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PILOT REVIEW: Believe

BELIEVE












Starring: Jake McLaughlin, Johnny Sequoyah, Jamie Chung, Sienna Guillory, Arian Moayeo, with Kyle McLachlan, and Delroy Lindo

Created by Alfonso Cuaron and Mark Friedman
Written by Alfonso Cuaron & Mark Friedman, Directed by Alfonso Cuaron

Believe is a new sci-fi drama from recent Academy Award winning director Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity). Young girl Bo (Johnny Sequoyah) has supernatural abilities that are beyond her control and she has a team of people protecting her led by Winter (Delroy Lindo). When things start to get more dangerous, they turn to ex-convict Tate (Jake McLaughlin) to help them keep Bo from Roman Skouras (Kyle McLachlan) and his associates including Channing (Jamie Chung). And, of course, there's more to the relationship between Tate and Bo than they first let on.

THE GOOD: I thought Believe had a thrilling opening scene. The scene with the car crash was well done and set the show off on the right foot. The performances are good: Johnny Sequoyah carries herself well in a big role, Jake McLaughlin brings some humor to an otherwise serious show, and Delroy Lindo and Kyle McLachlan are always solid.

THE BAD: I guess my biggest problem with Believe is I just didn't understand it all and then got a little bored. This is partly my own personality as I tend to feel this way often about sci-fi. Yet, I feel like a really good sci-fi show would be able to overcome my own predisposition towards them. Believe did not do it for me. And unlike Resurrection, I just don't even see myself interested enough in finding out the many mysteries explored in the pilot, because I feel like they're just going to be unsatisfying and I'm not invested. My final gripe was the revelation at the end of the pilot about the connection between Bo and Tate was just so obvious and overdone. It seemed like they were going there from the start of the episode and it was hardly the surprising moment they probably intended.

BOTTOM LINE: Believe just seems like the next in line of the many sci-fi dramas that are maybe too ambitious and maybe too cliche to ever provide a satisfying story in the long run. After watching the pilot, I have no doubt that Believe will be, at best, another Revolution and at worst, a quickly forgotten sci-fi drama.

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