The Crossing Series Premiere Plot Summary:
Sheriff Jude Ellis (Steven Zahn) and Port Canaan police rescue dozens of people claiming to be refugees from the future.
I have to compare this show to Lost. It can’t be helped. ABC has advertised this show as “from the network that brought you Lost.” ABC even advertised The Crossing on the Lost Facebook page.
The Crossing is by no means the first show to try to be the next Lost. The Event on NBC immediately comes to mind. But the network that has attempted to emulate the success of Lost the most is ABC itself. Remember The River and Resurrection? ABC rode the Lost wave when that series was still on with V and Flashforward. Unfortunately for these imitators, the furthest these series got was a second season.
A show can’t thrive trying to be another. That’s why the series that’s the truest successor to Lost is Game of Thrones. Both have large casts of characters and deep mythologies, but Game of Thrones is clearly its on thing. It’s not a knockoff. It’s based on a book series that started in the 1990s.
The Crossing reminds me a lot of The Event and V. It has a bunch of visitors whose true origins are at this point a mystery. They’ve even infiltrated our society, like in The Event. The clear difference is that they’re from the future, not aliens, and some of them have abilities. I won’t go into too much detail, but The Crossing could become a very different series very quickly. My main worry is that it’s going to become like a comic book show with factions of super-powered people fighting each other.
Science fiction typically provides a protagonist that’s a normal person, an average Joe. In The Crossing we have Sheriff Jude Ellis. The best pilots get us invested in the characters. It can be an act of heroism, a display of integrity or honor, a sympathetic backstory, etc. Right now all we know about Jude is that he’s divorced or separated with a kid and does yoga. Not much to go off of.
The premiere contains a good twist regarding one character, and I’m curious to hear about this future war, so I’ll at least stick around for another episode. However, I’m not convinced this is something special yet.
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Good)
THE CROSSING AIRS MONDAYS AT 10 PM ON ABC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq4w6GhDTmU
