TAXI Brooklyn is a short-lived comedy/drama, buddy-buddy show that has found its way to the televisual graveyard that is Netflix. With a truncated twelve episode season, the procedural police drama/comedy stars Chyler Leigh – better known for her role as Alex Danvers on Supergirl – as Detective Caitlyn Sullivan and Jacky Ido as Leo Romba, a French-born, Brooklyn residing, taxi driver.
Taxi Brooklyn, a lazy title for a lazy show, takes the implausible premise of difficult-to-work-with detective – she has already had five partners that year in the opening episode – and pairs her with an immigrant, street savvy taxi driver, whose sense of right and winning charm makes him one of the few people who can stand to be around the detective. Conveniently – and there are a lot of convenient situations in this show – the detective has her car privileges rescinded by her captain John Baker – a thankless, horribly cliched role taken on by James Colby – this little detail brings about the ludicrous plot device of having the taxi driver ferry the detective everywhere. They even go as far as having him run over her foot in episode three so as she cannot drive!
Caitlyn, or Cat as she is called in the show, is a ‘maverick’ cop who is obsessed with finding the killer of her father. He was also a member of law enforcement. Sound familiar? It should, it is basically the same premise as Castle, the much superior Nathan Fillion/Stana Katic starrer. Whilst, like Castle, the ‘who murdered my father?’ arc is the overarching story that sustains the season, each episode has a separate story.
My heart, as ever, goes out to the actors in this mess of a show. Besides the aforementioned, there is José Zúñiga who plays, I kid you not, detective Esposito and Jennifer Esposito – a crush of mine from her Spin City days – plays Dr Monica Pena. These fine actors are forced to try and breathe believability into scripts of staggering ineptitude and – sorry to repeat myself – cliche-ridden plots. The scripts are just the tip of the iceberg. I was momentarily buoyed by some interesting editing in the opening of episode two. My hopes were quickly dashed by the handheld camera work, poor sound and slapdash editing.
Even with the sloppy production of a show this contrived, the scripts needed to at the very least be competent and mildly believable. They are not. Aside from shoehorning in random characters connected to the killing of Caitlyn’s father, the scripts have so much horrible exposition, not to mention quite unbelievable, convenient, coincidences that one spends most of the watch time spotting the next cliché.
The real pity with this show is that the two leads actually have the right chemistry for the show’s premise, unfortunately, the characters are never given any scope to develop, forced to spout their lines with little to no motivation.
Though not totally unwatchable, Taxi Brooklyn is definitely in the realms of bad television. That it managed even to run for twelve episodes is an achievement, thankfully, even though NBC is notorious for cancelling solid shows, the cancellation of this show was a tick in the correct column.
filmsbyq4u 