What a difference a week makes. I watched the second episode of MY OWN WORST ENEMY and I must have missed some important information in the pilot. Are Edward's handlers going to keep sending him on missions knowing every time he'll turn into milquetoast Henry? Really? I figured Edward and Henry were going to have to hide that information, not just whine about it to the boss.
So I'm back to agreeing with the conventional wisdom: it's a ludicrous premise. But that's not the reason I won't be tuning in next week.
The second episode -- the title of the episode even -- deals with Henry's issues about Edward sleeping with his wife. I have no arguments there: these are important issues. In the similar series JEKYLL, even going near the wife and family was the uncrossable line for the mild-mannered doctor. In ENEMY, super-spy Edward seems to be having wild sex with wifey pretty much every night.
Which quite properly bothers Henry. Though, oddly, he's not bothered that a dangerous stranger is sleeping with his wife, the woman he's supposed to love. He makes no effort to warn her, or whisk her away to safety. Though he tries to devise a password-protection system with some doctor he knew twenty years ago, he makes no such attempt with his own wife and family. In fact, he doesn't seem very bothered by Edward's presence in the family home, or bed, at all.
He's only bothered that the stranger is better at sex than he is.
Talk about your breathtaking level of self-involvement. Did no one anywhere down the line on this show (or up the line) find that a teensy bit disturbing? Not to mention fatal to the premise of the show: we have to like Henry for the show to work. Edward is already a cold-blooded assassin -- who's gonna cry if he gets whacked? Henry -- even if "unreal" -- is the one in danger of losing the real life and real connections he's built. Henry is the one in danger of getting erased.
If he's just another preening jerk? Feh. I'm done.
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