NBC premiered a new drama called Rise on March 13, which was produced by the writers of Hamilton, Friday Night Lights and Parenthood. While the show was set up to look like a thrilling and emotional ride, the premiere fell short with the plot basically following Disney’s High School Musical but with less singing and zero jazz squares.
The pilot starts with main character, Lou Mazzeuchelli (Josh Radnor), who is an English teacher at the local high school requesting the opportunity to be the new drama department head. He then changes the play from Grease to Spring Awakening, which is a criticism of sexually oppressive culture, which causes a whole scandal in the small-minded town.
The students who decide to be in the play are Lilette Suarez (Auli’i Cravalho), who is basically the Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) in the show. There is Gwen Strickland (Amy Forsyth), who is like the Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale), who has her star role stolen by the newbie Suarez. Then, there’s the internally conflicted male role named Robbie Thorne (Damon J. Gillespie). Unlike Troy Bolton (Zac Efron), Throne plays football and raps.
After getting more students to join the musical, the principal reads the script of the provocative musical and deems it too inappropriate for the school. This results in Mazzuchelli to quit and the play to switch to Pirates of Penzance — because the school already has the costumes. The students rebel, and the wannabe drama ensues ending with a cliffhanger that attempts to make the viewer excited for the next episode, which doesn’t exactly work.
Granted, it was the pilot episode, and often first episodes are subject to extreme criticism. But, with the plot already being so predictable, it leaves the audience wondering how they are going to make multiple (or even just one) season out of it.
The cast of Rise is clearly very talented, but they can only do so much with the poorly written plot. Is there hope for NBC’s new drama? Probably not. But, hopefully the cast uses the show as a stepping stool for bigger and better things, making Rise as unfortunate of an acting experience as Twilight was for Robert Pattinson.
Rise airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.
