3 out of 5

Developed by: Alon Aranya, Jeffrey Nachmanoff

Hostages is… not a good show.  Established.  It’s all based around a rather ridiculous hook, and the majority of the episodes rely almost completely on either withheld information (from the viewer, from other characters) to create forced drama, or, when tricksy machinations are going on, the movie/tv magic of people looking away at the right time or not happening to enter the room until… just the right moment.  Things like this are totes fair game for moving pictures and can be used – sparingly – to effectively amplify whatever, but it’s rather telling when you have to keep waving your wand throughout every episode to pretend that these little miracles are plausible.

Ahem.

But unlike some other hook shows I’ve watched, I wasn’t restless with Hostages.  I’ll even say I enjoyed it.  I’d even say I’d recommend it for a weekend of popcorn viewing.  It’s not that it’s so bad its good or that it qualifies as a guilty pleasure, but rather that I didn’t feel like anything was really phoned in, even though it was structured to work that way.  You have a pretty respectable batch of actors, and unlike ‘American Horror Story’, this isn’t an opportunity to go all genre and let loose.  So Toni Collette, Dylan McDermott, Tate Donovan and Billy Brown – while maybe not given more than a couple emotions to work through – seem committed to their roles, elevating the proceedings considerably.  I also respect that the show held its head high for 15 episodes.  Yes, I think we all did an eye-roll after episode 1 when our question was answered as to how they were going to drag this out for a full season, and its not that the whole thing isn’t just one long delaying tactic, but I accept that these twists and turns stuffed into a 90 minute film would’ve been god awful, but with a little padding in-between it works, successfully, as entertainment, taken to I’d say just the right limit of viewing time before we would’ve wanted them to get on with it.  So cheesy and manipulative as it may have been at points, there weren’t really ‘subplots’ or distractions that didn’t, in some way, keep the main ball rolling.

Toni is a successful doctor, Tate her husband, leading a generally normal life as a busy family just trying to have dinner with their teenage son and daughter.  The president is to undergo some kinda routine but important surgery, and as a political move, decides to choose a ‘local’ physician to do the duty – a straw which Collette draws.  Then one night, prior to the surgery, Dylan McDermott comes knocking at la casa Toni in a ski mask with Billy Brown and a couple other cronies in tow and tells our fictional doctor that she’s going to kill the president or they’re going to kill her family.  Dunt dunt dunt and whatnot.  Now insert a couple episodes of those demands getting foiled by our titular hostages’ futzings, equally matched by our captors showing they mean business, then about five or six episodes of revealing the ‘whys’ behind this scenario, and then a spattering of episodes following the chain of command accompanied with a lot of good guy / bad guy side switching.  To be fair, they only draw out the ‘who’s in charge’ for the first third of things, but as said, there’s really nothing mind-blowing going on in the plotting department, though I’ll admit to some good TV surprises, wondering how the writers will get us from this moment to the next.

And I was pleased that they would divert from some obvious tropes: Toni and Tate’s marriage is exposed as being sort of rocky, but this situation is used neither to bring them together or create further tension which pushes them apart.  They come together as a couple who have shared love at some point, but recognize that it doesn’t change their relationship over all.  The kids are both independently intelligent, neither one doing any dumb kid thing to mess things up at any point, and actually actively assisting several times.  The bad guys do, as mentioned, flip flop sides enough times, but I’d say each character at least stays true to whatever their one-note motivation is provided as: loyalty, money, power, etc.

So color me successfully distracted.  The whole thing is silly, and though they toss in some procedural stuff to make a good impression, there are countless points where you’ll be asking yourself how any of this could possibly happen.  And it is most certainly not a character show (note I used actors names in this review, not really concerned enough to remember their roles’ names…) but one of events.  That they lucked into a talented cast who breathed life into it was fortunate, but it bears the glossier-than-it-should-be hallmark of being a Bruckheimer production, so there ya go.  There is so much TV out there I can’t say you should drop everything to watch this, but by the same token, good, digestible thrillers are fairly far between, either requiring a several season commitment or upping the ante with sex and blood.  Thus: our ABC-approved ‘Hostages.’  ‘Twas okay by me.