Surface is another creature feature on this year’s crop of new TV shows to keep our grey matter occupied. I’m a genre fanatic so of course I really don’t mind. And it seems that the reality craze or what they now call unscripted TV is losing some steam. The new name still isn’t truthful about the genre. I’m just happy to see it lose some ground.
Surface is about what seem to be sea-creatures, but I suspect something more intriguing will ... hmm hmm ... surface in future episodes. It has multiple story arcs from all over sea-side towns in the US - from teenagers steeling dad’s boat to scuba fishing enthusiasts to marine biologists thinking they’ve discovered a new vertebrate lifeform. Of course, with such a large scale story arc, the government is involved and it will do the usual dirty tricks to keep the issue from surfacing in the media.
All the archetypes are there to make the story interesting. There is the nerdy teenager suffering the pressures of high school and his popular big sister. He will most likely play an integral part later in the overall story. There’s the tough-as-nails yet vulnerable hard-working divorcée marine biologist who will make trouble for the government and make herself indispensable to them also. There’s also the governmental scientist who comes complete with a Slavic or Cyrillic accent, a white beard, combed-back grey hair and a tall and imposing demeanor. There’s also the fish-out-of-water guy who saw his brother get taken away by one of these creatures. I have a feeling they will all come together at some point. Sort of like Close Encounters of the Marine Kind sans Spielberg. The beasts are seen very little, but they seem huge and seem to have carpal fins.
The story goes like this: Marine biologist Dr. Laura Daughtery goes on a deep-sea dive with a top-of-the-line state-of-the-art sub to do research in some abyss where they suspect lays the birthplace of life itself on earth. What they find, along with the local life, is a big Wal-mart and a Starbucks. No I’m just kidding. They find huge craters with a depth that is off the scale. Then all of a sudden, the depth starts to reduce. We soon get the point that something is coming up. But the audience gets a mere glimpse of the creatures.
At the same time, more or less, a fishing party, complete with 9 cases of beer, is under way near an off-shore drilling platform. One of the fishermen gets taken for a ride after harpooning one of the beasts. They disappear into a pool of light and other small lights glimmer in the distance. It gives indications of technology, but I’m only speculating at this point.
Article comments
1 - Joanie
If this show is better than Invasion, I'll give it a shot.
2 - JELIEL
Invasion was OK. Surface was better IMHO. Give it a shot. I won't review Invasion because I got distracted from watching it in it's entirety.
3 - Brian
"And they didn’t lower themselves to showing us Lake Bell in a zipped-down wet-suit or a gulp! bikini, as I was expecting them to."
Well, that didn't last long, as Nov. 7th's episode saw Lake Bell strip down to her underwear and jump in the water! She looked incredible!
4 - JELIEL
No doubt Brian. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy that part.
But yesterday, though my inner perv was enjoying it, the endless attention grabbing cleavage squeezing started to feel forced after the 10th or 11th time. It's never the cleavage that bothers me it's the endless pursuit of ratings grabbing through cleavage. For the almost all the episodes so far, the teenage girls were always in bikini. Good eye candy but served no purpose other than to titillate young male viewers.