TVPast Forums - 1313 Mockingbird Lane pilot [Review]

Friday night was the premier of the pilot for the New Munsters show.

NBC pulled out everything they had to try to get this over, including cameos from stars from Grimm, a special preview of an upcoming episode of grimm and some behind the scenes views of how the tv pilot was made.

I'm not a huge fan of remakes. And where I enjoyed some of the Munsters it came off as a quasi ripoff of the Addams Family. But I had hopes that maybe this might be a good remake. It had star power with Jerry O'Connell, Portia De Rossi and Eddie Izzard.

If you want to see the episode/pilot for free imdb has it here http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi3564807193/

After watching it I could see why it was just given a pilot episode. The writers tried to jam as much as they could as nods to the original series. As they wrote they seemed to forget that an interesting plot would make the series come to life more than just pandering to the previous series.

Eddie Izzard as Uncle D (basically a play on the idea that he is Dracula) was lost in the writing. None of his timing and ability seemed to come through with the bad heart jokes and play on words.

Jerry O Connell is an excellent actor when handed a good script. He got handed a piece of paper that probably said "look stupid and have no clue" written as his lines. I started to feel sorry at the end because the charm of the original series and just how the idea of 'strangers in a strange land' gets lost somewhere between scene one and scene 4.

During the 60's Lilly Munster and Morticia Addams were the first taste of a prime time goth girl. How could such creepy women be so attractive. The dreams of boys and men right next to June Cleaver. Portia De Rossi gave an admirable play on holding up to this naughty but nice legacy. But couldn't save the pilot as a whole.

The storyline looked muddled and confused. It almost appeared that they had jammed three or four episode plotlines into one hour long episode. Maybe stretching the pilot to two hours might have given them the foothold that would allow the show to build it's own fanbase quickly.

The overnights came in that the show was a mild success. But much of that had to be given to the show being the leadin for NBC's hit horror show Grimm. Unless NBC gives this show a chance to breath it will be one for the scrapheap.

Thoughts if you saw it?