Eli Stone: A pretty good show that’s great when there’s nothing else on

Posted by Dan February 13th, 2008 at 11:33am In Eli Stone

I even thought he was cute as Sick Boy.

Been watching Eli Stone?

I have — and while I’m not necessarily wildly enthusiastic, it’s a solidly watchable show.

I keep telling myself that the primary reason I watch is not the fact that Jonny Lee Miller is super adorable. But it kind of is, and I am honest enough to come to terms with that. I hope you can appreciate that kind of candor, folks. You and I have a relationship built on trust, TiFaux readership. (side note: when Jonny and I get married, I wouldn’t even have to change my last name!)

The gist of Eli Stone is that the titular character is a slick corporate lawyer who has to re-examine his life after suffering a brain aneurysm. It’s not just your garden variety aneurysm, though — it’s one of those kickass aneurysms where you hallucinate all sorts of crazy visions that have an eerie bearing on your everyday life (he sees a biplane and knows he needs to help represent a pilot, etc.). It kind of reminds me of Nate from Six Feet Under, only on a larger scale and less existential.

Narm.

Eli’s life is rounded out by his neurologist brother (convenient), his foxy and wrong-for-him fiancee (played by Natasha Henstridge — who I always expect to see kissing dudes and then killing them like she did in the Species movies), his father-in-law/boss (played by the dude from Alias) and his secretary (who falls safely into the archetype of sassy, matronly African American supporting characters). The guy from Ed (Tom Cavanagh) also made an appearance on the pilot as Eli’s dead dad, who also suffered from the inoperable brain aneurysm (the episode ends with Eli releasing his Ed-dad’s ashes into the wind with some distractingly awful CGI animation).

The biggest hook for the show thus far is Eli’s big, crazy hallucinations. The pilot featured a puffy modern day George Michael singing “Faith” in Eli’s bedroom. The second episode had a big musical number with a boy’s choir in the company lobby. It’s obviously a lot of fun for the producers to create as flamboyant scenes as possible — and it is fun to watch. It’s going to be interesting to see how long they can keep up the gimmick, though.