Justin Kelly, Kellie Martin and Brady Smith, Courtesy NBC
THE JENSEN PROJECT
Friendly Rating: All ages except the very youngest viewers.
Safety Rating: Perfectly safe.
Quality Rating: Would be really good, but for the ham-fisted dialogue.
Series premieres with a special two-hour episode tonight at 8 p.m. on NBC.
On one hand, there’s a lot to be said for The Jensen Project. It’s creates a lovely amount of dramatic tension with a bare-minimum of violence – just some butt-kicking to get away from the bad guys and a threat on a kid. On the other, the writers seemed to have missed the subtlety boat and it doesn’t help.
Shades of Eureka (alas, without the wit) The Jensen Project is this super-secret ultra-high tech science group dedicated to saving the world with its inventions. Alas, as a character says, “the things we make to save the world are only a step or two away from destroying it.” Worse yet, son of the late founder Edwin Jensen (David Andrews) has left the project to become a bad guy. Enter the Thompson family: genius scientist Claire (Kellie Martin), her husband Matt (Brady Smith), an internist, and their son Brody (Justin Kelly). Claire used to be Edwin’s protege until he decided to steal her work and shame her into leaving the project.
But thanks to Ingrid (Patricia Richardson), the new head of the project, Claire gets sucked back in, along with Matt and since Brody is no slouch, either, he pushes his way into his folks’ work and adds his own unique skills. Eventually, as the series goes on, the family will have to learn how to work together to defeat evil. Or at least Edwin Jensen.
I love the concept. I love that they are able to create a show that is reasonably family-safe that is also reasonably exciting. I just wish the writing weren’t so heavy-handed. We hear at least five or six times that Claire’s issues with Edwin have messed the family up and that they all have to talk more. Even as Brody get congratulated for his help, Ingrid reminds him that he did it disobeying his parents’ orders. And while I like the fact that she’s pointing this out, did she have to do it in such a blah, in your face way? Not to mention the mean, nasty guy who’s hired Edwin to make nano-bots for him. He’s really, really mean. Not nefarious or even scary. Just a bald-faced mean guy. Yawn.
There’s part of me that hopes it gets better, but right now it feels like a pro-family organization wrote up what they think families should sound like that real people. Too bad, because you’re going to get a much better picture of what families should sound like if you write real people in the first place.
