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When we first heard about CBS’s new drama Wisdom of the Crowd, we thought, “Hm… crowdsourcing to find a murderer! That should work well!” Then we saw that Jeremy Piven was going to be the star. Let’s just say we didn’t have high hopes. Read on to find out if the show surprised or confirmed our worst fears..
A Guide to Our Rating System
Opening Shot: The opening of a pilot can set a mood for the entire show (think Six Feet Under); thus, we examine the first shot of each pilot.
The Gist: The “who, what, where, when, why?” of the pilot.
Our Take: What did we think? Are we desperate for more or desperate to get that hour back?
Sex and Skin: That’s all you care about anyway, right? We let you know how quickly the show gets down and dirty.
Parting Shot: Where does the pilot leave us? Hanging off a cliff, or running for the hills?
Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the Wisdom of the Crowd cast who is not the top-billed star who shows great promise.
Most Pilot-y Line: Pilots have a lot of work to do: world building, character establishing, and stakes raising. Sometimes that results in some pretty clunky dialogue.
Our Call: We’ll let you know if you should, ahem, Stream It or Skip It.
WISDOM OF THE CROWD
Opening Shot: A selfie video of Mia Tanner (Abigail F. Cowen) telling her father that they’ve had their differences but she loves that she’s in his life. We later learn that she shot that video shortly before she was murdered.
The Gist: Jeffrey Tanner (Piven) is a tech guru who owns a Google-esque company; a year after Mia is murdered, he decides to sell the company for peanuts in order to throw his full time into an app called SOPHE. You see, he feels that the man that is currently sitting in prison for his daughter’s murder is the wrong guy, and he feels that the users of his new crowdsourcing platform can help him find Mia’s killer. He’s putting up $100 million as a reward to the person that leads him to the real killer.
He persuades the lead SFPD investigator in the case, Det. Tommy Cavanaugh (Richard T. Jones), to help follow the leads generated by SOPHE, mainly because he knows that Cavanaugh doesn’t think they got the right guy, either. Cavanaugh is reluctant, knowing that collecting evidence via internet trolls could lead to illegal searches, mob scenes with innocent victims and other difficulties. Tanner dismisses him, thinking that the “90-10” rule applies: for the 90% of tips you get that are junk, 10% will have something and likely lead you to the right place. Of course, all the stuff Cavanaugh was afraid of happens, but he stays with Tanner.
The case takes a turn as we find out about another murder that was similar to Mia’s, and CBS procedural sleuthing kicks in. We’ll explain what that means below.
Our Take: This show turnd out to be pretty much what we expected. While it’s not an overall terrible show — Piven and Jones do a good job with the limited material they get — its premise is just wrong on so many levels. If you know what it’s like to read through a bunch of laugably silly Yelp reviews written by people who don’t seem to have a grasp of written English, then you’ll understand how utterly insane the idea of this show is.
The pilot plays out with all the standard CBS procedural silliness attached: a warehouse-based headquarters full of exposed pipes, flat-screen monitors, and “eveidence alert” alarms, witnesses who seem to remember a particular stranger from a year ago, Detective Cavanaugh IDing some thug they chased in a park withough explanation on how he figured out who the guy was.
But then there’s even more silliness, like a young woman using SOPHE getting a cheerful call from a programmer asking for “a weird favor”: to go close to a couple of suspected murderers on a park bench so she can record their conversation (it’s admissible because she volunteered, says Tanner). Or Tanner sleeping with his head programmer, Sarah Morton (Natalia Tena), just to show…? Actually we don’t know why they’re together or how this impacts the SOPHE project. Then there’s Tanner’s ex — and Mia’s mom — Congressman Alex Hale, played by Monica Potter, who has good scenes with Piven as they comiserate over Mia’s murder, but seems wasted in the pilot.
But we just can’t get over why a) this is portrayed as something new — have the producers never heard of a tips line? — and b) showing people putting themselves in danger trying to be a smartphone-wielding citizen’s police force is a good idea.
Sex and Skin: Tanner and Sarah kissing and sleeping next to each other is about all the sexy times we get. We don’t even know why it’s there to begin with.
Parting Shot: Tanner is at home and Cavanaugh is at the police station, and they’re looking at a video submitted by a SOPHE user of a man lurking outside Mia’s apartment on the night of her murder. All of a sudden, an alarm sounds and the screen shows an “Evidence Alert”. Oy. And the case-of-the-week merry-go-round begins.
Sleeper Star: Jake Matthews plays Tariq, a hacker who Tanner hires after he shows a fundamental flaw with SOPHE. His role is promising, even if he’s shown in the pilot breaking all rules of evidence.
Most Pilot-y Line: “Do you know how Steve Jobs got to be Steve Jobs?” Tanner aks Cavanaugh. “By understanding human nature; he understood that people wanted an iPhone before they knew what an iPhone was. That’s what I do. And that’s why I know this is gonna work.” Besides being a tortured speech, we tend to remember that not being the case, as most people knew exactly what an iPhone was when it was introduced.
Our Call: SKIP IT. The idea of the show is just hard to stomach, and while Piven gives a surprisingly understated performance and we like Jones, the idea of showing a real cop investigating murders based on evidence given by people who can barely navigate Facebook is just too much of a leap for us to buy on a weekly basis.
(Click to see all of Decider’s complete Stream It or Skip It reviews)
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.
