James Wolk is a naturally appealing TV lead. So much so that viewers may even forgive the early scenes of his new drama “Ordinary Joe” for casting him as a college senior. Wolk, at 36 a veteran of …
Wolk, at 36 a veteran of projects including “Mad Men” and “Watchmen,” first came to audiences’ attention on network TV, and it’s to network TV he returns this month. “Ordinary Joe” tracks one character through three lives, investigating the consequences of three possible decisions its protagonist might have made.
In one reality, Wolk plays a rock star; in another, a cop; in a third, a medical professional. In all of them, some fundamental thing seems missing, though, naturally, what that missing element is varies from timeline to timeline. Characters recur throughout: Lail plays Joe’s former college girlfriend Jenny, who becomes in one case his partner in a loveless marriage and in another his ex-partner with whom he reconnects.
But for all the gifted performers onscreen — not least of them Wolk, a compelling performer who even sells the rocker persona despite often reading elsewhere as a bit of a square — “Ordinary Joe” feels, in its pilot, a bit stuck.
A key difference, though, is that “Ordinary Joe” isn’t just fictional — it’s hypothetical. “Ordinary Joe” intends to make you feel, with a pilot touching on big, elemental emotions for its characters. And yet we know these feelings are only being evoked by a hypothetical set of circumstances — we’re celebrating, or mourning with, a story that even within the show’s world is not real.
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