Is Anyone Watching The Black Donnelly's? Yeah, Me Neither.

OK, so that's a lie. I can't live like this anymore. I feel like I can be honest with you, and the truth is this: I have watched The Black Donnellys. Twice.

And it's terrible.

The Donnelly boys may be Irish, but as The Departed taught us this year, a wiseguy is a wiseguy, right Marty? And it's a good thing too, because it seems like creator Paul Haggis has quite literally left (in) the gun and taken (out) the cannoli. The show might be full of shamrocks and drinking, but it's clear Haggis spent one bleary-eyed weekend watching The Godfather movies with a clipboard and checklist.

But before I claim there are no differences beyond chianti and Guinness, let me admit that there are four Donnelly boys, in contrast to the three Corleone brothers. First there's Tommy, the reluctant criminal but fierce family defender (Michael Corleone). Then there's Jimmy, the hothead getting everyone else in trouble (Sonny). There's the sweet and somewhat dim brother, Kevin (Fredo). And lastly there's the sweet and somewhat dim youngest brother, Sean (Fredo). The only difference I've managed to find in the two Fredos is that Sean gets the snot beat out of him in the first episode, and thereafter remains a bloody pulp confined to a hospital bed, acting more as a cause or a plot device than a character.

But the show doesn't suck because it's unoriginal. Plenty of good television is unoriginal. No, the real problem here is something I'll call the "Grey's Anatomy Method". What Grey's does, better (or worse) than anyone, is tug--no, make that yank--at those heartstrings. But the problem is that the emotions the show asks its viewers to experience aren't earned; they're cheated with the latest song by The Fray or cutely-designed watercooler phrases like "McDreamy" and "she's my person." The emotion is laying right on the surface, out where everyone has easy access to the very deep feelings those wacky docs of Seattle Grace are constantly feeling. It's like storytelling in all italics.


Thus is the case with The Black Donnellys. The atmosphere is just painted on the walls, with the characters awash in the green light of the neon shamrock hanging in the bar window and in the scenes that miraculously are all shot on wet pavement in the dark. Tommy Donnelly is our sympathetic protagonist, not because we relate to his dilemma or understand his character, but because he has sweet doe eyes and a chiseled, handsome face. In the world of shorthand storytelling, only the ugly people are bad. But unlike Grey's, melodrama has no place in the world of the Donnelly boys.

Grey's Anatomy knows it's a primetime soap opera, and is completely unapologetic. That's its shtick. It's a show that does ferry crashes during sweeps and has subplots about passing syphilis. But The Black Donnellys, with its Paul Haggis pedigree, aspires to something else. The show quotes Yeats and attempts to engage questions of moral grayness. But the quotes are always puzzlingly detached from the plots and the closest interrogation of loyalty versus culpability is typed in all caps right on the black and white poster: FAMILY ABOVE ALL. It's a show trying to tell ambitious stories with a frustrated language, and the result is, well, frustrating.