(S01E03) Tonight was a great night for openings. First Jericho, and now The Nine. The opening scene wasn't just tension-filled, it was a great piece of filmmaking, showing the first hour of the bank robbery, where everyone was, and what happened. One of those well-done scenes that have a lot of characters and a lot of things happening, but you know exactly what's going on and what everyone is doing. And it clued us into how this show is going to operate in each episode. They're not just showing us what happened with a flashback, it's almost as if each episode is a new look at what happened, not just a flashback rehash of stuff we already know.The comatose Randall that Jeremy "killed" with a syringe last week? He's alive!
I mentioned Six Degrees earlier. They could learn a lot by watching this show (or many shows, for that matter). Sure, there's the "what happened in there" gimmick, but I swear that this show would be interesting even without that bank robbery. That's how well the characters are drawn and how good each story is. Of course, I can only say that because we're seeing how every one of their lives was interrupted by the bank robbery, and changed forever, so we'll never know how those lives would have been, except for a few moments in the pilot. As it stands now:
Jeremy is feeling guilty about what he did to the con in the hosptial. And he's still interested in Franny.
Nick goes back to the force, gets his medal, and decides not to push things with how the whole hostage negotiation went down (or has he?). andhe also has to deal with the knowledge that Jeremy told Lizzie that he wanted Randall dead. Nick confronts Jeremy and he admits it.
Egan gets fired from his job, and now he's acting...well, different. "Listening to loud music in the garage, exercising, and wanting a baby" different. And he goes to an employment agency for another job, but finds they're all hellish cubicle jobs. He needs something more. Maybe he should try Monster.com, since their theme song is what he was listening to in the garage.
Lizzie is pregnant.
Franny needs work too. She brings her nephew Ricky into the hospital. He was hurt after locking himself in the bathroom (?). Jeremy looks at him.
Kathryn is in court again, but she can't put the robbery behind her either. And what's going on with Lizzie might ring a bell with her too.
Felicia is struggling mightily with trying to remember what happened those two days, and with the guilt of finding out that her cell phone made things worse. Her therapist takes her back to those 52 hours under hypnosis, but she can only remember up to a certain point. So later she decides to...break into the bank! Her dad isn't sure how to help her, and he almost hopes she never remembers what happened in there. As for Randall, an investigator wants to know what happened, and wonders why Felicia keeps trying to contact Randall.
At the end, her dad summons all of the survivors to his house so they can tell Felicia what happened in the bank. (Cool how these people are all attached to one another now, and it's not unbelivable - you believe it and it feels right.)
I'm not quite sure why this show isn't doing better in the ratings. Because it has a great ensemble cast and a soap opera-ish (and I mean that in a good way) set up, but at the same time has just a bit of a suspense thriller, a bit of a twist to it to get viewers looking for something with more of an edge, a whodunnit (or, in this case, a howhappened). It's like an episode of Six Degrees or ER, only with this constant hint of dread that's always in the background. I like that, and I really like this show so far.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
10-18-2006 @ 11:54PM
David said...
Don't the ratings suck for this show? Will it even have an ending?
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10-19-2006 @ 12:25AM
Michelle said...
I find the writing in this show to be very heavy handed and overly dramatic. None of the characters act like anyone would in real life. Every action seems perfectly set up for the next "surprise" around the corner. I think the cast's great but the writers really need to let up on their soap opera dramatics!
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10-19-2006 @ 12:33AM
Jaimie said...
I think The Nine started out with disappointing ratings, but I have a sneaking suspicion it will have legs and build audience. A site with a lot of links to news and official or other sites is at http://www.fidelityrepublic.com/ . There are more and more news and analyses of the show indicating a lot of interest. Maybe I will be proven wrong, but I suspect we will see a lot of the loose ends tied up by the end of this season.
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10-19-2006 @ 12:52AM
Karen said...
Tonight was the night that really started to grab the audience, if you have been watching from the beginning.
The "1st hour in the bank" was riviting and as you said the camera work was superb with that cell phone flying back and forth on the floor. Talk about suspense!
Right there, at that moment,you could totally feel and connect with all of them and the fear they were feeling. Just watching the scenes from the "1st hour" it showed how everyone was not only trying to protect themselves but everyone else as well, which is the premise of the show, and the reason they are all so connected.
I really enjoyed this show BEFORE tonight, but AFTER tonight, I am hooked!! The characters are coming to life and the storylines are great. I care what happens to "all nine" of "The Nine".
I am so hoping this show will last. I didn't know it has low ratings. Sometimes I think the 10PM shows are late for some people to watch and they go to bed. I read somewhere that they now count Tivo'd shows too in the ratings.
Great show, great cast, great everything!
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10-19-2006 @ 2:23AM
Cyrus said...
What is the name of the song (or the artist) that is playing when Jeremy is on the roof with Franny? I didn't see any songs listed during the credits.
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10-19-2006 @ 2:36AM
V said...
Can anybody explain why the bank robbers didnt wear masks like real robbers would? I would suspect that no one can ever be free if they get identified after robbing a freakin bank!
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10-19-2006 @ 3:39AM
Toby OB said...
I don't think any show has a chance to survive in the slot following 'Lost', no matter how good it is or even what network it's on. Most of the 'Lost' fans have abandoned the TV to get online and discuss the show.
I think the same thing happened in its first year when 'Lost' was on at 8 pm. Speaking from experience, I did the same thing even though I was so deeply into 'The West Wing' which followed it on NBC at 9 pm. I'd have to tape that and watch it the next day because the 'Lost' experience had been too mind-blowing to concentrate on any other TV show.
Maybe ABC would be better off to cap off the night with 'Lost' at 10 pm and have 'The Nine' for its lead-in??
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10-19-2006 @ 4:52AM
Revid said...
This was an awful episode IMO. Was anything new revealed?
The scene when Lizzie called Kathryn while she was in court was just horrible writing. First of all this happened at Lizzies workplace, she doesnt have any closer friends there that arent in trial court. 2nd, It is not much of an emergency; a 2 week old baby might die. Big deal. 3rd, how is Kathryn helping by saying "it'll live, they'll find the heartbeat".
The overall problem with this show is that the only twists we will see are going to be revealed to the hostages at the same time. If there is something that they all know they would have discussed it by now or if It was so tragic they wouldnt be able to carry on like not much happened.
I'll give it one more episode but I think all of these 22+ episode seasons are just too much and they make good storys go bad by stretching them 12 episodes too long.
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10-19-2006 @ 11:03PM
Diane said...
WHY isn't it doing better? easy.. the "Invasion" abandonment.. a lot of us watched Invasion after Lost.. and got hooked.. it had 1/2 decent ratings and they still yanked it..
Fool me once..shame on you.. fool me twice..
I'm not willing to give my time to ABC for a program with a decent premise they're just going to cancel
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10-19-2006 @ 9:08AM
mike said...
I was hooked after last week and this week, not so much.
The pacing is slow. I'm not really caring for these characters all that much.
I know they need to stretch out what happened in the bank for a whole season, but geez, could they move a little faster? They give you a little bit in the begining, a little later in the show and that's all. I don't need to know everything immediately, but a little more would be appreciated.
I'm not sure which storyline I like the least, but Lizzie's pregnancy is leading the list.
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10-19-2006 @ 10:28AM
Beth said...
This was the first ep I have seen. I really enjoyed it. Can someone explain to me why the cell phone made things worse? Also, didn't Lizzie admit that she told Jeremy that she wanted Randall dead?
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10-19-2006 @ 11:03AM
johnnymac said...
She (Felicia - daughter of bank manager) feels that if the police never found out about the robbery that they would have been in and out in five minutes.
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10-19-2006 @ 11:20AM
Karen said...
I thought this episode was terrific. One of the best yet. The character development was so well done. It's as if each new episode deepens the story, the characters, the tension.
I loved Egan working out to Cheap Trick. That slayed me.
Cyrus, I couldn't ID the song from the rooftop, but it sure sounded like Cat Stevens to me.
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10-19-2006 @ 11:30AM
Lizbeth said...
I'm trying to give this show a chance, but last night I found the flashback robbery scene to be "stupid" rather than "terrifying."
It is rather unrealistic to believe a 16-year-old would stupidly go into the middle of a robbery, rather than hide in the bathroom -- or sneak out a back door -- which I'm assuming ALL BANKS HAVE.
The scene where she is slinking around and popping up behind desks and sliding the phone back and forth was ridiculous. Was it meant to be humorous? If so, it certainly killed the "terror" they were trying to create.
Also, are we to believe that she couldn't get a signal for her phone anywhere else except dab smack in the middle of the bank? The writers are asking us to suspend quite a lot of disbelief to accept this scenario.
I don't know. I just don't like the character of Felicia Jones. She doesn't act like a teenager. She acts like a minature adult, and that annoys me. Her dad is so underdevelped as a character. There doesn't seem to be anything for him to do. And Felcia keeps yelling about her memory, which is annoying the hell out of me.
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10-19-2006 @ 12:29PM
MacGuffin said...
Last night's show really grabbed me then kind of fizzled out.
This is the one show that I really want to get into, but so far it hasn't met my expectations.
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10-19-2006 @ 12:52PM
Rob Stevens said...
Some of these criticisms are close, but just off enough where I get a little chuckle. Yes, some of the writing is forced, but the interaction between Kathryn and Lizzie? It was obvious to me that they'd had a conversation in the bank that we were being let in on by the way the two interacted. Sure enough, it was revealed towards the end of the episode. Yes, it felt awkward at first because you can tell there's a history that you know nothing about, but unlike Lost, you're clued in pretty quickly. There was nothing wrong with that scene, if you watched the entire episode.
If you want to complain about how they used the cell phone to build tension in that scene, don't talk about how unlikely it would be for a teenager to try to work their way into the middle of the bank to get a signal, or the passing back and forth of the phone. At one point, she came out of a back office. Do you mean to tell me that there wasn't a single DESK PHONE back there that she could use? Who the hell continuously relies on a cell phone with bad reception in an emergency? (Yes, a teenager who's never had to be without a cell phone perhaps, but I find that hard to believe.)
One thing that I loved ... all of the Nine coming together at the end of the episode to help explain to Felicia what happened. I was afraid that the "weekly meeting at the diner" would be the lazy way to get them all together at the end of every show, but they've already mixed that up a bit, which was a nice touch. I also liked the doctor being terribly conflicted about wanting to kill a man, as well as the admission by Chi McBride's character that he wants his daughter to get past her issues so that he can start to deal with his own.
I really wasn't sure about this show at first, but it's definitely grabbed my attention now.
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10-19-2006 @ 12:58PM
dave said...
This show is loosing me – I was really into it and recommending it to friends and now I don't know if I will watch - it's way too slow and predictable - plus we know all these people made it out of the bank which takes some of the tension out of the robbery scenes - omg she's on the phone will they catch her and kill her - well... no she's still alive - anyway there is hope but they have to pick up the pace
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10-19-2006 @ 1:54PM
ClaraN said...
I'm trying to stay with this one, sure common sense says use the desk phone, but if all the problems were resolved there wouldn't be any T.V. shows. Chi McBride does a terrific job as a father trying to help his daughter, but it sort of fell flat in the end when there was no trauma involved in Felecia's memory loss, she just felt guilty, those visits to the jail hinted at something a lot heavier. The worst thing that I can see is that every five, that's it five minutes they have five minutes of commercials, it is sort of difficult to stay interested when some guy is selling a car every few minutes just when something looks as if it is going to happen. Why are we still in the first hour when there are 51 more to go? I really want to like this show and I'll stay with it just out of couriosity, hate to leave anything unfinished.
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10-19-2006 @ 2:02PM
Littleoldman, Dan said...
What I'd like to know is where I can buy some of that wonderful, ultra-sound absorbant flooring they've got installed in that bank. What with the number of times that cell phone was sent sliding across the room, you'd have thought the one robber would have noticed, regardless of how much attention he was having to pay to the conversation at the front door. Nope. Not even a whisper from the phone, and not even a glance or a clue on the part of the robber. Ab-so-lute-ly silent.
Like I said, I gotta get me some of that flooring for my place.
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10-19-2006 @ 7:40PM
Jen said...
I'm hooked. I don't think that brand new storylines/ideas need to be introduced in every episode of any show. I think they are building the characters in a way that you can start to relate with one/some of them. I hope The Nine starts to do better in the ratings, but this expectation of instant gratification from so many viewers may cause an early end to a great show.
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