The first episode of the defunct show, King & Maxwell, started with a car chase. If I recall, Rebecca Romijn‘s character was chasing someone dressed in a beaver costume. The silly opener was followed by what was singularly one of the most boring hours of television I’ve ever seen. Note to all: just starting something off with a car chase is still not enough to make people want to continue watching.
Perhaps its boredom-inducing spell became a kind of aphrodisiac, sending viewers subliminal messages screaming silently, “There is nothing else to do but turn to sex! Save yourself the misery of continuing to watch!” Yes, randy gents the world over, if you want to get your girl in bed – indulge in this inaugural boring episode of King & Maxwell, one of TV’s least interesting offerings. She will not be able to resist.
Me being the glutton for visual and virtual punishment that I am, though, I gave the show another go. Yes, I put myself through that. Oddly enough, though the first episode started up slowly, the next episodes were a lot more entertaining. The playful repartee between the two titular leads, King and Maxwell, played respectively by Jon Tenney and Rebecca Romijn, leads the show, and perhaps if it had been given a bit more opportunity to get off the ground, it might have gained an audience. I don’t know. It was a fairly standard PI procedural, so nothing groundbreaking. Plenty of deserving shows never make it past a first season. I question all the time, for example, how something vanilla-average, like the Debra Messing vehicle, The Mysteries of Laura, gets renewed for a second season, while something with a lot more personality and promise, like Battle Creek, gets the shaft. You tell me.
It was a bit harder to discern, but I think King & Maxwell may have had some promise. The aforementioned sarcastic spark between Tenney and Romijn and the unusual character played by Ryan Hurst (also seen in unique roles in Sons of Anarchy and Bates Motel) sometimes transcended the limitations of the show’s decidedly limited walls.