The CW's 'Easy Money' stands to profit viewers

NBC begins and ends the workweek with a couple of big-budget, high-profile new dramas that are eager to please, but as it turns out the upstart CW network has a humbler, more understated and far better new series airing between the two over the weekend that is quite content to wait for the audience to find it.

If there's any justice in this TV world, "Easy Money" will last years longer than either "Crusoe" or "My Own Worst Enemy," but of course you know how that dynamic usually plays out, Aware One.

In any case, let's keep things simple and organized in chronological order by starting with "Crusoe," airing at 8 p.m. Friday on WMAQ Channel 5. It's a revisionist retelling of Daniel Defoe's classic tale of shipwreck and capitalism (as opposed to the capitalist shipwreck that confronts us today). It stars Philip Winchester as the title character and Tongayi Chirisa as his man Friday.

In its underpinnings, "Crusoe" is faithful to Defoe's novel. Crusoe is an original capitalist, intent on starting an importation business, when he's lost in a shipwreck, as the flashbacks involving his "godfather," played by Sam Neill, well prove. Those flashbacks are critical; otherwise, the remote island setting could get downright claustrophobic. Besides, they also offer the opportunity to break the monotony with a few scenes of lusty reverie involving the ever-faithful Crusoe and the wife he pines for back home, played by Anna Walton.

Yet on the island proper the series is quite revisionist, as Crusoe is an endlessly inventive, swashbuckling figure of derring-do - sort of the Indiana Jones of castaways - while Friday is a noble savage loyal to Crusoe after he saved him from bring sacrificed in a native rite. In last week's premiere, it even found a way to be openly feminist in the shapely form of a formidable woman pirate.

That two-hour debut was a success, but where to from here? How many ships will stray onto the island only to leave our heroes behind, like the ill-fated cast of "Gilligan's Island"? The writers will have to prove themselves even more inventive than Crusoe himself to make this show work as a weekly series.

"Easy Money," by contrast, has no such grand ambitions. Airing at 8 p.m. Sunday on WGN Channel 9, it focuses on a simple, family-run business in a Southwestern strip mall.

Considering that the business just happens to be a thriving short-term payday-loan firm that dabbles in extortion, however, this family is simple the way "The Sopranos" is simple.

It's an apt comparison, in that both are held together by a dynamic actor at the center: in this case, Steppenwolf Theatre's Laurie Metcalf, who leaves the comedy of "Roseanne" far behind as Babette Buffkin, the intense, cunning, and surprisingly ruthless and compassionate by turns family matriarch. Jeff Hephner is her son, Morgan, who technically runs the company but has to deal with his various competitive relations - while also dealing with the discovery that he's actually adopted.

"It's about me trying to figure out who I am," he says, to which Mom replies, "I know who you are." Tony and Livia got nothing on these two.

This is an intense, yet soft-spoken show full of naturalistic writing and acting, and it's one of the best new series of the fall. Yet even the CW has soft-peddled it, as it's actually produced by Media Rights Capital, a firm that has agreed to underwrite the CW's entire Sunday-night schedule. It's going to need more help than it's been getting if it's to compete with "Desperate Housewives," "Cold Case" and even "True Blood" on HBO. So don't be surprised when this "family" drama has to resort to breaking some legs.

Legs get broken and worse in "My Own Worst Enemy," which is more interesting in theory than in execution. Christian Slater stars in the dual role of milquetoast Henry Spivey and sadistic superspy Edward Albright. A top-secret firm has "manifested a split personality," in the words of Alfre Woodard's Mavis Heller, in Henry/Edward and in Mike O'Malley's Tom/Raymond, basically office buddies who are, unbeknown to even themselves, also sleeper-cell spies clicked into action with the help of a computer chip implanted in their brains. As the series opens, however, Henry's chip has malfunctioned, making him shift back and forth erratically.

The theory I posited about "Samantha Who?" - that it reflects an America in conflict with itself, in its ideals and its actual deeds - is even more applicable here, as Henry recoils at the torture Edward routinely performs. Henry is also irked that Edward has been having success performing "the hummingbird" on his foxy wife, played by Madchen Amick. (Don't waste your time Googling it; it's no Venus butterfly.)

Yet, as in "Crusoe," the question is where to from here? And I'm not so sure NBC and the writing staff have an answer for that. NBC has already muddled "Heroes," and it couldn't even get the new "Bionic Woman" off the ground last year. A large part of series television is the faith a viewer has that a show will be rewarding from week to week. "Easy Money" has a sure-of-itself feel that inspires confidence, but "Crusoe" and "Enemy" are going to have to prove themselves over time.