Blood & Oil tries to be Dallas and misses the mark

ABC/Fred Hayes

In 2012, producer/writer Cynthia Cidre made a big splash when she successfully rebooted the classic primetime soap Dallas for a new generation, bringing back many familiar faces from the original series and adding a new generation to bridge the two shows and bring in both old and new viewers. Unfortunately, the network that aired the show, TNT, never seemed very happy with its success and pulled the plug after three seasons (due to an older skewing demographic in a TV world that craves young viewers).

Now ABC has a new drama set to debut from creators Rodes Fishburne and Josh Pate set in the world of oil and family drama that borrows heavily from the standard set by Dallas, but falls short of immediately catching viewer interest … which is probably why ABC thought it a good idea to bring Cidre into the fold to get the show in order. But will the pilot be enough to grab viewers to come back for another episode that may have more of Cidre’s influence?

Blood & Oil (the show’s third title) starts with young couple Billy and Cody LeFever (Chace Crawford and Rebecca Rittenhouse) leaving their hometown in Florida to open a laundromat in North Dakota. An accident on a stretch of highway leaves their washing machines strewn across the plain and their pickup firmly embedded in the terrain, but a passing pickup gives them a ride to town.

That town is Rock Springs, North Dakota, a town in the midst of an oil boom. Billy and Cody have nowhere to stay but are directed to the Patchwork Motel, which is more like a migrant worker camp, where they are befriended in an odd way by aspiring restaurant owners Kess (Keston John) and Ada (Yaani King). The pilot also introduces Wick Briggs (Scott Michael Foster), ne’er-do-well son of oil tycoon Hap Briggs (Don Johnson), who thinks he owns the world. Too many missteps force Hap to disown his arrogant son, setting up the family drama.

Billy gets a job with Briggs’ company and is fired on his first day because of the carelessness of Wick (it seemed like Hap was going to give Billy another chance but didn’t), and Cody talks her way into a job at the local pharmacy after offering some alternative medical advice to a man waiting for a prescription. Hap and his scheming wife Darla (Amber Valetta) get wind of a new geological survey that shows massive oil reserves on some nearby property … which is owned by the Native Americans who are not too happy that Hap’s son killed a rare white moose. But the Briggses see a way to get to the oil by drilling from neighboring property (a plot device that was part of the Dallas revival).

ABC/Fred Hayes

Somehow Billy gets wind of this situation and manages to wheel and deal his way into borrowing $100,000 to buy the parcel of land in question which in turn will be leased to Briggs, if he plays his cards right. Of course, Briggs has no other option than to deal with the upstart, but he sees in Billy the son he wishes Wick would have been. Instead, Wick is seeking revenge by stealing his father’s oil which ends the episode with a dramatic cliffhanger.

Blood & Oil, at least the pilot episode, is all over the place and never really nails down the drama that is supposed to hook the viewers. Everything happens so quickly and much too easily for Billy and Cody in the week since they arrived in Rock Springs. The show also has a weird Wild West feel to it that makes it feel like it’s taking place in the 1800s rather than 2015. I had to keep reminding myself that this was the present (but never having been to the farthest reaches of North Dakota, perhaps it is still very Wild West like).

The show also seems to be going out of its way to introduce black characters into the story, but having Kess jump out of nowhere right in front of Billy and Cody at the camp area to tell them Cody has a cut on her forehead (which I’m still trying to figure out how he could even see it from wherever it was he sprung from) was just bizarre. And Delroy Lindo’s Sheriff Tip Harrison was barely a walk-on role in the first episode. And then there is the strange British woman, Jules Jackman (India de Beaufort) who seems to be the one pulling all the strings in Rock Springs. She owns a bar and some really crappy apartments that she charges $2000 a month for! And she’s in cahoots with Wick, but I’m still trying to figure out how she ended up in Rock Springs and how she became so powerful. Hopefully there will be some kind of backstory on this mystery woman.

ABC/Fred Hayes

The rest of the main characters are pretty much faint stereotypes from the Dallas canon – Hap, so far, is more Bobby than JR Ewing. Darla definitely fills the Sue Ellen role though. Billy and Cody are the Gary and Val of the series, with Wick becoming the Cliff Barnes-ish villain. But, the pilot’s worst infraction is just that it doesn’t really have enough drama, scheming and backstabbing to make you want to tune in again next week. Even the cliffhanger is lame, putting several major characters in mortal danger … who you know will survive because they’re all the stars of the show and it’s only the first episode (there is little doubt that the producers would pull a Psycho and kill of Don Johnson by the second episode).

On the plus side of things, the cast all do their best with what they’ve been given in the pilot (and several roles were re-cast at the last minute, which may have affected the tone of the show), so I can’t fault anyone’s performance. The stunning locations of Utah (standing in for North Dakota) are also a plus. We just need a good story to tie it all together.

Blood & Oil has been bouncing around the television landscape for more than three years now, developed at ABC which then passed, picked up by USA Network when then passed, and then landed back at ABC where it was titled BOOM! (which FOX stole for their summer game show) then OIL! then Blood & Oil. This is the first production for Fishburne, but Pate has many credits to his name including cult favorites Surface and Moonlight. Hopefully with the experience of Cidre on the Dallas revival, she can help bring more drama and believability to the series.

New dramas like Blood & Oil rarely hit the ground running, especially those with such a tortured history, and it may take an episode or two with the guidance of Cidre to really turn into must-see TV. But with a less than thrilling pilot episode, will viewers be willing to give it another shot?