Human Target: "Marshall Pucci," Or How to Destroy Your Show In Just One Episode

Last night Human Target aired its second season finale, and what I hope to be its series finale. I'll explain why, after the jump....

If you let a television show run long enough, you increase the chances of reaching a point that changes that series as whole, a point from which the show can never recover. This is often referred to as “jumping the shark,” though the term's denotation and connotation have diverged greatly over the last few years, so that any horrible turn in the show's nature is deemed as such. (For the record, “jumping the shark” is used to note episodes that go over the top, usually in the search of audience numbers. This is not to be confused with general declining quality or inane twists that fundamentally alter some element of the show.)

Regardless of what you deem it (though the more I think about it, the more “jumping the shark” seems apt), that point was reached last night on Human Target with the introduction of the CIA. Yes, that CIA. But not really, because their just a group of rogue agents who somehow still have access to a large selection of government resources, because the show couldn't possibly make its audience ponder the questionable morality of our “heroes” by having them go up against the US government, because, come on, this is Fox after all.

Sorry. I went off a little bit there, didn't I?

Chance and his team have always had a certain sector of the criminal element with whom they engage: villains with some sort of strong financial backing, but who operate in small numbers and couldn't easily mobilize the entire security force of a large nation. This was a wise creative decision for the show, because as ridiculous as some of the past situations got, there was still a limit, and this meant that the show, even in the highly fictitious framework it has set up, still kept some sense of “believability.” Yet the show shattered all that believability when it had the guys go up against a government trained group of agents and SOMEHOW WIN.

Now, one could argue that this doesn't mean that all possible future episodes would be like this, that Chance and Crew could still take on smaller adversaries a majority of the time. This is true, but the temptation to go big like this would still be there, and the show would indulge itself, each time somehow finding a way to up the ante and make everything even more ridiculous. And even when they weren't doing that, in the hours where things get played out like “usual,” in the back of everybody's mind would be the thought: “Come on, these people took down an elite CIA team! We're supposed to believe that this is giving them trouble?” The show has been broken.

Yet somehow the show managed to pile even more awfulness on top of everything else, by continuing to indulge in the Chance/Ilsa romance, and trying, for some reason, to put its own spin on the “guy races to the airport to profess his love” trope. I get that Chance and Ilsa is a thing now, but can't the show at least try to put a little more originality into it?

I don't wish ill on the cast and crew of this show, but I think everybody involved needs to recognize that the second season was a failed experiment, and that since the show can't be returned to the season one standard, it's time to call it a day.


Additional Thoughts:

So apparently Marshall Pucci wasn't a cheater. Of course not. Why give the show any sort of moral quandary to deal with?

Apparently Guerrero really wanted a goodbye hug.

What was up with Valley's pronunciation of the word “cashews”?

Does the CIA not know the difference between a microchip and a camera's memory card?