New Shows: Crusoe

Since we’re just starting out, we’re going to begin with two special features before we move into the weekly episode guides. First, we’ll show you our impressions of the 2008 fall season, and then of every scripted show we could think of. It’ll give you mortals a sense of our tastes, and information on what shows we’ll be following on a weekly basis.

Crusoe

Do you remember when Lost started, and everyone thought it was going to be a serious Gilligan’s Island, with the question of how they were going to get off the island every episode? And how JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof surprised us by making it about how cool the island was? Yeah, Crusoe is the Gilligan’s Island thing. It is, unsurprisingly, the story of Robinson Crusoe, stretched out into an episodic format. The first episode featured pirates looking for treasure, but they were dispatched by the end, which leads us to conclude that we’re looking at Crusoe as Gilligan. In fact, he’s more The Professor -- his island is a mass of Rube Goldberg devices, from crazy traps to a hamster-wheel bridge (no, we can’t explain it any better) to a ridiculously complicated signaling device right out of Wile E. Coyote’s repertoire. Of course, they’ve reworked the racist “Friday” character--he still takes his name from the day Crusoe found him and refers to himself as “Friday” in the third person, but now it’s because he’s “making fun” of Crusoe and the fact that the white man can’t pronounce his real name. Right. He still has a Wookiee Lifedebt to Crusoe -- you saved our life, so we’ll be your slave, we mean friend, until you die.

There are Lost rip-off flashback sequences throughout the show, but they fail to be entertaining or even particularly enlightening as to Crusoe’s character. And then there are the coincidences. Okay, so Crusoe’s island happens to have pirate treasure on it. We’ll buy it, because otherwise it’s Cast Away on a weekly basis. Then at the climax, he figures out that the pirate treasure just happens to be buried right where he built his treehouse. Uh-huh. Then, he blows up the pirates, and guess what is right under there feet, unearthed by the explosion? THE GOLD!!! We. Don’t. Think. So. The only thing to watch Crusoe for is reasonably cool action sequences (a nifty swordfight in the premiere), some bizarre bamboo MacGyver sequences, and the fact that the costumes and dialogue are a reasonable facsimile of the 17th century. Otherwise, keep of off Crusoe’s island and go to Lost’s.

All scores are from 1 (bad) to 5 (good)
Hephaestos (Plot): 1
Zeus (Character): 2
Apollo (Dialogue): 2
Athena (Intelligence): 2
Dionysos (Fun): 2
Hermes (Overall): 2