Jake 2.0 Discussion – “The Tech”

The first episode in a show that’s similar to The Six Million Dollar
Man
airs tonight after the season premier of
Enterprise.

11 replies on “Jake 2.0 Discussion – “The Tech””

  1. TV Guide’s Comments
    TV Guide’s Matt Rouch said that the show (after suspending some major disbelief) was fairly enjoyable. I plan on tuning in.

  2. Shows promise
    The sound effect when he performs a superhuman feat was pretty annoying and it was old already after the third time.

    I liked the pace they took with the episode and all the actors seemed to fit their roles fairly well. I’ll make an effort to catch next week’s episode. It’ll be interesting to see if Jake manifests any more powers as the nanites settle in (a built in stun gun would be cool as well as feasible).

  3. 6 Million Dollar Dork, but thankfully not Sentinerd
    Okay, it has potential. Given my usual mantra “pilots suck”, it might work. It probably won’t make it, though.

    Pluses:

    • Actor has been around a while
    • Different concept
    • Silvio Horta did “The Chronicle”, which turned out to be a pretty damn good show, with a equally cheesy concept.

    Minuses

    • They need to set a tone. I do like that there’s more than one potential love interest, but I hope it’s not all 6 Million Dollar Man. Maybe one new “trick” per episode. Keep it lower key.
    • Cornball dialogue. At the end, when they offer him a job, there was only one line or so that was vaguely original. The rest of it “a special team with you at it’s core”… *gag*. Come on, guys.

    Anyhow, I’ll watch the next couple of episodes, but considering what “Jake” has been in before (Spy Game, Odyssey 5), I’d rather have more of those shows instead.

    • Re: 6 Million Dollar Dork, but thankfully not Sentinerd

      Speaking of “cornball”…

      Did you notice the song in the background when Jake made his
      second trip to Sarah’s apartment? When she was saying “there are no
      heroes any more”? The song had lyrics like “I’m no hero…” among
      others.

      I really hate when shows do that.

      As others have said, the sound effect when Jake uses his powers is
      already grating on my nerves.

      The problem this show will have to overcome is also its main
      gimmick: the nanites. If every episode is “how can Jake use his
      abilities to get out of a jam” then the show will get real old, real fast and
      will die a swift death. However, if they decide to make the show more
      about the covert ops stuff with the nanotech abilities as an added bonus
      and don’t emphasize them too much, they might have a chance.

      But I won’t hold my breath.

      (And the whole time I was watching this I kept thinking “But what
      happens on Odyssey 5!?!?” Now we’ll never learn the truth…)

      • Re: 6 Million Dollar Dork, but thankfully not Sentinerd

        (And the whole time I was watching this I kept thinking “But what
        happens on Odyssey 5!?!?” Now we’ll never learn the truth…)

        FWIW, the full season has been posted on usenet. I have up through episode 20. I’m not positive that’s the end of the season, but seems likely since Jeremiah had the same number of eps. If you can’t find them, let me know.

  4. Woooh… deja vu
    Ok… did anyone else come away from the TV going “Oh my word… it’s an even geekier spider man jammed into 1hr”

    The amount of original concepts in this show couldn’t fill a thimble. In spite of that it actually wasn’t that bad to watch.

    Just for the record here are some of the UNoriginal concepts that I spotted:

    1. repressed wannabe geek gets awesome powers
    2. lab accident causes the “upgrade”
    3. Other nerd/geek girl interested (at first) in him for the powers only
    4. standard girl that doesn’t know he exists as a possible love interest
    5. Hero gets sick after accident goes to sleep and wakes up to find his powers
    6. Hero fails to use his powers sometimes but never when in real danger
    7. most of all hero (at least at first) doesn’t want to be a hero
    8. …. (tons more.. but I gotta go to work :} )
    • Re: Woooh… deja vu
      …and one of my pet peeves: ignoring physics. I was just waiting for him to casually pull a door out without bracing himself anywhere and sure enough… To be fair though, they *did* have him throw himself at a door trying to break out and fail (and it even hurt when he did it). So those cancel each other out.

      Another big pet peeve is bad guys who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. If you want to have the bad guys shooting at the good guy and missing, don’t put him in a long narrow tunnel where they could probably shoot at the walls and still hit him with ricochets!

      Still, annoying as all that is, it wasn’t much worse than Encounter at Farpoint, so I’ll give it a few episodes to develop.

  5. eh…..
    “Ehh….” sums it up.
    I got no emotional response at all from any of it.
    It wasn’t horrible…. but it did nothing for me.

    That Eric Vaughn guy wasn’t “evil” enough. Heck he could have been Jake’s weird uncle or something. The girl characters were so predictable. The geek chick, that is always some (fairly) hot chick dressed up in uglies and wearing glasses (so that you get a shock when she gets pretty), and the average pretty cute college type girl.

    The “abilities”… ugh. cliche.

    I’d give the show a solid…. 3 out of 6. average.

  6. Last Two Minutes
    The last two minutes saved the show for me. If they focus on covert ops and keep it from getting too unbelievable or goofy then I’ll keep watching. The NSA stuff was pretty weak. They should have gotten some consulting especially if this is central to the show. At a minimum Jake would have to go through some sort of agent “bootcamp”.

    Everyone other than Jake is pretty 2D at this point. I think they should have the “team” focus and develop a small group of characters. The NSA guy who helped Jake actually has a more commanding screen presence than any of the other actors.

  7. Too bad they didn’t use the original working title of the show….
    "The Six Million Nannite Man"

    Been there…watched that…too bored to videotape.

  8. Six Million Man?
    I was getting more of an Invisible Man vibe from it – guy gets device implanted in him that gives him special abilities, becomes spy for mysterious government agency, scientist babe has to figure out how to keep the device from killing him.

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