NOTORIOUS – ABC’s “Notorious” stars Sepideh Moafi as Megan Byrd, Ryan Guzman as Ryan Mills, Kate Jennings Grant as Louise Herrick, Piper Perabo as Julia George, Daniel Sunjata as Jake Gregorian, Aimeé Teegarden as Ella Benjamin, J. August Richards as Bradley Gregorian and Kevin Zegers as Oscar Keaton. (ABC/Bob D’Amico)

NOTORIOUS, starring Piper Perabo and Daniel Sunjata, is hoping to fill the void left on the schedule, and in your heart, by the pregnancy-delayed SCANDAL (coming at midseason).  It fails miserably, giving us a show where, sure, they talk at you really fast, attempting to recreate the pattern of speech delivery that Shondaland shows have been doing well forever, but we get nothing substantial by way of character development or a real reason to invest in their world.

Even at the lowest points across SCANDAL’s varied ABC career, it has been an entertaining show with solid performances and, more often than not, life or death stakes. And while most characters are wretched people on SCANDAL, having all killed someone at least once in some way, the lawyer (Sunjata as Jake) and TV news producer (Perabo as Julia) shown in NOTORIOUS somehow come off as worse people, and I don’t see myself rooting for them to “succeed” at whatever they’re trying to succeed in doing.  The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be anything at stake except that these spoiled rich people might lose their power or money?

Perhaps when the surprisingly serialized series (which I wasn’t expecting) moves into future episodes, they’ll delve more deeply into why we should care, but I’m afraid to say I won’t stick around long enough to see that happen.