I wanted to like Countdown. Seriously.
It’s Jensen fricken Ackles. I’ll give pretty much anything he does a once-over, and Eric Dane didn’t exactly hurt the sales pitch. Throw in a special task force trying to stop enough stolen nuclear material from turning Los Angeles into a Chernobyl-level disaster, and this sounded like it might scratch that 24 itch.
It doesn’t, and it’s not even close.
I actually watched “Teeth in the Bone” twice because it’s Jensen Ackles and I thought maybe I’d been too hard on it the first time.
Then I watched Episode 2 just to make sure. Nope.
The premiere has a genuinely good opening, a surprise appearance from Milo Ventimiglia and enough plot to fill several episodes. Unfortunately, almost none of it gives me a reason to care.
Welcome to the River of Molasses, where an enormous amount of shit happens while nothing feels like it’s moving.
All Urgency, No Pulse
The opening works.
A Department of Homeland Security agent is being chased through the streets, and the janky handheld camera gives the sequence some genuine urgency. For a moment, it looks like he might escape. But he doesn’t and it’s his murder that sets everything in motion.
And then Countdown starts throwing information at you like somebody accidentally hit 2x playback.
Mark Meachum (Ackles) is undercover in prison. Amber Oliveras is an undercover DEA agent being held hostage in a drug den. She pulls some Nikita-style moves and escapes.
Suddenly they’re both part of Nathan Blythe’s (Eric Dane) newly assembled task force.
There are more people. Names. Agencies. Specialties. Desks. Everybody apparently knows where to go and what to do.
Wait. Who the hell are all these people?
I had to pause the episode repeatedly and use Prime Video’s X-Ray just to figure out which character was which and that’s a serious problem.
It isn’t that television can’t introduce a large ensemble quickly. Of course it can. But Countdown doesn’t really introduce these people. It announces them. There’s an enormous difference.
Blythe gathers everyone and essentially reads the team roster to the team itself. We’re told they’re a law-enforcement all-star squad and warned against chest-thumping and lone-wolf behavior before we’ve had enough time with anybody to understand why these particular people were assembled in the first place.
We’re barely 13 minutes into the show and it’s already handing me information I’m apparently supposed to file away for later.
I don’t want a briefing packet. I want a television show.
The River of Molasses Has Been Weaponized
Here’s the weird thing about Countdown: It’s moving incredibly fast. And it’s agonizingly slow.
Agents race from location to location. Leads appear. Suspects are identified. Someone gets questioned. Someone finds surveillance footage. The team storms a building. There’s a shootout. There are ominous conversations. There are secrets. There’s a ticking clock.
And I don’t give even one iota of a shit. That’s the River of Molasses. Movement isn’t momentum.
24 understood that immediately. Jack Bauer could spend an entire sequence trying to get from one place to another and it still felt urgent because the show established why the hell it mattered.
Countdown seems to think urgency comes from having people walk quickly while tense music plays. But you need to be invested and it’s not happening.
By the time this team is chasing leads surrounding the murdered agent, I’m still trying to understand why Blythe selected these people, what makes this task force special and why everyone has apparently accepted the assignment without asking the questions I’m sitting on my couch asking.
Instead, the show keeps piling more drama onto the table. Meachum has worked with Blythe before. Meachum has a brain tumor.
Oliveras is apparently considered a ticking time bomb. Blythe has some unusual interest in Shepard. There’s drama involving his assistant Damon.
Oliveras starts looking at everybody’s classified information. Meachum starts flirting with Oliveras because apparently we need to get that potential romance cooking immediately too.
Holy hell, slow down. Not literally. Emotionally. Let me care about one thing before you hand me seven more.
Please Stop Reading Me the Police Manual
The dialogue is also a serious problem.
Countdown has an unfortunate habit of explaining itself instead of letting us experience anything. There’s so much telling instead of showing that eventually even tiny details start becoming irritating.
Blythe repeatedly refers to “302” interviews.
I know what a 302 is because I run a mafia site. But does the average viewer need the procedural terminology repeated? Just write the report.
Then we get location title cards whenever the team goes somewhere new. Again. And again. And again.
It starts feeling less like a stylistic choice and more like somebody forgot television can communicate location without turning the screen into a PowerPoint presentation.
The whole show has that problem.
LOOK! THEY’RE HERE NOW.
THIS PERSON DOES THIS JOB.
THIS IS IMPORTANT.
TENSION IS HAPPENING.
Stop telling me. Make me feel it.
Dean Winchester Has Entered the Task Force
I like Jensen Ackles. That’s part of why I gave Countdown considerably more rope than I probably would have given somebody else.
But Mark Meachum also presents a problem. I keep seeing Dean Winchester.
Ackles can change the hair, clothes, job and surroundings, but there’s still that underlying Dean swagger — the cockiness, the delivery, the way Meachum tries to needle Oliveras.
And here, the attempts at humor don’t particularly land.
That wouldn’t matter if Meachum himself were compelling enough to make me forget about Dean. So far, he isn’t.
The show throws a brain tumor at him remarkably early, presumably to add vulnerability and urgency to his story.
Instead, my first reaction was:
Should this man be working on a task force trying to prevent nuclear catastrophe if he has a major tumor in his brain?
Maybe we’ll get there. I’m still not invested enough yet to even care.
You Are Not 24
Eventually we arrive at the actual larger threat. There’s enough missing fissile material to potentially cause a Chernobyl-level event.
There it is. The ticking clock. This is what the task force is really dealing with. And on paper, I should be completely in. I love this kind of stuff.
But Countdown keeps reminding me of 24 without understanding why 24 worked.
Jack Bauer didn’t matter because people told us he was a badass. The stakes didn’t feel enormous because somebody announced that they were enormous. That show pulled you into the emergency and made everything feel immediate.
Countdown manufactures activity without manufacturing tension.
Even a late shootout barely registers because the team has essentially just arrived and started shooting.
Meachum saves Oliveras. Someone conveniently has a radiation detector available. Nuclear material! Big threat! Tense music!
And I’m sitting there thinking: Why do I care? That’s death for a thriller.
☢️ Radioactive Dumpster Juice
This isn’t ordinary Trash. This is Radioactive Dumpster Juice.
Countdown has recognizable actors, slick production, shootouts, undercover agents, conspiracies, nuclear material and enough government acronyms to fill a filing cabinet.
But it turns all of that into generic mush.
The show isn’t incompetent enough to be entertainingly terrible. That’s almost worse. It’s professionally manufactured mediocrity.
There are pieces of a good thriller floating around in there somewhere, but they’ve been soaked in so much exposition and artificial urgency that I can’t taste any of them.
And yes, Prime Video eventually canceled Countdown after one season. I can’t say I’m shocked.
🗑️ Our Verdict: TRASH
Jensen Ackles couldn’t save this one for me. Neither could Eric Dane. Neither could a nuclear threat to Los Angeles.
The opening murder briefly promises a tense conspiracy thriller, but Countdown quickly becomes a bizarre combination of too much happening and absolutely nothing happening.
That’s the River of Molasses in its purest form.
Characters are introduced faster than we can connect with them. Information replaces development. Location cards constantly interrupt the action. The dialogue explains things the show should be dramatizing, and the supposed urgency never turns into actual tension.
I even gave Episode 2 a shot because Ackles earned the benefit of the doubt. Still no.
And that’s Trial by Stream doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. I gave you an episode. Hell, I gave you two, and I’m still reaching for the remote.
- ➝ 📇 The TV Rolodex: There are a lot better shows to watch than Countdown, even 70s shows have given us better thrills like Harry O and Streets of San Francisco. Want to find more? Search our TV Rolodex: A–Z Archive for the full list.
- ➝ 📇 The Movie Rolodex: If you’re in the mood for a movie, check out our Movie Rolodex: A–Z Archive to see our ever-growing list of movies we’ve had something to say about whether a full movie review or a Streaming Roulette roundup. In fact, check out Invasion U.S.A. with Chuck Norris if you want action that doesn’t get stuck in the River of Molasses.
