SHOWBUZZDAILY Pilot + 1 Review: “Wicked City”

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WICKED CITY:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC

Previously… on WICKED CITY:  In 1982 Los Angeles, serial killer Kent Grainger (Ed Westwick) is slaughtering young women he picks up on the Sunset Strip.  He’s recently acquired a new playmate, Betty Beaumontaine (Erika Christensen), a single mom and nurse with a very dark side.  Chasing Kent is LAPD detective Jack Roth (Jeremy Sisto), who hates his partner Paco Contrenas (Gabriel Luna), and who cheats on his wife Allison (Jaime Ray Newman) with undercover cop Diane Kubek (Karolina Wydra).  Aspiring reporter Karen McClaren (Taissa Farmiga) briefly had contact with Kent, and is reporting the case as well as helping the cops.

Episode 2:  The second hour of Wicked City was, if anything, even more disagreeable than the first, thanks to a plotline that had as its centerpiece a sequence that amounted to torture porn, as Kent and Betty had sex with a young woman whom we knew Kent intended to murder.  The sadistic three-way tried to push the envelope of broadcast standards, but merely demonstrated how strong that envelope is, and played as second-rate American Horror Story.

Beyond that sequence, the show was clumsily written by Co-Executive Producer Mick Betancourt, with a script that had characters baldly stating their aims and emotions when they weren’t making silly “hey, it’s the 80s” statements (one character explained MTV to another, who sneered that no one would ever watch a network that showed nothing but music videos), and with rudimentary performances from most of the cast under the direction of Jon Cassar.  The only mildly intriguing character remained Betty, who was finally introduced to Kent’s killing ways in the last minutes of the episode, but the show had nothing interesting to say about her mix of ordinary-mom concern and latent brutality.  Instead, we were asked to care about the budding relationship between Karen and her editor Diver (Evan Ross), who talked her out of going back home to Iowa, or wherever she’s from.  The lower post-pilot budget kicked in, too, making for a noticeably cheaper look, and the period detail was mostly reserved for a guest appearance by Joe Walsh (as one of those MTV video directors).

Wicked City had a lousy start in the ratings, and there’s no reason to expect any help from word of mouth.  The series is intended as an anthology that would switch its plotline and cast next season, so it may not necessarily be canceled altogether, but this season’s run may barely manage to complete its episode order before heading into hiding for a year.

ORIGINAL VERDICT:  Change the Channel

PILOT + 1:  Not So Much Wicked As Inept