Zero Hour

In my lifelong quest to watch just about every show that is canceled after a handful of episodes, I just watched Zero Hour.  After setting a record for lowest ratings for a new series on ABC-due to the brain-trust at ABC putting it on against The Big Bang Theory & Two and a Half Men on CBS and American Idol on Fox-the odds of finding the Lost Ark of the Covenant may be better than the odds of this show making it.

Like Do No Harm and Monday Mornings, Zero Hour has a meaningless title-it also has a little too much nerd appeal.  All the Nerds are watching Big Bang Theory.  Then there’s the has-been factor with Anthony Edwards-the guy who left ER and didn’t become George Clooney.  Not exactly a big draw.

Ok, so how was Zero Hour?  Eh, so-so.  It’s the story a man who has a magazine about conspiracies who stumbles upon-a giant conspiracy!  The show has a lot of cliched ideas going for it.  Nazis with super secret technologies-they seem to have solved that pesky immortality problem.  But that’s only part of the mystery, the Catholic Church seems to have been hiding something for a couple of thousand years.  The Ark of the Covenant?  The Body of Christ?  Aristotle’s lost book on Comedy?  All we know for sure is that it’s pretty big and appears to have a peaked roof and doesn’t mind being under water.  So I guess the Aristotle is out.

Then there is the small matter of cloning.  Those dang Nazis sure did crack a lot of stuff-I wonder if we’ll see the Anti-Gravity device at some point?  The rumor is that was what crashed in Roswell in 1947.

Zero Hour looked pretty good, but there is something a little out there about a genetic mutant chasing down twelve people in their nineties so he can steal their antique clocks.    Maybe the hardest part to believe is that he has only found one in the last seventy years or so.

It’s also pretty much impossible to look at Zero Hour without thinking of the Da Vinci Code.  Secret organizations and hidden clues and trips around the world by people who shouldn’t really be able to just travel around the world whenever they feel like it.  Lots of stuff happens-and none of it makes much sense.

If given a chance Zero Hour could be a fun show-but it has that American Treasure problem with the story pretty much being over once our hero finds all the clocks and digs up the McGuffin.  I doubt that it will last that long.

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