Reviews by Matt

Nine people were held hostage during a bank robbery. For 52 hours they were help captive in the bank while the cops stood outside and tried to get all of them out safely. What happened inside the bank over the more than two days is still a mystery to everyone on the outside. All we can tell is that those nine people were forever changed and bonded together by their experience. Three bank employees, Eva Rios (Lourdes Benedicto), Franny Rios (Camille Guanty), Malcolm Jones (Chi McBride), Jones daughter Felicia (Dana Davis), cop Nick Cavanaugh (Tim Daly), lawyer Kathryn Hale (Kim Raver), insurance sales man Egan Foote (John Billingsley), Dr. Jeremy Kates (Scott Wolf) and his girlfriend Lizzy Miller (Jessica Collins) are the only ones who know the truth of what happened over those 52 hours and the audience is just dying to find out what they know.

There has been a turn in television lately. Where many of the new shows were crappy reality shows a few years ago, now the shift has turned to dramas. Most of this has to do with two shows in particular, “Lost” and “24”. These shows both require every week viewing and for the audience to stay with it for an entire season. This is one of the best shows to use the new format (and it has to be good if both my parents are watching it, my dad only watches two shows religiously 24 and now The Nine). Over the course of the season the audience will learn what happened in the bank and more and more about the characters dealing with the events that brought them together.

What makes this show so strong, more then the mystery, is the characters. The characters are the driving force behind this. They are intriguing and well acted. You can make a show as mysterious as you want, but if the characters do not click, then you will fail. A great example is Fox’s “Vanished” which killed off the main character and will spend the rest of the season relegated to Friday nights (a time slot of death. Just look at what it did to “Firefly”). By far my favorite character is Nick. He is a cop with a gambling problem who has begrudgingly become the “poster boy” for the department. He knows that the entire situation was handled horribly and wants to let everyone else know, but can’t because, as we found out on this past Wednesday, the cops have dirt on a lot of the other hostages that they are not going to pursue as long as Nick goes along with what they want. He has been put in a position to protect the others from the cops, even if he does not like what he has to do for it.

I am looking forward to seeing where this season will take us and learning more about what exactly happened in the bank. There are so many unanswered questions that need resolution. Unlike “Lost,” I’m confident that the audience will get the answers they seek by the time the season comes to a close. On a personal note, I think the show would be better if it was not on after “Lost.” I tend to be still recovering from some sort of bombshell when it comes on. Luckily abc.com has replays of entire episodes steaming the day after they air. So go there and get caught up, or discover something you didn’t before. “The Nine” is a great show that allows has the perfect balance of mystery and strong characters.


ABC
WED 10/9c