Every episode begins with a quirky Abe and Henry moment relating to their past due to Henry's immortality. Then a cliched predictable case, with an obvious red herring, twist, and easily resolved in predictable ways, with unrealistic police work, Lucas' quirky pop culture jokes and references, Jo romantic teases. There's the occasional exploration of the characters' cliched past, some flashbacks to Henry's past lives which are often pointless and neatly tie to the episode's very simple and cliched message that is annoyingly explained in the end of the episode by Henry with narration. Almost every single episode has to end happily. There's this storyline where it's revealed that Henry's dad sold slaves. Of course Henry being the main character he is totally against this, leading him to try to free slaves getting killed in the process. He believes he failed those slaves and they died, but in another episode it's revealed that actually he did succeed in letting the slaves be freed somehow despite all the other information we've gotten about this completely contradicting this and not making sense. We also have Henry's past wife, who he's so sad about, that literally leaves him because she ages and he doesn't... where's the creativity?
This is basically an average cop procedural that's totally mediocre, only carried by Ioan Gruffud's charismatic performance, and the intrigue that the immortality plot will be more developed. The pilot setting everything up, while not great, was pretty fun and interesting. I thought it would get better from there, but apart from the occasional decent episode the only other good episode was the mid season finale and penultimate episode which FINALLY developed the immortality plot significantly. The mid-season finale in particular was my favorite episode which revealed the mysterious villain, played by the solid Burn Gorman, which also gets away conveniently but whatever, it was the only episode where I was actually somewhat excited. The villain honestly carried a lot of this show. Even though he barely appeared, every time he did it almost always felt like an above average episode for the show, and his backstory was interesting with him being caught and tortured by Nazi's. I thought after the mid season finale it would pick up, but nope. I'd honestly even say the second half was worse though I don't know if that's because I grew more tired with it.
It only started to get interesting again literally in the penultimate episode when they find Abe's mom/ his wife. It was interesting to see how the villain was related to it all, the actual mystery and the way she died was one of the only semi-surprising moments in the show. There's only like 3-4 good episodes, the rest are decent to bad, mostly mediocre and bad, some even being terrible. This is the type of show I played in the background while doing something else and only giving it like a quarter of my attention, yet the episode are mostly so basic and predictable I don't feel like I missed anything. I only watched this show because of the main actor, interesting premise and reviews on IMDb, to be honest I totally regret it. If I wasn't so obsessed with finishing everything I watch, and thinking maybe it would eventually get good to justify its ratings I would've likely quit it or skipped most of the episodes. It took me over a year to get through this. By the time I reached the second half I honestly just started skipping through scenes, especially the the cheesy narrations at the end. This is something I almost NEVER do because I feel like I'm missing something, but for this show I'm confident I just saved my time. I wish I just stopped earlier. This is genuinely one of the main reasons I've now started to let go my completionist mindset and just drop some shows.
As for the finale, I am reviewing it after all... it expectedly sucked. They seemed to be trying to save some of their best material for last, which is nice I suppose. I liked Lucas acting like Henry. But the main case is average and boring apart from the obvious connection to the villain and the dagger which can supposedly kill him. I like when Henry spots a guy who looks like the villain, it's the rare moment where the show builds a tiny bit of tension. There's also a decent scene where Abe realized Henry was thinking about maybe killing himself with the gun, and that he shouldn't kill, but honestly I'm just looking for the only decent things I could find in this episode cause it's truly mostly mediocre to bad. It started to escalate when Jo stared going after Henry after she realized he poisoned the guards coffee to get information, but then Jo let's him get away with it because of their unspoken romance. Lucas and Henry get a moment but it all feels so obvious and cliche. This show peaked in the mid season finale. But nah it just completely falls into more contrived cliche crap, the 3 C's. I can't believe this episode is so highly rated on IMDb. The villain has this master plan, he happens to have the original gun, (did he get it from the safe or was it a replica? I don't know.) he shoots in a subway which of course only Jo heard it and goes investigate. Of course Henry is able to drug the genius villain who has gotten away all this time after he's shot. Of course Henry dies before Jo arrives and survives. They really spread this scene out as to build tension like we didn't know he wouldn't die or be caught, like always. The villain is now paralyzed in perfect poetic irony, and obviously Henry will reveal the truth to Jo, the only significant plot development in 20 episodes, what trite.
Overall this was a mediocre show with very few redeeming qualities by the end of it. Despite some potential, mostly unused, it was cancelled for good reason. It has the occasional funny moment and I didn't hate it or anything. There was some enjoyment to be found, but it truly felt like waste of time at the end of it. His immortality barely played a factor in most of the episodes. The only time a semblance of tension was built was when there was a chance of him being caught dying or being exposed, but it never happened and those moments happened so infrequently. Also the show is kinda racist when it comes to certain cultures being depicted in overly stereotypical ways or just in plainly wrong ways. Clearly a show where much thought or research was not put in it. That being said visually it's above average for a show of this kind. Nothing impressive but it doesn't look as dull as some other shows of the same style I'd say. Regardless a good lead, a few funny moments here and there and above average production value is not enough to support a badly written, painfully cliched and predictable procedural show we've seen endless times. If you want to see a good supernatural cop procedural kinda similar to this, but actually good, check out Lucifer. This will be the last time I think about this. Goodbye.
Series and Finale: (4/10)
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