Human Target is one of the few shows I’ve seen that’s been able to improve upon itself extremely quickly. While the pilot episode, which aired Sunday night, was 10% story and 90% action, tonight’s episode, “Rewind,” evened the playing field a little bit. This time, it was about a 60%/40% ratio.
In fact, there was surprisingly little violence in this outing. Instead, most of this episode focused on the damage controller aspect of Chance that we haven’t seen before. Instead of engaging in lengthy fight scenes with the bad guys, Chance instead focused on trying to land a burning plane — there were only two or three scenes that could be considered action-packed, and these fight scenes lasted for less than a minute. If anything, it was refreshing to see Human Target change its stripes a little bit. With the show already becoming diverse in the first two episodes, things are looking good for the show to have more staying power.
Valley was on top of his game as always, and so was Haley; both delivered solid performances. Haley’s character Guerrero is starting to get a little repetitive; we understand that he deliberately antagonizes Winston for the fun of it, so knock it off already. That’s not to mention that Haley is criminally underused in the episode.
But the real scene-stealer of this episode is McBride, who plays Winston. Forced out of his element and masquerading as a flight attendant on the endangered flight, he plays disgruntled very well.
The plot twists were a little heavy handed; I’d figured out that “Casper” would be a woman almost as soon as Winston received the very first details of the case (it was a little obvious). And what would have been a good plot twist (the stewardess actually being a conspirator) was handled clunkily; they gave it all away too subtly.
And don’t even mention the corny dialogue that ended the episode as Chance and Winston rode off into the sunset distance.
However, the non-linear nature of the episode saved it from any major complaints. Sure, it’s not that innovative, but it’s one thing you won’t see on 24, that’s for sure.
We also got a little look into Chance’s past; it’s possible that he was actually a hired killer before he became a hired guard. If so, there’s some flashback meat waiting to be exposed there. Other than that, the episode did very little for overall plot development, but as I stated in my review of the pilot episode, an overarching plot isn’t really what Human Target‘s all about. It’s about a fun ride, and “Rewind” delivered the fun ride even more than the previous episode did.
Human Target‘s next episode, “Embassy Row,” will air on Tuesday night next week. Be sure and catch it then.
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