Pilot Screener Reviewlets - CW Dramas

- Hart of Dixie: some of the small town / southern quirkiness was, blissfully, leeched out between script and screen. It's still there, but BlueBell is now way more tolerable. The biggest problem here is Rachel Bilson. I love her to death, but, honey, I just don't buy you as a world class surgeon who doesn't have bedside manner. You exude bedside manner... at least of the candy striper variety. Just not, y'know... brilliant doctor. Putting that aside, especially because the show is about the soap and the town and not Summer Roberts, MD, there's a charm to this show that I, unexpectedly, might sample more of.

- Ringer: SMG is back. You're either going to watch it or not, you don't need to know my opinion. Stuff cut for time from the script, mostly in the immediate post-Siobhan disappearance stuff where Bridget first decides to try and become her twin sister. Long scenes became little visual shorthand, and it works. Love the use of mirrors throughout. It was a CBS show, as you all know... and as that it feels very different from everything else on CW. Older, a little more mature, a little less obsessed with romantic soap. I'm still intrigued. It's still a big buy that the identical twins were so estranged that Siobhan didn't tell her husband that Bridget even existed. But, y'know, that's the deal with premise pilots.

- Secret Circle: still a work in progress, if you ask me. I stand by my "I will see what the show is come episode 4" stance from the script review. There are a lot of characters, few of which really jump out, so hopefully, like in Vampire Diaries, they will claw their way to the forefront as we get to know them better. I like Britt Robertson (residual Life UneXpected feelings), who is really the only character we get a feel for... I'm not loving Thomas Dekker. I didn't feel the smoldering sexual tension you need between them (or between him and his character's actual girlfriend). There's a truly pretty, magical moment between their characters in the middle of the woods, when they make water droplets rise. Just gorgeous. The was also a lot cut from the script I read, particularly in the back half, and it results in a far better, open-ended semi-cliffhanger than the script had (where the circle of witches, like, came together and chanted around a bonfire or something, all their problems solved and personal issues put to bed, IIRC). I also have a bit of a fear that the show is just going to be a carbon copy of TVD, minus the danger inherent in vampires. It needs different tricks up its sleeve.

Not yet watched: Awakening, Cooper & Stone, Danni Lowinski, Heavenly (which I hear would have been picked up, except for the whole Ringer thing)