Zero Hour premiered this week on ABC. Its airs on Thursdays at 8 PM ET. Apparently the jury is still out on this since episode 1 (entitled "Strike") received very low ratings. If this keeps up, the show may need to be renamed "Dead Hour".
I think this is ABC's version of the DaVinci Code. The tagline is "the greatest conspiracy ever known". The basic premise is the baddies are after a clock (well really what's in the clock) that the main character's wife buys from a street vendor. Hank teams up with the reporters from his magazine (Modern Skeptic) and the FBI to find Laila. If the baddies get their way "mankind as we know it will end". I think we've heard that before. It doesn't carry quite the same punch that it used to.
The production value of the show is high. There are also some prominent cast members in the show. Anthony Edwards who you may remember from ER plays Hank. Michael Nygvist who was Mikael Blomkvist in the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo plays White Vincent (the baddie who has Laila).
Points to ponder:
- Why are the good guys always making the truth so hard to find? Just tell us what ya mean people!!!
- Stop blaming the Rosicrucians for everything. We all know the aliens are the real threat.
- DO feel free to blame the Nazis for everything since they definitely deserve it.
- Babies with strange eyes are not necessarily monsters. If he had a birthmark with 666, I would be worried. The baby they saw during WWII may be White Vincent. If so he is much older than he appears.
- New Bartholomew, meet middle aged Hank. Hank and the dead Nazi who helped the apostles look exactly alike. New Bartholomew (who they originally though was a place) is actually one of the 12 new apostles from 1938. Per the clockmaker, each apostle was given a clock.
- Conspiracies always involve: A. maps; B. traveling to exotic locals; and C. digging up old stuff.
- Old guys are always available to provide voiceovers to tie all the incongruent story lines together.
Favorite quotes
- "It's up to God now. Not only God can help now. Only the 12 can"- two Rosicrucans to each other as they are being shot by the Nazis.
- "The storm is coming... And it is called Zero Hour"- the clockmaker
Episode 1 "Strike"
Hank Galliston publishes the magazine Modern Skeptic, which focuses on the paranormal. His wife Laila buys a unique-looking clock from a boardwalk vendor and is later abducted. FBI Agent Riley arrives to show Hank and his copy editors, Arron and Rachel, video footage of Laila's abduction. The screen freezes on mercenary White Vincent, with whom Riley is familiar. Hank disassembles Laila's clock to find a flawed diamond. With light shone it, the stone refracts a map. He shows the map and its markings to a priest (Charles S. Dutton), who talks of a language that died in the 2nd century. The priest also mentions the Rosicrucians, a group of Christian mystics of the time, and place called New Bartholomew. The map diamond is left with the priest and Vincent later kills kim, collecting the map. Hank leaves his team behind and travels to where New Bartholomew should be, with Agent Riley in tow, as she tells him White Vincent's terrorist history. Arron and Rachel travel to Bavaria to find the clock maker (Jan TÅ™Ãska), who tells them he is a Rosicrucian. He informs them of 12 new "apostles" that assembled in 1938 to protect the war-torn world from doom. The apostles created a new "eternal life" and then scattered to hide from the Nazis. Clocks were created for each. New Bartholomew was not a place, but one of the apostles. Hank finds the place on the map where New Bartholomew is located. It is a German submarine, stuck in Canadian ice, with some dead apostles inside. New Bartholomew, also dead, resembles Hank. Outside, Vincent arrives as the clock maker's voiceover warns of the approaching tumultuous "zero hour".
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