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CHICAGO – The late playwright August Wilson left a gift to the world in the form of his “American Century Cycle,” a series of plays each individually set in a decade of the 20th Century, focusing on the black experience. Chicago’s Goodman Theatre presents Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” now through May 19th, 2024 (click here).
TV Review: The Rock Launches Bizarre Reality Show About ‘The Hero’
Submitted by BrianTT on June 6, 2013 - 1:15pm
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The Hero
Photo credit: TNT
“The Hero” debuts on Thursday, June 6, 2013 at 7pm CST on TNT.
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CHICAGO – What makes a hero? Is it the guy who rappels off a skyscraper with ease or the woman who confronts her fears and climbs a dangerous staircase? Is it the winner or the team player? At its best, TNT’s new reality competition series, “The Hero,” starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, taps into these questions, but it so often does so in a manipulative, predictable, boring way that you might not want to stick around for the answers.
 Television Rating: 2.0/5.0 |
To start, “The Hero” is overly complicated. Nine diverse contestants, most of them athletically inclined but a few chosen more for complex definitions of heroism, are assembled in an apartment building for the run of the show. They will live together and compete in challenges every week that test their individual heroism, team heroism, and general degrees of trust. You see, the challenges provide financial rewards that can be kept by those who complete them or put in the winner’s pot for the end. Knowing you only had a one in nine chance of walking away with the grand prize, would you keep a few chunks of it for yourself? What about the fact that America will pick the ultimate winner and so you have to look like a “good person” to the viewers as well? It creates some complex strategy that could be entertaining.
The Hero
Photo credit: TNT
Sadly, too much of “The Hero” feels scripted. They really cast someone on a show like this who cries at the drop of the hat and is afraid of heights? And yet she’s my odds-on favorite to win because of the “real hero” aspect of the show. Do we really need a competition series to teach us that it’s not the winners of the race but those who help their fellow racers that are the real heroes? I’m not sure we do. And too many of the competitors feel deeply scripted. They may not be actors but they have clearly been given roles to play, personality traits to exagerrate for the sake of TV. The real hero would be the man who can make a new reality competition series that feels original and engaging. “The Hero” isn’t that series.
 | By BRIAN TALLERICO |
