The Spice Girls are reunited, and it looks like ABC is taking this as a cue to bring girl power back once and for all. Its new show, "Women's Murder Club," based on the successful James Patterson book series, is a crime drama with women as the primary law enforcers. It's a watered-down, estrogen-filled "Law & Order" that mostly fails to impress.
The show takes place in San Francisco and stars Angie Harmon as Lindsay Boxer, a no-nonsense, intense female detective. She's the leather jacket-wearing, gun-slinging, defender of women everywhere who is intense in an every-case-is-personal kind of way. Naturally, when a female journalist and old friend of Boxer's turns up dead, she takes it as her mission to hunt down the killer and put him behind bars.
This is complicated, however, by the personal issues she must simultaneously deal with. Her new boss turns out to be her ex-husband Tom Hogan (played by Rob Estes), who left her because she was too involved in her job. Not to mention, he's getting remarried, and she might still have feelings for him. All too conveniently, her best friends Jill Bernhardt(Laura Harris) and Claire Washburn (Paula Newsome) are the assistant D.A. and the medical examiner, respectively, at the same station so they can help solve the case and offer love advice at the same time.
Boxer's personal life and work seem to overlap a little bit too much. In the pilot episode, one suspect cheats on his wife because she spends all her time at her job, and it later comes out that the wife still loves him despite pretending not to. Sound familiar? We're used to television characters drawing parallels between their lives and the lives of the people around them, but usually these parallels are at least thinly veiled.
Although the overall storyline itself is mildly interesting, the laughable and clichéd plot details make the show difficult to take seriously. After what can hardly be called a struggle, Boxer pins the first suspect to the ground and declares, "You are under arrest for pissing me off." This suspect turns out to have a whole wall of photos and newspaper clippings - like any crazy criminal, right? - pointing the police in the right direction.
Also, what primetime drama would be complete without a little sex in the workplace? In the first episode, it's between Bernhardt and the obligatory jerk lawyer who defends one of the suspects. Bernhardt has little real reason for sleeping with the cunning lawyer except that she can't commit to moving in with her boyfriend. With all the sexual tension between Boxer and Hogan, it's hardly a stretch to predict that more in-office romance is on the way.
The saving grace of the show, if there is one, is only hinted at in the first episode: the Kiss Me Not Killer. The episode is about a serial murderer that Boxer hunted with religious fervor a few years back but was never caught and seems to be back on the prowl. The killer, who sews his victims' mouths shut, strikes again at the very end of the first episode.
The case is especially personal to Boxer: Her over-involvement directly led to the end of her marriage with Hogan. Serial murder is a gimmick often used in television, but it's at least an interesting one, and this looks like it might just be creepy enough to bring some viewers back.
Of course, if looking for a good serial murder show, there is always NBC's "Heroes" or Showtime's "Dexter." That's the main problem with "Murder Club:" It imitates other shows, but never achieves the same quality and adds nothing new to the mix. It takes the female co-worker dynamic of "Grey's Anatomy," but lacks the dimensional characters required to pull it off. The tough, hot female detective on a personal crusade is straight out of the now-canceled "Veronica Mars," but Boxer doesn't have Mars' redeeming vulnerability or charming wit.
Almost everything else seems like a direct attempt to copy "Law & Order," but "Murder Club" involves so much personal drama that it doesn't have time to make the plots as intricate and complex. In the end, it's just not worth clearing your schedule for, particularly on Friday nights. If you need an Angie Harmon fix, catch her on repeats of "Law & Order," where she was a series regular from 1998 to 2001. There, she's basically playing the same character backed with much better writing.
