Movie Box Review

In comparison to ABC's GOOD CHRISTIAN BELLES, Glee is as macho as The Expendables--if Vin Diesel and The Rock had joined the cast.  There's female-skewing, and then there's having the remote send an electric shock up the arm of any guy who tries to tune in.  If they did an episode of this series and replaced the actresses with the cast of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, it's not clear that anyone would notice.  I'm surprised they haven't already announced that the show's repeats will be airing on Bravo.  Oh, I could keep going... but you get the point. 

And there's nothing wrong with a show that skews narrowly, something I say as a devoted fan of Fringe, Treme and Friday Night Lights.  I'm in the group that thinks The Wire may have been the best series that's ever aired anywhere, and for all its acclaim, no one ever watched it.   The audience for extreme campiness may be delighted with Good Christian Belles, and if there are enough of them, ABC will have a hit--in which case, they'll be more than happy to ignore those of us who find the show hard to endure. 

Based on the novel by Kim Gatlin (entitled "Good Christian Bitches," which was the series title until morals groups found out about it), Good Christian Belles tells the story of Amanda Vaughn (Leslie Bibb), a rich mean girl when she grew up in Dallas, who then moved with her high school quarterback husband to LA.  There she had 2 kids and a more peaceful life, which abruptly comes to an end when her husband dies scandalously, having lost all their money, among other things.  Penniless, Amanda and her children move back home, where they have no choice but to live with her mother (Annie Potts), and Amanda has to get a job.  Worse, Amanda has to reacquaint herself with the girls she terrorized in high school:  Carlene (Kristen Chenoweth), a shining example of the plastic surgery road to success; Cricket (Miriam Shor), a tightly-wound businesswoman who doesn't know her husband's secrets; Sharon (Jennifer Aspen), who's put on a few pounds; and the only semi-bearable one, Heather (Marisol Nichols), a real estate agent who believes in the possibiilty that Amanda's changed over the years. 

The pilot is basically a succession of scenes where the girls clownishly and repeatedly attempt to drive Amanda and her family out of Dallas (while adopting butter-wouldn't-melt-in-their-mouths attitudes to her face), while Amanda shows her pluck and gumption in refusing to be intimidated.  As the title indicates, there are endless displays of the ladies' hypocrisy in being churchgoing Christians while relentlessly scheming to ruin her life.  Writer Robert Harling was previously known as the author of Steel Magnolias, Soapdish and the script for The First Wives Club, so it's not like there's any surprise at the broad, unsubtle tone of the humor here, interspersed with occasional "heart."  (The show is also produced by Darren Star, of Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place fame.)  

Bibb is the only one in the cast who gets to play a human, and she's an appealing actress.  But givng Chenoweth a role like this is basically like handing over a fifth of bourbon and the keys to the family car; Chenoweth can be wonderful when she stays under control (as on West Wing and--sometimes--Pushing Daisies), but clearly she was cast here for her willingness to go over the top, which she does.  The rest of the cast mostly joins her; Alan Poul, who's directed episodes of Six Feet Under and Swingtown, is capable of eliciting nuance from his actors, but that wasn't the idea on this one.

Good Christian Belles is reminiscent of other extravagant ABC comedy-soaps like Big Shots and Dirty Sexy Money, neither of which found audiences.  Although the show's midseason scheduling hasn't been announced, certainly the network has any number of places to launch it, behind Desperate Housewives, Dancing With the Stars, the Modern Family/Happy Endings hour, or Grey's Anatomy.  Whether people will choose to stick with it is another question, but to be fair, Good Christian Belles isn't a mess or a failure, exactly--it seems to be exactly the show the network and producers wanted to make.  I guarantee this:  within 15 minutes you'll know if you're in love or can't escape fast enough.

Last night ABC's REVENGE became the first of the network serialized dramas to return from its long midseson hiatus.  Let's see how the show managed its 2012 arrival.

WHERE WE LEFT OFF:  Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp), who's really Amanda Clarks, continued her plot to bring down the super-rich Grayson family, headed by matriarch Victoria (Madeleine Stowe), and everyone else who played a part in framing Emily/Amanda's beloved father for treasonous involvement with terrorists.  In doing so, she has to cope with her growing feelings for Victoria's son Daniel (Joshua Bowman), the arrival in town of stripper/murderess/real-Emily/fake-Amanda (Margarita Levieva)--just go with it--who's hooked up with fake-Emily/real-Amanda's other crush Jack (Nick Wechsler), and the local sociopath Tyler (Ashton Holmes). 

WHERE WE ARE:  Revenge, like many other soaps before it, felt the need to come back from a hiatus with a bang.  This sadly led to a hasty and unsatisfying conclusion to the Tyler storyline, as he was instantly transformed from a seemingly charming sociopath in the Strangers On a Train mode to a routine off-his-meds psychopath waving a gun around.

It was one of those episodes that began with a Big Dramatic Moment (Tyler pointing the gun at Emily and the rest of the cast assembled for Daniel's birthday), followed by a "2 Days Earlier" title-card that meant the episode took 53 minutes to get us back to where we started.  This was particularly unfortunate because just a half-hour earlier on ABC, Happy Endings had punctured this very cliche with a "45 Seconds Earlier" sequence.  Happy Endings, incidentally, also pulled off what Friends With Benefits bungled last summer, having a metaparody rom-com-within-the-show (tagline:  "There's Like, There's Love... and Then There's, Like, Love") and eating it too.

All the patient work that Revenge had done for weeks, setting Tyler up as a wild card who could put a wrench in Emily's plans on his way to Crazytown, was wasted, as the show had to summon up a bespectacled doctor brother for Tyler to talk him into putting the gun down (Tyler never realized that Emily had unloaded the gun anyway, because she is sooo much smarter than anyone else).  In addition, spending the bulk of the episode dealing with wacko Tyler meant that none of the other storylines on the show were able to advance much.

Revenge, which has had middling ratings thus far (a 2.5 rating last night was enough to beat reruns on CBS and NBC), is nearing the end of its initial Emily-centric story arc, as the show gets back to its An Entire Summer Earlier flashforward that started the first episode, and then apparently changes direction.  The show's real challenge will be to make that work, but its 2012 return was more of a stall than a step forward.

Visually, PAN AM is a treat.  Just to be clear, this is the primetime series set in the mid-1960s that doesn't feature Don Draper or Playboy bunny tails.  While no series could possibly surpass the fetishistic accuracy of Mad Men (even though the Pan Am pilot is set in 1963, one of the songs on the soundtrack was composed for the Doctor Dolittle movie in 1967--it would give Matthew Weiner a coronary), Pan Am has a sleek, elegant look filled with terrific period detail; watching it, you feel like those plane sets could actually take off.  With Tommy Schlamme behind the camera (he's done all of Aaron Sorkin's shows, among others), Pan Am also moves rapidly and absorbingly through its mid-air paces.

In the dramatic region, the show hits more air pockets.  The script is by Jack Orman, who was showrunner of ER for years and has more recently written for Men Of A Certain Age, but who has less of a track record as a series creator.  The storylines are what one of the old Airport movies would have been like if no planes ever crashed:  mostly, a lot of tangled stewardess romances.  So we get the gorgeous Laura (Margot Robbie) who ran out on her own society wedding to make a life for herself; Laura's sister Kate (Kelli Garner), who's always been jealous of Laura and none too thrilled she has to share the spotlight with sis again; Colette (Karine Vanasse), who's French and unlucky in love; and Maggie, played by the cast's biggest name--Christina Ricci, in her TV series debut--but the sketchiest character, a political liberal who puts on stewardess garb for the sake of world travel.  (At least initially, the 2 pilot characters don't make much impression.)  Strangely mixed in with these suds is a story about one of the girls being recruited by an intelligence service to carry on mid-air espionage (John LeCarre it's not).

There's certainly potential to make something more of Pan Am's premise; a bit of dialogue toward the end suggests that behind their Barbie-doll exteriors, we should see these stewardesses as indicative of the new directions women will take as the 1960s unfold.  For now, though, it's pretty weak, uncompelling stuff.  While it's understandable that ABC wasn't interested in tackling the subtle, difficult tone of a Mad Men, at this point Pan Am doesn't even have the vitality of The Playboy Club's melodramatic pilot.  Luckily, the show's visual glamour and brisk pace should keep it aloft for a while as it tries to find itself.

ABC has given Pan Am a good spot on the runway, following Desperate Housewives on Sunday nights.  While it certainly won't touch NBC's football in overall 18-49s--assuming there's football this fall--it should appeal to the Housewives audience (the promos will look like a dream), and although Mitch Metcalf's Sunday projection shows it losing a chunk of that crowd and falling behind the aging CSI: Miami in the timeslot, it has a chance to do better--if it can figure out its own aerodynamics.

Soap operas are a staple of primetime TV, and in recent years especially on ABC.  More often than not, though, they tend to come either encrusted with silliness and self-mockery (Desperate Housewives, Dirty Sexy Money, Big Shots) or mixed with other genres (the Shonda Rhimes medical shows, The Gates, Rookie Blue).  There haven't been all that many all-out, unapologetic examples of the genre lately; but the network's new series REVENGE wears its suds proudly and with some potential.  

ABC probably won't be mentioning "The Count of Monte Cristo" much in its Revenge promos, but that's the acknowledged inspiration.  Emily (Emily VanCamp) is a mysterious, wealthy, beautiful young woman who's arrived in the Hamptons to win the heart of the local prince (Daniel, played by Josh Bowman), son of the town's matriarch Victoria (Madeline Stowe).  Through the course of the pilot, we learn that Emily was once Amanda, daughter of a trusted employee of Victoria and her husband Conrad (Henry Czerny) who was framed by them, his life ruined to keep Victoria and Conrad out of jail.  Emily/Amanda's real mission is to destroy them all.  Naturally, there are other complications, like the one person in town who knows who Emily really is (Gabriel Mann), and the boy young Amanda loved, now a man Emily should avoid (Nick Wechsler). 

A show like this is trickier than it looks, treading a fine line between twisty drama and arch self-parody (when Victoria herself wants revenge on someone, she has them buy a Van Gogh rather than a Monet).  Writer Mike Kelley has an uneven record, with the underrated (and virtually unseen) Swingtown to his credit, but also the almost unwatchable The Beautiful Life.  He keeps his narrative balls in the air smoothly enough in the Revenge pilot, establishing a lot of basic relationships and conflicts, although a flash-forward prologue is awkward--it provides a big bang for the pre-title sequence, but probably won't be picked up again for many episodes, if not the entire season. 

The polished look and style are in part attributable to pilot director Philip Noyce, whose films include Salt and Clear and Present Danger, as well as the excellent Showtime series Brotherhood.  Noyce and Kelley have also cast the leads well.  VanCamp was one of the most engaging presences on ABC's Brothers & Sisters, and she handily conveys Emily/Amanda's mix of steel and vulnerability, while Stowe, who hasn't been seen often enough in recent years, makes a formidable adversary.  (The men in the show seem more interchangeable, although Czerny is a strong actor who'll no doubt get the best out of what the material gives him.)  At least in the pilot--beware of series episodes with lower budgets--the production values are suitably top-notch for the swank millieu.

Revenge has an interesting spot on ABC's fall schedule.  Mitch Metcalf's Wednesday projection has it in 3rd place in its timeslot, but if it catches on, there's potential for more.  It follows the network's Modern Family/Happy Endings hour, and its competition consists of the original CSI and the last remaining Law & Order, two geriatric shows that have both just lost their leading men; Revenge should at least nab a chunk of the women.  (It's not what you'd call a "guy's show," although Emily VanCamp isn't exactly hard on the eyes.)  If the series can manage to tell compelling stories without lurching into cliche--well, the TV version of that old adage is that winning your timeslot is the best... you know.  

Deadline reported today that ABC Studios has signed Jesse Martin to a talent hold deal that, although it could end up with him being cast in a different ABCS project, is largely in place so he'll be available for a redeveloped version of Marc Cherry's HALLELUJAH pilot, for which Cherry is writing a new script.  That makes it one of the season's select busted pilots that, like the plague victim in Monty Python & the Holy Grail, can protest "I'm not dead yet!" as they try to cart it off.

In its current incarnation, Hallelujah isn't quite distinctive enough.  Cherry, of course, is the creator of Desperate Housewives, and even though this show is set in a small town rather than a suburb, it has a shiff of that series and a similar look (feature director Michael Apted directed the pilot, and although his credits include Bond and Narnia movies, along with HBO's Rome, visually Hallelujah is very bland).  It even more resembles some recent ABC failures like Happy Town and Eastwick that tried to mix a traditional soap story--evil powerful family dominates a town, a few rebels plot against them--with the supernatural.  In the case of Hallelujah, this added ingredient is religion.

Hallelujah, Tennessee's evil patriarch is Del Roman (Terry O'Quinn, the beloved John Locke of Lost, here very much in Man In Black mode).  He has a hot young wife (Arielle Kebbel) and he owns the distillery that used to belong to the Turner family--until that patriarch died under mysterious circumstances.  The remaining Turner family is headed by recovering alcoholic Rye (Donal Logue), whose marriage with Ruth (Frances O'Connor) is shadowed not only by that tragedy, but by an accident 2 years ago that caused brain damage to their young son.  Even as Rye tries to figure out how to unseat the ruthless Del, both the Romans and the Turners have nubile teen children who, the pilot makes clear, will soon be involved in a Montague/Capulet romance. 

Into all of this comes Jared (Martin), a drifter who has a prison record but also healing powers, and who makes it clear that he won't tolerate those who do others wrong.  (In what may be a piece of in-joke casting, Del's former housekeeper, now taking an honored place in his home, is played by Della Reese, former star of Touched By An Angel.)  Illicit romances and murders will litter the storyline, but the main conflict of the series would be Good (Jared and Rye) vs Evil (Del). 

Cherry is a thorough professional, and Hallelujah is well paced and absorbing enough, but there's nothing particularly memorable going on.  None of the characters have any shading--they're either wearing white hats or black hats--and since we know God is on Jared's side, there's not a lot of tension.  What does work in the pilot is the cast:  Martin, O'Quinn, Logue and O'Connor are all excellent--but ABC let the cast options lapse, and only Martin and O'Quinn are likely to be courted for a new version. 

It'll be interesting to see how things develop with Hallelujah.  The network's relationship with Cherry is an important one, but he'll continue to do new development along with the additional Hallelujah script, and Martin would be a valuable piece of talent even if he's ultimately cast into a different project.  Based on its original pilot, Hallelujah will need more than prayer to make its way onto ABC's schedule.

RINGER has both a high concept and enough plot for 3 ordinary series, but its main selling point is that it marks the return of Sarah Michelle Gellar to series television.  Hard as it is for some of us to believe, it's been 14 years since Buffy Summers started keeping the world safe from vampires and other monsters, establishing (via Genius-in-Charge Joss Whedon) a tone and subset of genre that's only grown more popular in the ensuing years.  Gellar is a genuine TV star, and in Ringer she's as beset by melodrama (everything but the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end, to quote All About Eve) as the Slayer used to be.

Where to start?  In the pilot script by the team of Eric Charmelo and Nicole Snyder (they were previously writers on Supernatural), Gellar plays Bridget Cafferty, former stripper, former hooker, former addict, currently about to testify against a vicious Native American mob boss at his murder trial.  At the last minute, convinced the FBI (in the person of Nestor Carbonell--Lost's Richard Alpert--as Victor Machado) can't protect her, Bridget bolts.  Her destination is the Hamptons, where her identical twin sister Siobhan Marx (also Gellar) has an estate, possibly just down the beach from the evil snobs of Revenge.  Bridget and Siobhan haven't seen each other in years--something unspecified in their past is Bridget's fault--but Siobhan takes her in.  Except... almost immediately afterwards, Siobhan vanishes, an apparent suicide.  So Bridget decides that the most effective way for her to disappear herself is to take over Siobhan's identity.

We are, believe it or not, just starting.  (For those who think pilots can have spoilers:  Spoiler Alert ahead.)  Conveniently, Siobhan never told her husband Andrew (Ioan Gruffudd) that Bridget exists, so although he senses there's something odd about his "wife," he has no reason to suspect a substitution.  Nor does Siobhan's bratty teen (and coke user) stepdaughter Juliet (Caitlin Custer), or Siobhan's best friend Gemma (Tara Summers).  Gemma is more concerned that her husband Henry (Kristoffer Polaha) is having an affair--which he is, with Siobhan.  Oh, and Siobhan is/was--guess what?--pregnant.  And the FBI is still after Bridget.  And the guy Bridget thought was out to kill her?  Maybe not.  And I'm not even giving away the pilot's final twist.

All of this, mind you, unfolds in about 40 minutes of screen time.  Ringer is stylishly ripe fun; it doesn't stop to wonder whether it's making any sense.  (The pilot is directed by Richard Shepard, who did the pilot for Ugly Betty; he seems to have rented every mirror in the general vicinity to repeatedly underscore the dualities and reflections in the plot.)  Even as you're thinking how silly it all is, you can't help wondering what's going to happen next.

A crazy story like this needs an anchor, and Gellar knows her way around bizarre plotlines.  The pilot, though, currently takes itself too seriously, and thus wastes one of its biggest assets--in Gellar, they have a champion at the art of wisecracking in the course of heavy drama, and with a show that could desperately use a dose of sardonic humor, the writers need to make use of that skill if the series is to keep rolling along.  The other actors don't get to do much more in the pilot than establish who their characters are--they seem to be hanging on for dear life--but in the course of episodes, one would think talented actors like Carbonell, Gruffudd and Polaha will make more of an impression.