NBC Wednesdays @ 10pm ET
In the gritty world of the NYPD, no one's tougher than Detective Robert Ironside. He is fearless; his instincts are second to none, and those around him must stay on their toes if they want to keep up. When his spine was shattered by a bullet two years ago, he swore he'd never let a wheelchair slow him down.
In an editorial column entitled "TV's new antiheroes are anti-entertaining", Entertainment Weekly writer Mark Harris accused the current TV season of debuting a number of new shows whose main characters are cheap knock-offs of cable's successful antihero trope (think Walter White on "Breaking Bad" or Don Draper on "Mad Men"). In this reviewer's humble opinion, no show is more guilty of this than NBC's "Ironside".
Note to NBC: if you're going to make another procedural police drama, just spin-off your hyper-successful "Law & Order" franchise. But don't try to disguise your completely by-the-numbers show by putting your lead character in a wheelchair. That one defining characteristic is literally the only thing that sets "Ironside" apart from the countless other procedurals on television, which is both lazy and insulting to the physically handicapped by co-opting their disadvantage to sell a show.
Star Blair Underwood ("L.A. Law"), usually a magnetic and capable actor, deserves way more than the caricature he's saddled with here. Ironside is a cranky Dr. House knockoff, who gets around with the help of a wheelchair instead of a cane and solves crimes instead of medical mysteries. But unlike "House", where the medical cases were frequently fascinating, the crime in the pilot episode of "Ironside" is a total paint-by-numbers case that any viewer could recite in their sleep. Even the plots not involved with the case are predictable. When we see that Ironside's former partner is seemingly way more affected by his condition than Ironside himself, we know exactly where this is leading...to a climactic scene where flashbacks to what happened to Ironside are edited together with a scene of him working out and finally breaking down, all underscored by Very Dramatic Music.
In a time when a lot of NYC-based television productions are shutting down and/or moving to LA, it's nice to see a new show shooting in the Big Apple and employing New York actors. For that reason (and Blair Underwood), it's easy to root for "Ironside" to be successful. But that just makes it all the more disappointing when you realize how mediocre it really is. It won't be disappointing for much longer, though -- its premiere last Wednesday was the lowest-rated drama debut in NBC history with a 1.4 rating, besting 2011's infamously terrible "The Playboy Club", which had a premiere rating of 1.6 and became the first cancelled show of that season. So it's only a matter of time before Detective Ironside rolls off sweetly into that goodnight.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OM9BEivcj4[/youtube]
