If you’re not watching anything else at 10/9c tonight, why not check out THE GATES on ABC?  It’s a perfectly okay way to pass an hour, and might actually surprise you when you find yourself interested to see what happens next.  In the pilot (from ABC), the Monohan family moves into a new home in an exclusive community called The Gates; things become complicated when the father, the new chief of police, must investigate neighbors in a missing-persons case his first day on the job.To say much more about the pilot would be to give a lot of the basic story away, but it goes without saying that ABC is marketing the characters as having “discerning” tastes, and giving you the sense that what hides behind THE GATES isn’t necessarily a bunch of normal folks living their lives.  Marisol Nichols plays the formerly put-upon wife of a cop who is struggling with the fact that she had to leave her old life behind to face the unknown of THE GATES.  The Monohan family has a solid family chemistry that makes you think Sunday dinner at their house would be full of the normal family tension that everyone faces when stuck in cramped quarters with their mom, dad, sister and/or brother.  The neighbors that the first episode focuses on are well-formed, and I will say that I worry about Rhona Mitra being typecast.

When I read the pilot, I was not expecting a lot of the reveals that were coming, basically because I wasn’t sure what the show was trying to be about, but seeing it put to life on the screen was much more enjoyable than I was expecting (my favorite twist from the written pilot wasn’t include in the filmed pilot, so I’m definitely come back to see if they deal with it).  That’s not exactly the most supportive “go watch the show” kind of review that I might give a more solid series, but I think it’s the kind of summer fare that ABC should focus on and it’s the perfect way to pass the time coming down from the excitement of 9PM shows on other networks.