Series / Second Chance (2016)

The Modern Prometheus.

Jimmy Pritchard (Philip Baker Hall) is a seventy-five year-old disgraced sheriff, forced to resign after a scandal regarding corruption, witness tampering, evidence planting, and assorted other crimes. Now, he has little to do but sit and smoke and try to give advice to his FBI son, Duval Pritchard (Tim DeKay)

One night, while at his old house looking for some pictures, he finds two men going through his son's office. When he confronts them, they overpower him easily, and toss him off a bridge to make it look like he killed himself. His death is ruled a suicide, and the case is closed.

Meanwhile, Mary (Dilshad Vadsaria) and Otto Goodwin (Adhir Kalyan), twin geniuses running a technology company called "Looking Glass ", have an interest in the sheriff. His precise genetic structure is one in ten million, and with the proper treatments, could be used to fight Mary's cancer. Although Mary forbids him, Otto acquires the sheriff's corpse and begins an experimental resurrection procedure.

When Pritchard awakens—after some initial confusion—he finds himself in a new body (played by Robert Kazinsky) far stronger than he has ever been, a perfect specimen of the human race, if not more. While he agrees to help Mary with her cancer, he insists on using his new lease on life to fight crime in his city, starting with the men who killed him—one of whom is his son's partner at the FBI. This is complicated both by Otto's overprotective nature, his son's suspicions, and the fact that he needs to return to the tank every twelve hours to be revitalized, or he'll die for good.

Second Chance aired from January 13th to March 25, 2016 on Fox for one season, before being canceled.

Not to be confused with the 70s ABC game show that was the predecessor to Press Your Luck.

---

This series provides examples of:

• Artificial Intelligence: Arthur, a basic assistant intelligence Otto created. He controls their house, but little outside it. He's also invaluable in searching and collecting information from all possible sources. In "Scratch that Glitch", he locales Jim when he calls for him on a tablet after loading the Looking Glass page. It turns out he's been scanning from his voice pattern to locate him.
• Big Bad: Connor Graff, the manipulative billionaire who pretends to be a friend to the Goodwins, but just wants to steal Otto and his technology for himself, which he does by trying to create a wedge between Otto and Mary.
• Big Blackout: The procedure to bring Jimmy back from the dead took up so much energy it caused a huge blackout on the city, which caused several criminals to escape. Mary helps Jimmy tracking down those criminals who escaped in order to set things right.
• Big Brother Is Watching: The Looking Glass software is running on millions of computers and Mary and Otto can use it to track people.
• Brain Uploading: In The Stinger Otto reveals to Mary he managed to upload his mind to the internet before he died, and now seems to be an AI similar to Arthur.
• Buddy Cop Show: The Police Procedural part of the show has the young reborn Jimmy partnering with his FBI Agent son Duval in solving local crimes, and their banter is filled with father-son high jinks.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: After being restored to his younger body, Jimmy will often compliment or defend his older self to people who knew him. Usually—especially when it's Duval—the person he's talking to will respond with their real and unflattering opinion of the older Jimmy.
• Came Back Strong: After he's resurrected and de-aged by the Goodwins, Jimmy's strength takes an inordinate leap even for a man in his physical prime. He almost punches through a steel door in the first episode. Being another of Otto's experiments, Alexa also has Super-Strength, which she puts to good use in the finale by taking down Connor's thugs.
• Came Back Wrong: Connor's failed attempts to replicate the resurrection process turns them into rabid killers with Super-Strength.
• Delicate and Sickly: Mary is terminally ill with cancer, however, because of her mentally-off genius brother, Otto, she goes so far as to play god and revive a person to fight her cancer. When the plot starts, she's only starting to feel the effects and still insists on working, but they're quickly subdued by Jimmy's blood transfusions (which eventually cure her completely).
• Dirty Cops:
  • Duvall's partner and boss in the FBI were committing bank robberies and using their position to hinder the investigation. They had Jimmy killed when he accidentally discovered them committing a crime and would have done the same to Duvall.
  • Jimmy had to resign from the police force due to a major corruption and abuse of power scandal. He's always claimed he did it to protect the city.
• Dungeon Bypass: When Jimmy is unable to break down a steel door, he instead breaks through the back wall.
• Everything Is Online: Since he never really leaves his home, Otto is usually used as a problem-fixer by using his computer skills to manipulate technology miles away. He's been shown "hacking" into police cams, mechanical cranes, or anything else really if the plot requires it.
• The Face: Mary for Otto. It's public knowledge that Otto is behind the technology of Looking Glass, but Mary is the CEO of the company, as Otto is unable to even talk to the public.
• Face–Heel Turn: After Mary finds out about the terrible experiments Otto was doing to try to cure, and how casually he was disposing of his failed human test subjects, she turns on him and calls him a monster. This causes Otto to snap, destroy Looking Glass and join Connor. He ends up regretting it by the end and orchestrates both of their deaths in order to atone.
• False Friend:
  • Duval's old FBI partner pretended to be his friend for years, despite the fact he was actually corrupt and had been sabotaging his cases for years, and even killed Duval's father when he figured it out.
  • Connor is one to Mary, she relies on him to take care of Otto and her company if her illness ends up killing her, but he is only interested in Otto as a potential moneymaker.
• Fountain of Youth: The 75-year-old Jimmy Pritchard is given a "second chance" when he is de-aged to his 35-year-old self via Looking Glass technology that involves him bathing in a Healing Vat. With the catch that he needs to come back into the Healing Vat for a couple of hours everyday or his body will start to fall apart. He's not the first person this has happened to either, just the most successful due to his unique genes.
• Friends with Benefits: Mary and Connor don't have a romantic relationship, but do occasionally sleep together simply to relieve sexual tension.
• My Grandson, Myself: The reborn Jimmy pretends to be his own bastard son to his family, as a pretense to try to reconnect with them as a Long-Lost Relative.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Otto grows increasingly jealous of Mary and Jimmy's growing relationship and starts to resent Jimmy for taking her attention away from him.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the final episode, Alexa has a change of heart and helps Mary and Jimmy, saving Jimmy's life by letting him bathe in her Healing Vat after his got broken.
• He Knows Too Much: Jimmy is killed by his son's corrupt FBI partner when he figures his scheme, and they kill him to keep him quiet. Unfortunately for them, he comes Back from the Dead and manages to expose their corrupt schemes.
• Heroic BSoD: Otto goes into this state every year on the anniversary of his and Mary's parents' death.
• I Banged Your Mom: A rare case of "I banged your dad". Joan Solodar taunts Duval by rubbing her affair with Jimmy in his face and how Jimmy used to call Duval's mom from her bed.
  Joan: Your dad called her, though, on those nights he wasn't gonna get home. He made those calls from my bed.
• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • Sheriff Pritchard never made any apologies for what he did to keep his city safe, even at his trial.
  • Otto has this attitude regarding the amoral experiments he conducted in order to find a cure for Mary's cancer.
• Internal Reveal: Duval ends up finding out Jimmy is actually his resurrected dad midway through the season, although he only believes it after Mary explains it to him.
• Journey to Find Oneself: Mary goes back to her homeland in the finale in an attempt to figure out what she wants in her life after Otto's death and the destruction of Looking Glass.
• The Stinger: The show ends showing Mary working at a kid's center named after her brother when she suddenly gets a message on a tablet from Otto who apparently uploaded his consciousness to the cloud.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Otto has such a relationship with his twin sister Mary. He was an incredibly introverted but brilliant child, to the point that he invented his own language to share with her and only spoke to other people through Mary. This dynamic continued into adulthood, so when she is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he goes to extreme lengths to find a cure for her.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Despite being the CEO of one of the world's largest companies, Mary doesn't have any employers assisting her in dealing with Jimmy whenever he asks for her help in solving his cases, she always does it personally. Even when it involves simply driving him around.
• Malevolent Mutilation: The Monster of the Week of "Palimpsest" is a evil plastic surgeon who performs unwilling body modification on prostitutes. His thugs also have so much body modification that they look like literal monsters, complete with horns and elf ears.
• The Mole: Mary's secretary Alexa is revealed to be a mole for Connor, although she actually likes Mary and spies on her unwillingly, since Alexa is actually one of Otto's failed experiments and is dependant on Connor's technology to keep herself alive, as well as the promise that he will do the same to her aging husband.
• Monster of the Week: Every episode has a "criminal of the week" for Jimmy and Duvall to catch, with the exception for the final episode.
• Mr. Fanservice: The young, de-aged Jimmy is a Hunk that is constantly shirtless or naked when he's at a Healing Vat.
• Ms. Fanservice
  • Mary is a Head-Turning Beauty that frequently dresses up in fancy but practical clothing, but still has a few fanservice moments, like the opening of "Scratch That Glitch" which has a gratuitous scene of Mary strutting around her bedroom in her underwear as she gets ready, with plenty of close ups of her body as she gets dressed.
  • Girl of the Week Jilly (played by Taylor Cole) has most of her screentime clad in only her underwear.
• Never Suicide: Jimmy's killers purposely try to make his death look like a suicide, by drenching him with beer and throwing him off a bridge. His granddaughter is the only one who thinks he didn't do it.
• Nice Girl: Mary always sees the best in people, always tries to give Jimmy good advice in dealing with his family and tries to use her company to make the world a better place.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Goodwins needed a lot of power to resurrect Jimmy and caused a major blackout when they overtaxed the power grid. As a result, two very dangerous killers escaped from prison and are on the loose.
• No-Sell: Jimmy tries to use his strength to break through a wall like he did once before but this time the wall is solid brick and he just bounces off.
• No Social Skills: Otto is implied to have some severe form of autism that makes it very hard for him to socialize. Until he was nine years old, he never spoke to anyone except his sister, and even then only in a language he invented called Twinspeak. While he has improved significantly since then, he still avoids speaking to anyone but Mary and Arthur, and part of the reason Mary is willing to go so far to fight her cancer is because she knows he'll shut down completely without her.
• Oh, Crap!: Jimmy is having the time of his (new) life when he realizes that the corruption in the FBI might go further than just his son's partner and he might have just sent Duvall to his death.
• Papa Wolf: The first thing Jimmy does after he is resurrected is head over to his son in order to warn him that he might be in danger. Later he has to go back into the resurrection tank right away or he will die a second time but his son is in danger so he instead races to save him.
• Police Brutality: Jimmy has no problem torturing a prisoner for information and is implied to have done worse when he was sheriff.
• Police Procedural: In exchange for donating his blood to Mary, Jimmy requests the Goodwin's help in letting him be the town's "unofficial" sheriff and they set him up to be Duval's consultant and partner in the FBI.
• Post-Coital Collapse: In "Palimpsest", we see Mary gasping softly before rolling off lover as they finish having sex, each wrapped up in their own Modesty Bedsheet and have a post-coital pillow talk revolving around their companies.
• The Queenpin: Joan Solodar, the Monster of the Week in "May Old Acquaintance Be Forgot" is a female drug lord that used to be a past lover of Jimmy back in his days as Sheriff. In the past, she eluded him by pretending to be the abused girlfriend of a drug lord whom she killed in self-defense, but in actuality, she was taking over his business and Jimmy unwittingly helped her. He takes her down in the present, with Duval's help.
• Really Gets Around: Jimmy used to sleep around so much his family readily believes him when he comes up with the excuse his reborn self is his son and a Long-Lost Relative.
• The Resenter: "Scratch That Glitch" has one of Looking Glass old coders attempt to kill Mary because he resents her having fired him due to his anti-social behavior.
• Retargeted Lust: Jimmy and Mary deal with their Unresolved Sexual Tension by finding sexual relief elsewhere, Jimmy with prostitutes and Mary in her Friends with Benefits relationship with Connor. They both show jealousy once they find out about this.
• Serial Killer: Asher Davis, the Monster of the Week of "From Darkness, the Sun" is a rich brat who has gotten away with killing people for sport due to his rich father covering up for him.
• Sex God:
  • Mary says the procedure has made the new young Jimmy has also made him "super potent", which he eagerly tests by hooking up with a prostitute.
  • In "May Old Acquaintance Be Forgot", Jimmy says his old hook-up Joan Solodar was a Sex Goddess which is a big part of the reason he let her go water she murdered her drug lord boyfriend (Unknown to him, she was actually taking over the business).
• The Sheriff: Jimmy was the Sheriff of King County and despite being forced to resign in disgrace more than fifteen years ago, he still considers himself to be the sheriff.
• Shoulders-Up Nudity: Whenever we see Jimmy naked in the healing vat, the camera stays above his waist, with Scenery Censor or Censor Shadow occasionally covering him up.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: Jilly finds herself in one after she's kidnapped by a crazy surgeon that wants to modify her body and marry her. Jimmy manages to rescue her before anything happens.
• Struggling Single Mother: Gender-Inverted with Duval, who struggles of handling his job as an FBI Agent as well as raising his daughter by himself.
• Supernaturally Young Parent: The show revolves around a 75-year-old man who is brought Back from the Dead and de-aged by an experimental treatment to his 35-year-old self. This results in him actually being younger than his own son, a 40-something single father of a teenage girl.
• Super-Strength: After he's resurrected and de-aged by the Goodwins, Jimmy's strength takes an inordinate leap even for a man in his physical prime. He almost punches through a steel door in the first episode.
• Toplessness from the Back
  • Used in the pilot, along with Shoulders-Up Nudity when Jimmy's prostitute takes off her Modesty Towel to seduce him.
  • There's a brief shot of Mary's bare back when she's finishing having sex with Connor "Palimpsest".
  • Used in "When You Have to Go There, They Have to Take You In" in The Reveal shot with Alexa dropping her robe to enter her own Healing Vat, showing an ugly scar in her back and revealing she was one of Otto's failed experiments in bringing people Back from the Dead.
• Transparent Tech: Transparent tech is used to emphasize how the protagonist's future environment after being reborn is different from what he's used to. (Note that his home has a CRT television.)
• Undressing the Unconscious: Jimmy always wakes up fully dressed in bed after his time in the Healing Vat. Mary's implied to be the one that dresses him up, given the Goodwin's have no assistants who deal with Jimmy.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Jimmy and Mary have tons of sexual tension in their interactions, not helped that he constantly has to be naked around her in the Healing Vat and they have to be in close proximity when transfusing blood. The series still ends with them having nothing more than a chaste kiss.
• Would Hurt a Child: In the final episodes Connor and Otto kidnap Jimmy's grandaughter Gracie in order to conduct an autopsy to get their hands in her unique genes that allow for the resurrection process. Jimmy and Duval attempt to rescue her, but fail but Otto ultimately becomes so horrified by what he almost did to Gracie that he ends up saving her before being Driven to Suicide and taking down Connor along with him.
• Taking You with Me: In the finale Otto realizes he has become a monster and is Driven to Suicide but decides to save Gracie by commanding Arthur to take her back to her dad via autopilot and then orders the plane doors to open so he and Connor would be sucked out to plummet to their deaths. The next time we see them, Connor he has been impaled by a tree branch while Otto lies dead on the floor next to him.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Duvall quickly realizes that the strange man that approached him looks and behaves very much like his late father. Duvall starts to suspect that the man is his half-brother from one of the many affairs Jimmy had.
• Your Days Are Numbered
  • Mary kicks off the plot by getting terminal cancer, prompting Otto to start a bunch of amoral experiments in order to cure her, which he actually succeeds with Jimmy's blood transfusions eventually curing her.
  • In the finale, Jimmy only has hours to live after Otto locks up his Healing Vat. He ends up surviving in the end by using Alexa's.

---