hailan on "The New Boss, Not the Same as the Old Boss"

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<p>Let’s say your highly successful television show is ending because the star is moving on, and you want to create a new show that will suck in as many of the christian louboutin shoes  old viewers as possible. What do you do? </p>
<p>Here’s one thing you don’t do: replace the star by making the dullest character from the old show the central figure of the new one. Yet that’s what TNT and the writer and executive producer James Duff have done with “Major Crimes,” which makes its debut on Monday night at 10 immediately after the final episode of the show it’s replacing, discount christian louboutin shoes  “The Closer.” (Subsequent episodes will be Mondays at 9.) </p>
<p>Maybe Mr. Duff and his colleagues were so focused on making sure that “Major Crimes” would be as familiar as possible to fans of “The Closer” — same setting (not to mention sets), same music, same writers and directors, nearly the same cast — that they forgot to make Capt. Sharon Raydor of the Los Angeles Police Department more interesting. </p>
<p>On the old show, Mary McDonnell’s Raydor was a droning scold who made the heroine, Kyra Sedgwick’s obsessional Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, look warm by comparison. Now Raydor has replaced Johnson as the boss of the Major Crimes unit, christian louboutin discount shoes  but she’s still a droning scold, and Ms. McDonnell’s starched, sotto voce delivery — she seems to be battling a case of lockjaw — doesn’t help. </p>
<p>“Major Crimes” feels like a reasonably sharp black-and-white copy of “The Closer,” but fans of the franchise are likely to miss the color provided by Ms. Sedgwick’s vivid performance. In that regard, Mr. Duff hasn’t done Ms. McDonnell any favors by making the new show track the old one so closely. A female boss is imposed on the unit because her skills match up with a shift in strategy by the Los Angeles Police Department; male feathers are ruffled. louboutins That’s exactly how “The Closer” started. </p>