The rescue specialists in Global's The Guard continue to flounder personally and professionally in the series' fourth episode, "When I'm Sixty-Four," airing Tuesday. With these people as Coast Guards, I'm glad I'm on dry land.
There's some welcome levity to this episode, which centres around the efforts of First Mate Laura (Claudette Mink) to bond with her coworkers – or at least make the appearance of bonding – after being passed over for promotion to irresponsible Duty Captain Miro (Steve Bacic).
The gang, including pretty, alcoholic Carly (Zoie Palmer) and her new-age nutbar of a boyfriend Wendell (Ryan Robbins), and pretty, post-traumatic-stressed Andrew (Jeremy Guilbaut) and his put-upon wife Amy (Julie Patzwald), react with varying mixtures of horror and dread to the social invitation. The event turns out about as well as you might expect from that kind of enthusiastic start.
When Miro's inappropriately young and vapid date exclaims "I hope there's going to be dancing later!" Carly answers, "Why, did she bring her pole?" Laughter is a welcome relief from the relentless misery of most of these lives we're following.
Besides the laughs and angst, the episode has an obligatory rescue at sea as well as the introduction of a new rivalry between our heroes and the SAR Techs from the Department of Defense, who seem to be to the Coast Guard what the FBI are to local police in every cop drama ever made for TV – that is, the arrogant bullies who encroach on their territory.
Though The Guard started with the strongest ratings among the slew of new Canadian-made offerings, it hasn't managed to capitalize on the gift of having top-rated House as a lead-in. This fourth episode – which the producers sent out for review in a wise and rare-in-Canadian-TV bid to keep the show from sinking further – is fortunately stronger than the last couple of outings, though it continues to suffer from storytelling torpor.
Before it launched, I was eager to embrace this show about pretty people doing adventurous and amorous things in pretty scenery—the kind of scenery that led me to move to Vancouver. However, my eagerness faded with the realization that not enough happens to justify the soap genre or the action genre.
My major disappointment in The Guard so far is the lack of drama in plot and character development oddly combined with too much backstory drama spelled out in the dialogue. None of these characters have developed into people I would care about, and yet they demand at every turn that I do.
You know how sometimes you meet someone, and you ask them how they are, and they tell you? They spill about their recent depression, and how their cat just died, and their father never loved them, and they're sure their headaches are a sign of a brain tumour. You know that guy? The Guard is that guy.
Article comments