TV Show Review: Pearson - The Complete Series

Stars: 2 out of 5

Pros: Jessica, the acting

Cons: Too many ongoing plots with characters we don’t care about

The Bottom Line:

Jessica’s new job

Did not like new characters

So struggle to watch

“You’re Not Keeping an Eye on Her.  She’s Keeping an Eye on You.”

As a fan of the USA Network’s show Suits, I was disappointed when Gina Torres decides to leave the show, meaning that her character, Jessica Pearson, was written out as well.  So when they announced that there would be a spinoff taking her character to the mayor’s office in Chicago, I was thrilled.  I made it through all ten episodes of Pearson, but I wasn’t disappointed when it was cancelled.

Jessica has taken a job working for Mayor Bobby Novak (Morgan Spector) as his fixer.  She got the job after publicly standing up to him, so the two are going to butt heads.  But what Jessica doesn’t realize is that she has entered a world filled with murder, affairs, and backstabbing.  Then there’s her cousin, Angela (Chantel Riley), who is opposing the mayor’s plans to tear down her apartment building, and considers Jessica’s new job as a betrayal.  Can Jessica navigate her new world?

I knew the show was in trouble from the very first moment.  Why?  Because it gave us a tense scene filled with danger, and then we flash backed weeks.  I HATE it when a show does that.  And it doesn’t matter what show.  Is your plot really that weak that you need to tease us about something we won’t learn the truth about until much later in the season?  Honestly, it bores me.

Unfortunately, the show proved my point.  The problem was, the show acted like it was on season 3 or 4 already instead of season 1.  What do I mean by that?  We had multiple storylines happening with all the characters that took more than one episode to resolve.  That works when the characters are established and we care about them.  But in this case, the only character I really cared about was Jessica.  We needed more stand-alone stories to help us get to know the rest of the characters instead of dropping all this drama on us.

Of course, it didn’t help that one of those storylines involved illegal immigration.  I found the entire thing just an excuse to preach to us.

Maybe another issue was that I only found Jessica likable.  The rest of the cast had their moments, and some I warmed up to as the season went along, but they all came with so much baggage I found it hard to care about them at all.

Now, this isn’t the fault of the actors.  They were bringing their characters to life as they were written.  This was the fault of the writers.

I was debating whether I would have continued on to a potential season 2 when it was announced that Pearson was ending after just ten episodes.  Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have been back.  It’s a shame because Gina Torres and her character deserved much better than she got here.