Overused storyline makes '7 Days' feel like forever

Joining the category of shows that we'd never admit to watching, UPN's "7 Days" closes the fall television season as a real winner in the stupid show category. It's a program in the tradition of other high tech shows that mix secret government activities, overused science fiction and very little logic, like "Viper" and (ugh!) "Team: Knight Rider."

Jonathan LaPaglia stars as Frank Parker, a once high profile CIA spy now confined to a mental hospital after suffering a breakdown from a mission. He's the typical, generic Hollywood rebellious, hot shot soldier who can't stand orders but performs incredibly when it comes down to the job. Basically, he identifies well with the teen angst riddled 15-year-old males the show is targeting.

The two-hour season premiere finds Parker in the hospital, while some (wait, let me guess) Russians attack the White House, kill the president and poison a nearby school where (another let me guess) Parker's young son attends. But remember the smart CIA always has a plan: transferring Parker to a base "somewhere in the Nevada desert," the CIA selects him to lead a mission to go back in time (hmmm, seven days perhaps?) to stop the tragic calamities.

If Parker goes back and changes time, the must-have hot female character, scientist Olga Vukavitch (Justina Vail), informs him that "when you make even a tiny change to the past, everything that follows is also affected." Wow, what a new concept this time travel, even though Marty McFly taught us about it in 1985.

New exciting ideas like this combine with many other intriguing concepts in "7 Days." Wonder where the CIA came up with the plans for time travel? Why the 1947 UFO Roswell crash, of course. Now please, this has got to be the most overexposed, overused, non-secretive idea Hollywood has had to link any type of government conspiracies or covert operations.

Why do these shows always have government agencies filled with a nation's elite who are so stupid? If the CIA is so brilliantly talented to develop a time machine, isn't it plausible that they could prevent an attack on the White House by a small six-person "hardcore Marxist distant group?"

When Parker eventually stops the bad guys (C'mon you really thought they'd get away?), he runs and picks up his son and hugs him, though he's been shot in his shoulder. If you can buy that, how about watching Military Adviser Donovan ("Seaquest: DSV"'s Don Franklin) take a grenade in the arm, bleed a little and shrug it off with a stoicism that would make comic book Sgt. Nick Fury proud.

Yeah, this isn't plausible at all, but the real question of plausibility comes when Parker asks a CIA director in charge of the mission, "Why is it 7 days?" He replies, "It has to do with the size and power of the reactor, Mr. Parker. Do you want me to explain it?

Obviously Parker says no because the writers composing the lines for these one-dimensional characters don't have a clue how to explain it. With "7 Days," all they show is good ol' American crap like "Independence Day" and "Armageddon," where the average, individualistic rebel saves the day and his country amidst his family and moving shots of the American flag. Haven't we seen enough of this patriotic tripe?

Even if you haven't had your fill of mom's apple pie, God bless the USA someplace else. Visit more scenic spots in America than "somewhere, Nevada," like Dawson's Creek, Mass. (actually NC), or, if you're really desperate, "Beverly Hills 90210." Hopefully, in seven days, we'll never have to hear of this show again.

10-07-98