Amazon Pilots Part II: Sorting Them Out (The After and Bosch)

A clown, a cop, and an old lady enter an elevator...  This is the set up for a bad joke and a particularly bad pilot titled The After.  I still cannot determine if this Amazon pilot is a serious drama or a comedy masked as a bad drama.  

The setup to the story is pretty basic.  A group of people become stuck in an elevator (including a clown). The elevator stops operating and the group need to climb out at the garage level.  While there, they learn they are stuck in the garage with no power, another couple joins them (a lawyer and prostitute, of course), and they encounter escaped convicts, one of whom is shot to increase the drama.  Then they learn the learn they were in the elevator for three days, a story line they never pick up again.  Then...okay, I am already tired. Just say it later involves one random explosion, crowds inexplicably running around in the city, an escape to a mansion, Latino thugs, and ultimately (spoiler! - if you really care) an alien.

 The writing is lousy, the acting is atrocious, and the mimicking of so many better shows that preceded it is sad.  I was not overwhelmed with the acting in NBC's Revolution, but those actors are Oscar-material compared to these clowns (okay, one clown and the others).  What is even worse is that the viewer ratings are overwhelmingly positive.  Do these people own a television?  I am with the 412 who gave it one star, only because I cannot give it zero stars. Here is one comment from the one-star category:

This show was so sloppily written with a bunch of stereotypical ethnic characters it was nearly offensive. Token black male prisoner, angry drunk Irishman, ethnic female cop, Mexican gang-bangers, sleazy white lawyer and his bimbo gf, rich Jewish lady, strong yet needy female lead. Bin this waste.

Enough said.  The good news is that I  completely enjoyed another pilot - Bosch. The pilot is a step above the typical police serial primarily due to the acting.  Titus Welliver (Sons of Anarchy) plays Harry Bosch, a divorced detective trying to keep his badge after a questionable shooting and related trial.  In the meantime, he starts to investigate the murder of a young boy while also initiating a relationship with a street cop.  

The pilot is based on a Michael Connelly's series with Harry Bosch, starting with The Black Echo.  Here is a quick summary of the book's plot (via Amazon), which is a completely different storyline from the pilot but gives you some background on Bosch:

For maverick LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal...because the murdered man was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who had fought side by side with him in a hellish underground war. Now Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit. Pitted against enemies inside his own department and forced to make the agonizing choice between justice and vengeance, Bosch goes on the hunt for a killer whose true face will shock him.

All in all, the production quality was solid, the acting superb, and the story line strong enough for an audience to want more.  Amazon has a winner here.