Dylan McDermott
Maggie Q
Mariana Klaveno
Victor Rasuk
Elisabeth Röhm

Created by:
Kevin Williamson

2014-2015
Drama, Thriller
CBS
TV-14

“Stalker” has drawn the ire of critics for being offensive (to real victims of stalking and to the intellect) and for being hard to watch. The real problem is that it’s too familiar. It’s not distinctive enough to properly handle its material. As a result, its serious subject matter seems trivial. That’s the offense.

This is yet another detective procedural that seems like a clone of every other detective procedural; again, that’s the problem. It’s well-paced, but that’s common to most other procedurals, too. I guess you could say that the pacing saves it from being thoroughly boring; it’s just plain-old boring, instead.

The first episode begins by depicting the attack of a female stalking victim. We don’t know her or her attacker, so it’s hard to care. I was disconnected from her horrific experience of being burned alive in her car. It felt like a cheap and lazy attempt to manipulate the audience. Plus, why didn’t she just get out of the car (she had plenty of time)? If she had, she could have stopped, dropped, and rolled. I guess she was too traumatized to think, a convenient yet admittedly plausible choice.

The actors do what any competent actor would do with this sort of material: look serious and pick up your cue lines. But the two detectives at the center of this show, played by Dylan McDermott and Maggie Q, are boring. She doesn’t like him, because he’s a man who acts like a man. And he doesn’t understand why that’s the case. They have their own individual problems, of course: She lives alone and has some fear of a home intrusion. (Has she been stalked before? And, at the end of the first episode, did she invite another stalker to start stalking her?) He wants to be a part of his wife’s and daughter’s lives again, but to no avail. (Is he stalking them?) But when those problems are finally revealed, it’s hard to care. The writers will be sure to develop them into something more, but it won’t matter.

The lesson of “Stalker” is that adding a stalker unit to a clichéd formula … results in a clichéd formula. Kevin Williamson, this show’s creator, would have fared better by infusing it with some of the wackiness of one of his other shows, “The Following.” At least that show has a point-of-view. “Stalker,” however, is the very definition of generic.

Verdict: Whatever

About: (Source: stalker)

STALKER stars Maggie Q and Golden Globe Award winner Dylan McDermott in a psychological thriller about detectives who investigate stalking incidents – including voyeurism, cyber harassment and romantic fixation – for the Threat Assessment Unit of the LAPD. Det. Jack Larsen is a recent transfer to the Unit from New York City’s homicide division, whose confidence, strong personality and questionable behavior has landed him in trouble before – but whose past behavior may also prove valuable in his new job. His boss, Lt. Beth Davis, is strong, focused and an expert in the field, driven by her traumatic personal experience as a victim. With the rest of their team, young but eager Det. Ben Caldwell and deceptively smart Det. Janice Lawrence, Larsen and Davis assess the threat level of cases and respond before the stalking and intimidation spirals out of control, all while trying to keep their personal obsessions at bay.