When I saw Taken during its original air date back in 2002, I loved it. When I watched it again in a couple years later on DVD, I didn't love it, but I still enjoyed it. Watching the TV Mini Series for only the 3rd time this past week, I'm a little less enthused about a lot of what takes place here. First off, the good stuff. I really do enjoy everything that takes place from the 1947 Roswell incident all the way through the 1990's as we track 3 Generations of 3 families who path comes to a head toward the end of the series. I thought the story itself was fun as they are clearly playing off the myth that has been estabhished over the years, so they had a lot to work with.

Now the bad. Once it gets to current day, which takes place in the 2000's, that's when things start to fall apart for me regarding the writing, character motivations and especially the acting of one in particular: Heather Donahue. She is absolutely HORRIBLE as an actress and reaches high school level emoting. I never noticed just how awful she is in this the first two times around. But watching her this week and been excruciating to say the least. Seriously, what the f*ck were the producers thinking when they hired her for this? Did they really think she was going to bring some kind of 'Blair Witch' heat to this? I think any other actress would have been 1000% better than what she gives here.

The other thing that kind of falters in the second half of the series is that they overextend themselves to the point of exhaustion. They have to keep Allie (Dakota Fanning) on the run, with near misses till the very end because they have saving it for something BIG. They are going to give us something truly spectacular and reward us for sticking with the show. Only problem is that the 'BIG Moment' is about the weakest thing ever put on film. It also doesn't help their case by having Special FX that was already 'dated' when it originally aired, more so now.

With that said, Dakota owns every scene she's in. You just absolutely fall in love with her. This of course was everyone's introduction to the pint size actress and it's because of Taken that I have followed her career since then. It's her performance that does make up for a lot of what's at fault in the second half. If she wasn't in it, I highly doubt I would have stuck around this 3rd time around. I just wished that we got something more profound at the end. Not that it has ever been talked about, but I'd definitely be open to seeing Taken 2: The Return with Dakota returning to at least wrap this series up once and for all. Or should they call it 'Given'. 

One cool thing about watching Taken this week is that I finally was able to figure out where I knew Desmond Harrington from. Ever since I started watching Dexter, I have been trying in vain to remember where I knew Desmond from. Sure, I could have cheated and gone straight to Wiki for that information. But I like trying to place faces. I just wasn't having any kind of success in that department. Ack!

Never saw it.  In fact, I had totally forgotten about it and when I saw the thread title, I thought "they're making a TV series based on the Liam Neeson film?"  I could totally picture a 24-style show, one long investigation, and every finale is a "your princess is in another castle" ending.

A show called "The Leftovers" just makes me feel a little hungry.

I'm honestly tired of these super high concept tv shows, I never had the impulse to sit down and watch a show just b/c Spielberg or Affleck worked on it.  I wanna watch a good show.  Honestly, I'm more excited to see Helix b/c I know Javi (the creator) dud TONS of TV in different styles and he knows what works.