Chaos - OAD 4/1/11 - "Pilot"

This show is a lot better and smarter than almost anyone here is giving credit. There was humor throughout this episode, but I guess everyone was waiting for a laugh track to tell them it was funny. Tricking Freddy, which seemed to happen a lot, to get captured so as to up the profile of the others that were captured, was hilarious. The back and forth banter and jibes between agents who are top in their respective fields was very good. Yes, it had much of the awkwardness of a pilot, but there was a lot more good stuff than that.

It's written and EP'd by Tom Spezialy, whose other writing and producing credits include, among others, Parker Louis Can't Lose, Weird Science, Ed, Dead like Me, The Reaper, and Human Target. (It also includes Desperate Housewives, but I won't hold that against him. At least he was writing when the show was still good.) This is an unusual show to be on CBS, but I liked it a lot, and am looking forward to seeing as many episodes as they get to make.

I'm starting to think there are less and less people willing to post in support of a show they did enjoy, because it's just so much easier to chime in when you didn't like them. Don't get me wrong, it's perfectly fine if you didn't enjoy it, but it's just too easy to simple state how many minutes into the pilot you made I until you cancelled your season pass. Actually putting together a more detailed critic or even just a list of reasons why you liked it takes more time.

I liked the pilot, but it did take a while until I had it 'figured out', as far as the characters and their alignments and motivations. If you only watched the first 15-20 minutes, you'd probably think the team that set up Freddy maliciously tried to get leverage over him for selfish reasons, probably because they wanted to keep their jobs. As it turns out n the end, their unorthodox methods actually end up getting the job done better than the people trying to shut them down.

Sometimes a show will make a little more sense if you watch the whole 42 minutes, despite your initial instincts based on half of a pilot. That's why they're longer than a sitcom: because have more plot to them than some wacky misunderstandings that end with drinks at the Regale Beagle.