The pilot episode of “Emergence” (Tuesdays, ABC) is a crisply crafted hour of TV that would set the stage for an excellent series in an alternate universe where there weren’t already dozens of recent series about the emergence of the next stage of human evolution. Still, it’s remarkable how gripping and likable this hour is. Creators Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas also helmed “Kevin (Probably) Saves the World” a couple years ago – that ultimately grew into a lovable series, even though it was much sloppier out of the gates than this one.
I fear “Emergence” will have the opposite arc in quality, but it starts with confidence. The story is propelled by “Fargo’s” Allison Tolman as Jo, the police chief of a small beach town where a plane crashes. As Mark-Paul Gosselaar did in last spring’s “The Passage,” Jo takes under her wing a mysterious orphaned girl, given the name Piper here for the sake of calling her something, in order to protect her from big bad governmental authorities. She’s played by Alexa Swinton, who was perhaps cast after her appearance on last year’s “Manifest,” another show about a mysterious plane flight.
As with an escapee from a refugee camp in last year’s “The Crossing,” Piper has next-level, seemingly supernatural, powers. Like “X-Men’s” Magneto, she can control metal. Or rather, she will be able to once she harnesses her powers; for now, she accidentally manipulates metal when she’s upset, leading to a car crash when she’s abducted by the government agents who want to claim (or perhaps reclaim) her. Piper’s powers also affect electricity and cell phones, and she can’t be injured – as demonstrated by her walking away from the car crash, and no doubt the off-screen plane crash too. That makes her kind of like Wolverine, as does her amnesia.
The “X-Men” comics saga, launched in the 1960s, calls those who exhibit the next stage of evolution “mutants,” or more kindly, “homo sapiens superior.” Philip K. Dick was writing about mutants a decade before that. Certainly, this sci-fi concept is more popular now than ever, since many people feel humanity needs some sort of spark in order to progress rather than regress.
So the fact that there are tons of mutant (although that term is rarely used) TV shows is understandable, but the similarities between them are extremely tiresome. They always treat the kid with powers as some sort of bizarre mystery, even though there’s one explanation, right there in the premise and sometimes in the title, as is the case here. Once Jo and everyone becomes fascinated by Piper’s powers (after all, they live in a world where “The Passage,” “Manifest,” “The Crossing” and even “X-Men” don’t exist), “Emergence” will have hit its creative skids.
In a vacuum, though, “Emergence” starts off well, with Piper cutely latching onto Jo as a mother figure. No surprise after their work on “Kevin,” Butters and Fazekas give us a dysfunctional yet warm family that includes Jo’s dad Ed (Clancy Brown), ex-husband Alex (Donald Faison) and daughter Bree (Ashley Aufderheide). There’s a small-town charm to the police station, too, as everyone respects Jo and is onboard with her decision to shelter Piper rather than put her in the system.
An outside ally comes in the form of British reporter Benny (Owain Yeoman), who knows a lot more about the government conspiracy than Jo does, but he would like to work with her to learn about this specific incident. The “wider conspiracy” part of “Emergence” is the only clunky element, but unfortunately, it’s a key element in this genre. Throw in the conspirators’ awkward attempt to use a fake husband-and-wife posing as Piper’s parents (one of whom even leaves behind a piece of evidence), and The Syndicate from “The X-Files” they are not.
So my impression is that “Emergence” delivers a very good pilot episode, but there’s little evidence that the series at large will be anything special. Admittedly, Piper might not precisely be a mutant, but if not that, she’ll be an escaped government experiment or an artificial being indistinguishable from a human. Perhaps she comes from the future. But I promise you she represents the emergence of the next stage of human evolution, something that will be met by protectiveness from the good guys and fear from the bad guys. It amounts to the same thing: a slight variation on something we’ve seen before, too many times.