First Impressions: Defying Gravity

I was on the fence on whether to watch Defying Gravity. On one hand it stars Peter Gibbons and Daisy Adair. But on the other one, it has been described as “Grey's Anatomy in space”, the crappy flagship show that amplifies that ABC stands for the All Broads Channel since shipping off Monday Night Football to ESPN. Although Defying Gravity ended up relying the lone bastion of male watching block on the channel by utilizing some of Lost’s storytelling with plenty of flashbacks, many of which are pretty worthless.

The show focuses on a six year mission around the solar system taking the crew to seven different planets to the tune of ten trillion dollars. Hopefully in forty years all of Earth’s ills have been cured because that is a hefty sum. Although it seems as the conservatives will have won the abortion debate in the future as one of the astronauts seeks out an illegal abortion. The law goes as far that they don’t even sell home pregnancy tests anymore for some unknown reason. Yet for some reason abortion is outlawed yet they are allowed to destroy embryos aboard the spaceship.

The cast is expansive, but seems to currently only focus on two formal couples, Ron Livingston (Office Space) as your token loose cannon who will break with protocol if he thinks what he is right with the lone exception of leaving two fellow astronauts on Mars ten years prior. He had a one night stand with Laura Harris (Dead Like Me) which presumably resulted in the needed abortion but the flashbacks are ambiguous in their timeline. Also no conformation on the abortion but one can assume here inclusion in the crew means she went through with it and is now haunted by baby cries.

The other former couple that was only hinted at so far are Malik Yoba (Cool Runnings), the current commander who happens to be currently wed to the boss and Christina Cox (who I thought was much younger, blonder and Britisher) who is married the former commander who was kicked off of the mission last minute for some reason and replaced by Yoba. The other crew members have yet to be fleshed out including some dude with massive scars on his back (I sense an upcoming flashback), a horny German, some dude searching for porn and the moderately attractive Paula Garces (Man of the House) who films everything.

The main drawback to Defying Gravity is that it is slow. Excruciatingly slow. And the meaningless flashbacks just make it seems slower. The lone interesting plot point (that has a high potential for the plot point to be disappointing) is that there is something(one?) called Beta that apparently is pulling the strings, booting two crew members at the last minute and apparently “allows” things to happen. If I were a betting man, I would put my money on Beta being akin to HAL 9000. The other big mystery being knowledge being withheld from the astronaut that they won’t be privy to until they reach Venus. Again, I would put my money on they are not expected to make it back to Earth. Either that or that viewers won’t be returning back to the show.

Defying Gravity airs Sundays at 10:00 on ABC. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Defying Gravity on iTunes (as I write this you can download the two part season premiere for free and in HD).