Granted, The Kingdom by King, which the story was based on, was a long piece of writing. But I've seen rice commercials that have told me more about the domestic lives of the characters involved. For instance, no one says that Diane Ladd, who plays the psychic, tracking the ghosts on the premises, is visiting her husband as he's dying. A nurse tells Ladd before she enters his room that being with the dying can be unpleasant. She, of course, explains that it’s just as simple as the jaw dropping and the spirit leaving.Not something I would expect someone to say about one’s husband. Without the narration, such conclusions would be impossible to figure out. That leaves us with dialogue and footage. Lots and lots of meaningless footage. This show will push you off the edge when striving to figure out what you already know and what you don't. By the time you come to your senses, you'll have missed something. It's not that complicated, and that's the sad part. It's just like a house with no joists or anchor bolts.
The main problem with the series is the build-up in the plot to the big crescendo in which the ghosts who are haunting the center are eventually shown. Then when we arrive, there is nothing truly unsettling. We just see a little ghoul girl, going up in an elevator, and asking someone to help her. That would be the one Ladd is trying to save from a bad ghost.
Also what's with the members of the "brat pack" all of the sudden being on the A-list of actors to call when a new, horrific thing in Castle Rock happens? I mean I love Jon Cryer to death, but I wouldn't give him crimson contacts and a bridge of fangs to attack a local general store owner. The best of Andrew McCarthy I've seen is when he was huddled up against the wall of his dorm in Class, stammering as he does so deliciously, while trying to figure out how he was going to tell Rob Lowe that he slept with his mom. To be fair, he's played characters that have been around the deceased before and therefore, has some experience. I've seen every single Weekend At Bernie's ever made. I have to say that Andrew McCarthy's is a step up from Anthony Michael Hall's performance in the USA series The Dead Zone, which should have been called The Tow Zone, in my opinion.
Nevertheless, I was sort of intrigued by Bruce Davidson's character, Dr. Stegman. His car was graffitied in the last episode with blood. He did a stunning job of intimidating some street thugs, who he thought were to blame, interrogating them, and then "showing" them a gun. Dr. Stegman played his trump card by telling the two criminals that if a chief neurosurgeon of a hospital threatened them and they went to the authorities, no one would believe them. Still, I liked him in Harry and the Hendersons, the television show much better.
My accolades to Jamie Harrold, the actor who plays Elmer Traff leads me to, but is not the cause of, the sub-problem: the shotty casting. This is a young man with immense-moving power and theatrical torque. Whether he’s resentfully mourning his mother's death or he's trying to further his relationship with the doctor who conducts the sleep studies in which he partakes, he is Oscar material. The difference in the caliber of actors when he enters a scene is Alan Alda playing opposite Carol Burnett and having Alda speak after her. Also, he is the only actor I have seen that cries to a plausible extent in the show. I think that he's the only one besides Diane Ladd who cries at all. And let me just say, there are plenty of things to cry about in a haunted clinic. The acting is one.
Finally, the most frustrating aspect to the momentum of each hour is the fact that King has written what I all, "inert bait" for uninteresting characters and actors. Inert bait is the concept of looking at a talented actor such as Ed Norton, Kevin Spacey, or Tom Hanks do practically nothing in order to set the mood.
Michael Keaton and Billy Crystal are especially adept at doing so. The actor can stare, drive, sleep, eat, or blink in order to establish tone. The actor can also make you hate, like, pity, or envy the character by most likely just breathing.
The woman in the last episode of Kingdom Hospital, who played a nurse, had a heart attack while taking care of a hospice patient. She was so unbelievable on the phone when she called authorities that if I were in the position to, I wouldn’t save her. If you can't die well, you really don't deserve support to keep you alive.
It should suffice to say that if this show were on the selected stations when I were staying in a shared hospital room, I would be asking for meds. It’s that painful.
Yet I keep watching. Trying desperately to avoid pulling the plug. I want to see where the story goes from here. We all must keep in mind that this is the skipper of capsized head's first television series that wasn't going to end in a week or so. We're not dealing with the pace of It or The Langoliers. If Tim Curry and John Lithgow were captors, no one would go free.
When driving through at King's entertainment diner, everyone needs to assume that the product isn't going to be as fresh as what we sit down to read at the counter or what is set down at our tables by Sissy Spacek or Morgan Freeman.
Photos courtesy of the WB
