I have sitting in front of me two episodes of Breakout Kings. One of the episodes I liked very much, the other interested me far less. The normally difficult process of judging a television show based simply on the pilot or a couple of episodes is far more difficult when this sort of thing occurs. Should I assume that the pilot (the episode I liked) is what the actual show will feel like or will it be the other episode (which will air third) upon which I should base my opinion?
To backtrack a little, last year, FOX ordered Breakout Kings as a pilot. As the story goes, it tested exceedingly well but FOX opted to pass on it anyway. A&E, however, moved quickly and was able to
bring Breakout Kings to the cable network nearly intact, with the majority of the cast as well as producers staying in place. Is then what I saw on the second episode some sort of underlying difference based on whatever requirement Breakout Kings faced when moving to cable or is the episode simply not as good and will the show return to pilot form in subsequent episodes?
Breakout Kings coming from some of the producers of Prison Break (Matt Olmstead and Nick Santora), follows an improbable—or if you live in the real world, ludicrously impossible—team of U.S. Marshals and prison convicts as they go after escapees. Think of it as Prison Break meets Leverage.
The team itself is comprised of Charlie Duchamp (Laz Alonso), Ray Zancanelli (Domenick Lombardozzi), and Julianne Simms (Brooke Nevin) on the cop side of things and Lloyd Lowery (Jimmi Simpson), Shea Daniels (Malcolm Goodwin), and Erica Reed (Sewinda Swan) on the con side. Or, more accurately, that's the cast of the episodes filmed following the pilot. The FOX pilot (which A&E is still using as the first episode), didn't include Swan's Erica Reed as a character, but rather a different female convict named Philly, who is played by Nicole Steinwedell.
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