Blog: DVR catch up on Frequency premiere
SPOILER ALERT: Catch the show before you get spoiled!
The CW has a lot of great shows, on pretty much every night of the week. But, I’m like most people and can’t be glued to my television each night. And, so, I have my DVR.
You know when we didn’t have DVR? 1996. (Well…My uncle was an early adopter of TiVo, but I don’t think that was until 1998).
I finally got to watch the premiere of Frequency, airing on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. I haven’t seen the movie, but I don’t consider that a bad thing (I watch Game of Thrones, but haven’t read the books. I’m fine with that, as my expectations only surround the show). In the series, we follow Raimy Sullivan (Peyton List), a 28-year-old detective for the NYPD, living in Queens in 2016. Her dad, Frank (Riley Smith), was also a cop, and was killed in an undercover operation gone bad in 1996, when Raimy was 8 years old.
Raimy harbors some bad feelings regarding her dad’s death. Being undercover meant that he, essentially, had to walk out on his family, and Raimy feels betrayed and abandoned. Frank loved to play with a ham radio, and would bury little presents in the backyard, marking the delivery with a small flag.
Raimy has kept the ham radio, and, while she still keeps a distance from all things her father, she decides to play around with the radio after her almost-fiance gets it working. An overnight lightning strike gives it that magical punch, and boom! Raimy is somehow talking to her father over the ham…two days before he’s supposed to die.
Of course she warns him (because, that would make for a really short series), but the fallout, the butterfly effect, saves his life, while her mother gets killed by a serial killer and her fiancé has no idea who she is. Raimy has a childhood best friend, Gordo (Lenny Jacobson), and detective partner Satch Reyna (Mekhi Phifer) (OMG they have cool character names on this show), to help her in this new world.
Basically, what we have here is Flashpoint, minus the Flash plus a radio. Presumably, she will help her 1996 father stop the serial killer from taking her mother, throughout this season, and then, who knows what butterfly effects will happen. Will her fiancé recognize her again? Will her childhood best friend forget her? Will she even be a cop anymore?
The CW has never shied away from risky concept shows, or recycling actors from previous shows. Peyton List starred in the Tomorrow People, a 70’s sci-fi remake, and both she and co-star Robbie Amell have since been seen on the Flash (as the Lisa Snart/Golden Glider and Robbie Raymond/Firestorm, respectively). List was also Lucy Lane in Smallville (Supergirl shout-out!)
While the CW will take risks on first seasons, sometimes, they don’t let the shows stick around long enough to find their footing. I did enjoy the Tomorrow People, while recognizing that it had some ‘oof’s that could easily be fleshed out in season two. Tomorrow People, though, didn’t get that chance.
I really hope CW gives Frequency that multi-season chance. I really like the idea of fluid this show can be: As they solve the serial killer case this season, how will that change reality for next season? Or the season after that? And then, five seasons in, how will Raimy keep her sanity when she has, like, 5 different sets of memories for her life events…and no one in her world remembers any of it. Part of what made me get invested in Arrow, five years ago, was that the CW had given the show runners a 5 year assurance, that they could lay out this longer story line (whether or not they held well to it is another question). We knew the plug wouldn’t be pulled early, and that paid off with the additions to that universe of Flash, Legends, and, now Supergirl.
I really hope Frequency gets that chance.
THROWBACKS:
•Raimy: Are you trolling me?
Frank: What? What’s that?
(Ahhhh, remember there was a time before trolls? What a nice world that must’ve been)
• I probably could’ve gone another 20 years without Wonder Wall stuck in my head.
• World Series stats from the “future” seems to be such a great way to set a time and date, right Back to the Future and Captain America: The First Avenger?