Crossing Jordan
NBC, Mondays, 10 p.m.
Created by Tim Kring; starring Jill Hennessy, Miguel Ferrer, Ken Howard and Ravi Kapoor
I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but there is nothing even remotely interesting about Crossing Jordan, NBC’s wannabe edgy new drama starring Jill Hennessy as Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh, a medical examiner with an attitude.
The series began Monday night when Jordan returned from Los Angeles to her native Boston and her former job with the Massachusetts State Coroner’s Office. She also reunited with her father, and ex-cop played by Ken Howard, who, it seems worth mentioning, has procured a thick Boston accent since his days as the diplomatic basketball coach on the White Shadow. Father and daughter, apparently, are still haunted by the unsolved murder of his wife (her mother), which helps explain why the father is and ex-cop and the daughter is a medical examiner with a tendency to go well above and far beyond the call of duty.
Last night, for instance, Jordan was assigned a routine case: the body of a teenaged prostitute had been found in an alley, and suicide was the presumed cause of death. But Jordan couldn’t leave well enough alone. She quickly discovered that the prostitute wasn’t a prostitute at all; she was a virgin who had been suffocated to death.
Meanwhile, an important city official did, in fact, commit suicide on the very same day as the prostitute’s murder. Using her intuitive powers, no doubt inherited from her discerning daddy, Jordan tried to connect the two cases. She enlisted the help of Det. Collins, played by Kyle Secor, who luckily has some experience with investigative drudgery from his days on Homicide: Life on the Street. In the end, however, it was during an endearing little father/daughter game of "You be the victim, I’ll be the killer," that Jordan made sense of the case.
Jordan then willingly put herself in harm’s way to uncover the murder. Unfortunately, the scene had about as much suspense as an episode of Gilligan’s Island. Because – and I don’t think I’m ruining any surprises – harm does not even come close to finding our almost-obscenely attractive protagonist in this not so very special season premiere. For if it did, there would be no season to premiere. – JoAnne Steglitz