“I was Charles freaking in Charge.”
“Let’s agree to never do anything worthwhile ever again. I’ll have ‘Ferg-face’ and you’ll have ‘Whoa’ — forever and ever.”
There’s a line we commonly use here when we review a brand new series: pilots are hard. And it’s true. So much context to establish, characters to force a connection with, so many ways that first impression of a storyworld can go wrong and turn an audience off. Building something special within the ever-withering allotted time for a show on ad-supported television can be a vexing, horrifying, story-crushing experience. It’s a cutthroat world and we don’t envy any of them the task.
But I have never watched a show where the people involved obviously hated their jobs so much.
Backstory for those of you who don’t watch Gilmore Girl re-runs every day (I’ve seen the entire season about three times in the past two years) and aren’t particularly in the know of all things ABC Family: a while back Joseph “Whoa” Lawrence and Melissa “Explains It All” Joan-Hart starred in an ABC original movie called My Fake Fiance that shattered all kinds of ratings records for the network. Mind you, this is a network just recently burgeoning with original series (Secret Life of the American Teenager, Make It or Break It, etc) and, just a few years ago, was the home mostly to just Full House reruns. I’m just saying the bar probably wasn’t all that high. Viewers ate the movie up and remarked at the chemistry shared between the two leads. So ABC Family decided to capitalize on the stalling careers of the beached sit-com talent. The press release even used the word “manny” to make sure everyone knew how hip and smart they were.
What they came up with was a derivative plot driven by cliche sit-com tropes (you could have made bingo cards) and lies. So many lies.
Read more »
