of a title sequence? More and more US TV shows these days (especially network series) have either a very short title sequence or nothing at all.

No, just an animated title card with a lab coat pulling a sheet over the outline of a body.

There are only "x" number of minutes for story per hour.  With shows not only getting squeezed by more commercials but are having to yield precious minutes to "reality" competitions about races, survival, dancing and singing that run over the standard time limits week after week.  They've already squeezed and sped-up the closing credits to air them over the promos for the following show (to the point where the unions are really upset) so the last thing left to cut was the main title squence, which used to be a kind of art form.  Now you get a few seconds of music and a title card, and then the credits run over the action at the top of act one.   (And even at that shows like Castle tend to run a minute or two shorter than similar dramas on other networks.)  Pity.

 

Re: Body of Proof.  I'm enjoying it. Within a couple of episodes they've already moved beyond a lot of what people saw as cliches in the pilot, and I'm enjoying the characters.  I do think that Jeri Ryan, especially, needs to be "fleshed out" more, as it were.  But that red dress she was wearing while getting ready for her date goes a long way toward making me forgive the producers.  And of course I've had a mad crush on Dana Delaney ever since and Marg Helgenberger were heating up China Beach.  (Heck, I actually went back and watched Desperate Housewives for a awhile there when Dana was on.)  It could eventually lose my interest, but for now I'll be sticking with the show. 

 

Regards,

 

Joe

Body of Proof's fast national ratings (posted on Zap2it) for episode 4 (last night's new episode on ABC) show that the show's ratings are keeping steady. They dipped a bit for episode 2 (which was shown on the Sunday night (3rd April) after the series premiere the previous Tuesday night (29th March), but went back up with episode 3.

 

Re: Title sequences in TV shows these days (and this does go off-topic). A good example where there's no title sequence, just a flash of a title card showing the name of the show and the lead character, is The Listener, the Canadian drama series about a psychic paramedic (Season 2 is currently being shown on FX in the UK). Because The Listener had been off air for ages (something like two years since the first season), I'm guessing the show's makers put "Season 2" on screen under the show's title because there hadn't been new episodes for ages.

 

It's been refreshing watching Treme and now Rubicon (this started on BBC Four last week), as they have long title sequences. But is this because they're/they were cable shows?

I agree, with you regarding the non believer cop.  She solves the case, and each time a new case comes up the cop doubts her?  Outside of that, I enjoy the show.
 

 

 

True, but last night's show was at least a beginning in showing them in action as they solved that murder.  I'm really starting to dig this show.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crawdaddy

 

Just like everyone else. I am really enjoying this show.  The pilot was just so-so.  Each and every week the episodes have been getting better and better.  Found this weeks episode to be the best yet.  Glad to see that the daughter maybe thawing in her relationship to Mom.

 

Good stuff.

 

Doug

I found out today that Geoffrey Arend who plays nerdy Ethan on the show is married to hot Christina Hendricks from Mad Men fame. 

 

 

 

 

 

Crawdaddy

Robert you need to stay more up to date on your celebrity gossip.

I like the show so far too, and it's fun seeing different sections of Philly pop up although the building they work in is either cgi or in another city.

Also has Delaney smiled yet or has her face moved yet.

 

 

In that case, that man is my hero.  Maybe there's hope for the rest of us. 

 

Re:  Not shooting in Philly.  The reality is that very few shows are shot where they are set.  Most are shot in Los Angeles and do maybe a week or two shooting exteriors with the main cast and maybe aother few days with a second unit shooting background shots.  (Those straight-down from a helicopter bits so popular these days are often stock footage purchased from companies that specialize in that kind of thing.)  It is just easier to get guest cast, special equipment and trained stunt people if you're shooting in or near a major production hub like L.A., N.Y. or Toronto.

 

Re:  The "non-believer cop".  Heck, he thinks normal police work is more likely to produce results than theories from an M.E.  Chances are his 20 years or more on the police force support this view, so it isn't surprising that he remains skeptical of Megan's insights after a couple of cases that could be chalked up to luck.  Based on the cop's experience the odds are she'll hit just as long a losing streak at some point.  And there are already indications that he may be coming around.  Compare this with supposedly brilliant FBI Agent Dana Scully who played the skeptic role for years on the X-Files, long beyond the point where the evidence should have convinced that the paranormal existed. 

 

Regards,

 

Joe
 

 

Edited by Joseph DeMartino - 4/19/11 at 8:40am

What's weird about this show is that it's shot in, I believe, Providence RI. If you're shooting in one Northeast city as another Northeast city, why not just set the show in the city you're shooting in? Would this show be less effective with a Rhode Island M.E. instead of a Pennsylvania M.E.?

 

Philly versus Providence.  With all due respect to Providence, it's still a small city in comparison to the City of Brotherly Love so the perception of a big city ME wins out in the minds of those that make the decision.  If I had to guess the reason why it's not being filmed in Philly is because they probably got some serious tax breaks from Providence and RI.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crawdaddy
 

 

And sometimes they don't disguise it very well. On a recent episode of Suspect Behavior that was set in Indianapolis, during a couple of the exterior shots with the main actors, there were mountains seen in the background. I have lived here for a while and never noticed them. To give them credit, the stock stuff was great and the script used vey accurate names for places and streets.

 

 

 

 

The worst was Silk Stalkings, which I don't think I would have watched at all if Mitzi Kaptur weren't so darned cute.  Allegedly set in Palm Beach, FL, an area so flat that the highest point within 30 miles is a 50 foot mound above a landfill, the show was full of mountains in the background, killer hills, the wrong kind of trees (even the palm trees) and lots of stories set "in the bad part of town" - of which there is none.  (The Town of Palm Beach, which occupies about 3/4ths of Palm Beach Island, has its own police force.  The nearest "bad parts" are across the intracoastal waterway in the nearby cities of West Palm Beach and Lake Worth, which have their own police forces and where the PBPD has no jurisdiction.  Palm Beachers like to pretend that all the bridges are drawbridges because of the boat traffic in the intracoastal.  I happen to know that they view the waterway as a moat, and the drawbridges as their first line of defense against the riff-raff. ) 

 

Regards,

 

Joe

Not exactly.  Memphis and New Orleans are both Deep South cities that have the Mississippi river and a fair amount of history in common.  Providence is in Rhode Island, a New England state, and beyond that part of the Northeast.  Philadelphia is Pennsylvania, a Mid-Atlantic state that has more in common, culturally and geographically, with Delaware, Maryland and even parts of Ohio than it does with Northern New Jersey or southern New York, to say nothing of anything further east of the Hudson river.  It is more like shooting a series set in Charleston, SC in Jacksonville, FL.  You could say that both cities are "in the same part of the country" (the south) but you'd be missing a lot. 

 

Regards,

 

Joe