Girls and romance fans of all genders know him as the breaking-up-by-Post-it cad from SEX AND THE CITY. Boys and geeks of all genders know him as the uber slacker of OFFICE SPACE. His presence alone was enough to get me to tune into the debut of Fox's new Tuesday night series STANDOFF -- he could have been enough to make it worth a second viewing. He wasn't.

Think MOONLIGHTING meets 24. Yeah, it's an uncomfortable mashup, life-and-death drama and light romantic comedy, and big surprise: It doesn't work. But not quite for the reason you might think. It might have worked, maybe, if they didn't go too cutesy-poo with the lovey-dovey and -- much more vitally -- if it hadn't shot its wad right in the first damn episode. It's like this: Matt Flannery (Ron) and Whatserface (Rosemarie DeWitt) are the hottest team of hotshot crisis negotiators the Los Angeles field office of the FBI has to offer. And they're sleeping together. How do we know this? Matt broadcasts this, in the opening moments of the premiere episode, to a hostage-taker in an attempt to forge a bond of trust (it works), so now the whole world knows their secret, including their kneejerk macho SWAT coworkers and their by-the-book boss, who will give them nothing but grief about this major violation of the rules.

Where can STANDOFF possibly go from here? Sure, Ron is a master of laid-back snark, but he's got no one fun to play off of. DeWitt's Emily Lehman is unpleasantly brittle and emotionally high-maintenance -- where he's charmingly caddish, she's just shrill and annoying. And there's zero chemistry, no electricity at all to give us a little voyeuristic thrill. But even if it had been enjoyable listening to them snipe at each other -- over the problems and even the meaning of their relationship, over his revelation of it -- all the tension has been drained from the premise before the series has even gotten started. It may be fun to watch a show jump the shark in its debut, but it also leaves you with little reason to watch another episode.

And it would have been so easy to fix this. Imagine the suspense and fun that could have been teased out of this exact same premise -- two FBI partners who are romantically and sexually entangled -- with one key difference: we, the audience, know what they're getting up to, but no one onscreen does. They could have snuck around for years, popping into an empty office for a quickie, engaging in secretly suggestive banter and sexy codespeak that their coworkers were clueless about -- the possibilities for innuendoizing law-enforcement jargon are just about endless. Anyone up for a little disorderly conduct?

But no. STANDOFF instead instantly makes itself a turnoff by, um, climaxing way too early.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
MaryAnn Johanson
author of The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride
minder of FlickFilosopher.com

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