The Glades: Season One
Shows like "The Glades" make shows like "White Collar" and "Psych" look so much better. All of them focus on being light, with characters that are always amusing while they solve a mystery within the hour — except "The Glades" falls short in the "light," "characters," "amusing" and "solve" parts.
Charisma-less Matt Passmore plays Detective Jim Longworth. As every opening-credits sequence explains, he used to be a cop in Chicago. After a stupid incident, he decided to move to Florida to work on his tan and golf game. For some reason, he didn’t think that people would get murdered in Florida. Even in the promo for Season Two, he’s still surprised that beautiful people in bikinis die and he may actually have to do something as a homicide detective.
As is the case with the lead on every other show, Longworth is constantly wisecracking, sees himself above everyone else, is a self-described genius and will break the rules to solve the case. This type of personality could be charming if someone like Hugh Laurie or James Roday were the know-it-all, but the writing and Passmore’s performance makes the character completely unlikable and obnoxious.
It doesn’t help that the entire show is built on how much of a “wild card” he is. Carlos Gómez plays a medical examiner who is friends with Longworth, but all he gets to do is to be frustrated with his "crazy antics" and talk about those crazy antics for the rest of the episode. Kiele Sanchez ("LOST's" Nicki) is a nurse with whom Longworth is obsessed. They “banter,” but they will never actually be a couple because she doesn’t want to divorce her inmate husband for the sake of her child. That means they will forever be in “will-they-or-won't-they” TV limbo.
Truly, most of this would be excused if the show succeeded at being the light show it desperately wants to be. It’s not funny, and the mysteries don’t really make sense. Longworth's not much of a detective if he verbally accuses every single character and then it ends up being the random secondary guest actor in the last few minutes.
With so many elements not working, this can’t be a show to casually watch during the summer or have on while you’re working on something else. It’s just frustrating. It looks like a likable show, but it treats its audience like idiots.
The special features include deleted scenes, audio commentary by the cast and crew, a couple of featurettes talking about how great the show is and, of course, a gag reel. Oh, actors not being able to remember lines.
Series: 1.5 Yaps Extras: 2.5 Yaps