Human Target — Pilot
Is there a more evocative name on TV than Human Target, recently packaged with 24 for its series premiere? The premise, taken from a comic book of the same name—I wonder when it cedes its wikipedia namespace to the TV version?—is delivered pretty thoroughly in those two words, and its preview commercials removed all doubt as to this neo-procedural hour-long’s formula: Christopher Chance (Mark Valley) takes cases as a bodyguard in-plain-sight, luring potential assassins out by putting only himself, under some innocuous cover, between them and their man.
The pilot betrays its comic book roots in Chance’s first adventure, which takes place aboard a near-future bullet train in California. There’s a hideout, dark but somehow over-ornamented, like the walls of a TGI Friday’s, with things designed to achieve a moody-layer effect; there’s a business plan, in which Chance and assistant Winston (Chi McBride) run this quasi-legal bodyguard outfit, that seems unmoored to any notion of reality. Even its shots seem, at times, composed more for the panel than the flat panel.
Overthinking TV 