Pilot Script Review - The Selection

THE SELECTION
Network: CW
Written By: Elizabeth Craft & Sarah Fain (based on the novel by Kiera Cass)
Draft Date: January 19, 2012
Pages: 61

Disclaimer!

YES (with a couple quibbles / questions / reservations / etc).

Guys, I'm in love with this project in a way that I didn't expect to be. Its logline (300 years in the future, America doesn't exist anymore, but there's a caste system of 8 levels and a monarchy and potential future Queens are picked in a lottery, one from each of the 35 Districts Sections of the post-America country, and enter a competition to become the Queen) is a little long and eye-roll-y and I've read way too much of the glut of dystopian YA lit that's been published post-Hunger Games (and can I get a SQUEE!!!! that the first movie is barely a month away?) for this to ever really register as fully original.

And, y'know what? It's not fully original. But that doesn't mean it doesn't work. And it's the first attempt to adapt dystopian YA to a weekly television series format, so it'll wind up feeling very different than the Hunger Games' movies. Whereas the Hunger Games is an annualized totalitarian method of oppression via a reality TV version of Battle Royale, The Selection is more like The Bachelor.

Really.

Any time there's a Prince in Illeá, 35 girls are chosen to compete to become his bride.

See? The Bachelor.

But there's so much more to The Selection than that.

First off, our lead character, the semi-eye-rollingly-named America, is a "Five." In the caste system, that places America squarely in the middle. The Ones are the royal family. The Twos are super-duper wealthy. The Eights... they're mentally ill, homeless, and felons. So, things could be worse for America. She's a singer. Her mother plays the piano. Her sister, May, the violin. Her dad used to be a cobbler, but he's been injured. There's not much hope of upward mobility.

That's where The Selection comes in. You marry the prince... you become a One. You even make it to "The Elite," the final six girls in the competition for his heart... your family gets elevated to Two. That's kinda huge.

May is really, really interested in being Selected. America... not so much. She's fallen in love, you see.

With a Six.

*gasp*

His name is Aspen, and he's a waiter. And their love is pretty much illegal. They're saving up money to pay the fine for marrying between castes... and once they have it, they're gonna get hitched. Which will make America a Six, too (no idea if it's because he's the man in the relationship and you inherit your husband's caste... but that seems to make sense).

That isn't hugely important, though, because, of course, America is Selected (while performing at a party for local Two, 19-year old Jasmine Grantham (WINK, DOWNTON ABBEY), who is hoping / expecting to be Selected (there are undertones that become overtones that, even though The Selection is one of few ways to be upwardly mobile in this society, it's a rigged lottery and The Selected are more based on political ties and monetary needs).

So, of course, America bitches and moans until the people around her convince her that going and trying to win is really the only thing to do.

Yes, America is yet another YA female protagonist to whom things happened, and not someone who really acts that much. Sigh. Bella Swan. You set such a horrible template. Although, America's "fuck the caste system" attitude is quite attractive from a modern/real-world stand point.

In America's case, the convincing comes via Aspen enlisting in the Army without telling her (which means he's not allowed to marry or even have a girlfriend until his ten years are done... at which point his caste is elevated... to a Two! Wow, Illeá really respects their veterans... but, hey, there's a war going on, as always, and also a rebellion brewing so Aspen's chances are kind of terrible) and her family guilt-begging her into doing it for them (see above, re the family getting elevated to Two if she makes it to the final six).

And all of this is the set-up. The first act. I haven't even touched on the other competitors (pretty much all Twos and Threes, America is the only Five who was Selected in the who country), the gowns and designer shoes (America really stands out here with regards to her level of disinterest in these things) and Prince Maxon (instant love triangle) and Queen Amberly (OH MY GOD, THE QUEEN, SHE WINS, I CAN'T EVEN TELL YOU HOW MADE OF WIN SHE IS).

Oh, and the rebellion. There's that going on, too. So, danger.

Obviously, as it hasn't been published yet, I can't compare Craft & Fain's script to the novel. I don't know where the novel goes (though I certainly have more than serious suspicions based on the pilot). But I'm *SO EXCITED* to see this thing realized and on my television machine on a weekly basis.

My biggest question mark / quibble (beyond America's relative passivity at certain points and the limitations of not really getting to know too many of the other girls in the competition so most of them beyond chief competitor / presumptive winner / manipulative bitch Celeste seem like so many Red Shirts) is where Aspen winds up.

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Aspen winds up, unbeknownst to America, one of the newest royal guards at the Palace. I understand this as a way, perhaps the only way, to put the love triangle in an immediate front and center position. But it doesn't track for me, timing wise... as Aspen seems to have gone through basic training and been assigned in a matter of 96 hours. I mean, you can picture Aspen guarding Maxon at some point and it being fraught with love triangle tension, and America even finding out about Aspen's presence and being tempted to rekindle her love with him... which would be problematic for both of them in their new positions (her, because she's supposed to be competing for the prince's heart and certain parts of it are televised - though not all of it; him, because though there's a great reward if you survive being a soldier for 10 years, you apparently have to do it celibate and unattached).

But, really... cannot wait to see what happens next.

Pilot Script Review - Arrow

ARROW
Network: CW
Story By: Greg Berlanti & Marc Guggenheim
Teleplay By: Marc Guggenheim & Andrew Kreisberg
Draft Date: January 11, 2012
Pages: 60

Disclaimer!

"This city deserves a better class of criminal."

I keep contemplating that quote from Heath Ledger's The Joker in The Dark Knight when thinking about this script. But I'll get back to that.

At first blush, I was largely underwhelmed by Arrow. It's an origin story and, being a DC Comics character, it's both a fairly familiar one and one that doesn't inspire a ton of empathy. DC doesn't really do flawed or pitiable heroes the way Marvel does (*he says, remembering that as a boy he read both and currently reads neither, but always had a purile affinity of the unquestionable awe-striking heroics of Superman and Friends). Oliver Queen is a spoiled rich kid who got lost at sea with his massively wealthy CEO father, their head of security, and the girl Oliver was banging. Five years later, Oliver is rescued from an island in the South China Sea. Somehow, he survived (none of the others on the boat did). And he's been changed. He's strong, wily, and is on a mission to clean up Starling City (something we later learn is basically his father's dying wish). We go through the motions of meeting family members and friends and ex-lovers who used to know Oliver. He tries to convince them he's okay and is the same person, all the while crafting his secret identify (that he seems to have had in mind, but is only able to legitimize / begin to put into action when he and his best friend are kidnapped - ooh, conspiracy! - and he rescues himself while his best friend is supposedly but probably not unconscious).

The cast of characters are...
- Moira, overwhelmed mother
- Thea, younger sister, who was the only one who believed Oliver was still alive but is royally fucked up because of his five-year absence (because it's a CW show and it apparently needs a sexy female teenager who does drugs)
- Tommy, best friend and still a rich party boy
- Laurel, do-gooder attorney, Oliver's ex, the older sister of the girl who died in the boat accident (so... awkward...), and currently dating Tommy
- Walter, Moira's new husband and head of the Queen Consolidated conglomerate

Let's stop there. We meet Walter on page 8 and know he's with Moira shortly thereafter... so if you're smelling a Hamlet adaptation format, you'd be living in my olfactory senses as I read. And you'd be right. Except for the twist at the end that I won't spoil, but thankfully there was a twist and it's not a literal Hamlet adaptation of "uncle killed my father and married my wife and now there's something rotten in Denmark."

There are more characters, too, including Laurel's father who happens to be the detective on the trail of "The Arrow," but the one I want to focus - sort of - on is the villain of the piece, Adam Hunt.

"This city deserves a better class of criminal."

Adam Hunt is a terrible villain. Not terrible like terrifying. Terrible like... pathetic. We're made aware of him through Laurel's legal story, a class action against him for fraud and predatory lending. It isn't going her way because, from the get-go, we're told what he did was deplorable but technically legal. So Oliver, on the outs with Laurel but hearing her plight, goes outside the justice system to rectify the situation by scaring the bejesus out of Hunt, telling him to wire $40M to an account by such and such a time, or else. Hunt doesn't do it, of course, but surrounds himself with guards and calls in the cops, and Oliver is still able to get inside the supposed stronghold and hack his way into Hunt's computers / accounts, and escape largely-unscathed (there's a close call with Hunt tossing a grenade - both a laughable action villain line and an actual grenade - as he runs into a panic room), then anonymously transfer $50K each to the people in Laurel's class action law suit. So, fear not, there's very much the expected Robin Hood aspect to the story.

Look, origin story villains are hard. They're either the villain that forces the hero's journey, or an existing problem that the nascent hero can take down. But they can't be the biggest of the big bads because where does the hero grow from that? And they aren't a villain created in a response to the hero's presence. But besides being a privileged rich guy who hides behind guards instead of taking action like changed privileged rich guy Oliver... I don't really know what Adam Hunt says as a villain about Oliver Queen as a hero. So, I found him kind of unworthy and I hope the series is able to provide a better class of criminal in the future. And I don't know if Adam Hunt continues past the pilot, but I'm curious what the week-to-week villainy/antagonists will be like on this show (if any... the MOTW format seems to be a relic at this point, though I'm sure it will one day be dusted off and done in a fresh way). I imagine the conspiracy around the boat accident and Oliver and Tommy's kidnapping are long-arc villains and not a week-to-week antagonist presence. But we'll see.

And by that I mean that I expect to see. Now that I'd read more pilots from the season, I'm thinking back on this project more positively because I think it works emotionally, even if it's not breaking any new ground. It's solid, broad-audience popcorn entertainment (action! suspense! love triangles! family secrets! conspiracies!) and unless there's some epic fail in rest of the process, I have to think this gets picked up.

And, please, don't complain about Justin Hartley / the Smallville version of Green Arrow and this being different.

Pilot Script Review - Beauty & the Beast (CW)

BEAUTY & THE BEAST
Network: CW
Written By: Sherri Cooper & Jennifer Levin
Draft Date: January 11, 2012
Pages: 65

Disclaimer!

Two things to note going into this review. One, I have not yet read the ABC / Jon Steinberg B&TB script. There will be no apples to potentially-different-fruit comparisons. Two, the only familiarity I have with the 1987 Linda Hamilton / Ron Perlman CBS series that the CW version is a remake / reimagining of is a quick glance at Wikipedia.

Based on that Wikipedia entry, a whole heckuva lot is different about the 2012 Cooper & Levin version. The only things that really seem to remain are the leads' names. Catherine is our Beauty. Vincent is our Beast.

Catherine Chandler wanted to be a lawyer.

In 2003, she was working as a bar over the summer as she studied for the LSATs and one night, she left her car's vanity mirror open the whole shift. Her car's battery died, so her mother came to pick her up. They were attacked. Catherine's mother died. Catherine ran, and was chased. She was saved by... some creature. A beast. Of course, her psychologists tell her that description is just a trick her mind played on her because her attackers were "beasts."

It's nine years later. Catherine is unlucky in love, has a history of choosing jerks. And a jerk has just pulled her heart out and stomped on it (outside an Adele concert, no less!) Catherine is roommates with her younger sister, Heather (who, thanks to this being a premise pilot, is mostly just a sounding board/counterpoint to Catherine vis a vis her relationship with men, their father, etc... it's a good, fun, believable sisterly relationship and I'm sure in series we'd get to know Heather better). Catherine is also... a homicide detective.

That summer night in 2003 really did change her life.

Catherine and her partner Tess are brought in on the case of a murdered Vogue fashion editor, where the first piece of evidence is a mysterious fingerprint on the victim's clothes. Mysterious not because it's a fingerprint, but because it belongs to Specialist Vincent Koslow, MD, who died in Afghanistan in 2002.

Catherine explores this lead, trying to find people from Vincent's past. He was an ER resident before 9/11, then enlisted after... because his family died in the towers.

Now, I'll pause here. In general, I have a problem with using 9/11 in fiction. I know. It's a thing. We're over 10 years later. You can't just ignore it if you want to tell the truth. It changed a lot of people lives, maybe every American's life and however much further you care to extrapolate/globalize that, directly and indirectly. It's my issue and I have to get over it. But it's still an issue I feel I need to bring up, because I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing. My major problem, being an East Coaster who lived in an NYC commuter area, is when it's used for emotional exploitation (I refuse to see Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close). Thankfully, here it's simply part of a character's backstory.

Okay, back to the script and away from my baggage.

Catherine tracks one of Vincent's old friends (his last known roommate) down... at an abandoned chemical warehouse... and though Catherine and Tess are turned away, we find out Vincent is alive, living in the chemical warehouse, and is the "beast" who saved Catherine's life in 2003 (per a news clipping he's held onto).

What proceeds is a light, banter-y crime procedural with strong character elements. There's an investigation, the murder is solved (are you surprised?), Vincent and Catherine meet and have sexual tension... though I'm not sure if it's UST. The script gives no indication of what, exactly, this "beast" looks like. As far as I really know, he's fast and strong and reclusive and has some rage issues... but not incredibly inhuman (and there is no secret utopian underground society). So I'm kind of picturing a werewolf at this point and not some grotesque monster that needs to hide in the shadows. The backstory there is that he's been experimented on, so he's got some genetic mutations. There's a conspiracy/company (Muirfield) behind it, and he's trying to stay off their radar, but Catherine accidentally alerts them because Vincent (who tried to save the murder victim's life) left some trace DNA evidence that matches exactly to Catherine's mother's murder... and it's not entirely human.

CW needs to crack its version of a crime procedural (yes, yes, they have Supernatural). This may be it, with its mythical Gothic romance trappings. I won't pretend this is groundbreaking, but what it is... is enjoyable. I love the characters Cooper & Levin have created. There's a comfort and familiarity and breeziness to the way they talk and interact on the page and, ultimately, I think that's why a lot of people like the TV they like. Hopefully that translates to the screen.

Pilot Script Review - The Carrie Diaries

THE CARRIE DIARIES
Network: CW
Written By: Amy Harris
Draft Date: December 20, 2011
Pages: 60

Disclaimer!

Remember that one time when Gossip Girl, at the height of its ratings and buzz (aka: season 2) tried to do a backdoor pilot about Lily Rhodes in the 1980s? Well, for some reason / many reasons, that didn't wind up happening. Now, three years later, CW is a changing network with new leadership, Gossip Girl is gasping for its last breath / apparently is getting one last season for some reason... and we have another 1980s-set teen drama that's a prequel to an iconic New York City-set series (that also happens to share two out of three words in its title with CW's lone, um, successful? show, The Vampire Diaries... so that will be fun and confusing if this is picked up... and before you jump down my throat, TVDers, please keep in mind that I think TVD has developed into one of the best network dramas on the air right now).

Where was I. Oh, right! Carrie Bradshaw.

I will say that, having sat through 94 Sex and the City episodes and 2 SATC movies (or, really, one movie and one horror show where depressingly materialistic women try to ignore that they're aging and throw everything that's bad about Western culture into the face of the Middle East), I could very, very clearly hear Carrie saying these lines (write Amy Harris did work on SATC), especially the abundant and theme-explicating voiceovers (which I'd ordinarily complain about... except that TCD is just following the SATC template). In fact, I heard Sarah Jessica Parker in my head while reading those lines. A very large part of me wonders if the show could get SJP to record the voiceovers like Kristen Bell does for/as Gossip Girl and Bob Saget does for How I Met Your Mother.

If you're a stickler for continuity... The Carrie Diaries is just a tad different than what was "established" in SATC (then again, SATC never really talked much about Carrie's backstory). So, try and forget anything you knew about Carrie. And that sound you hear is all of the gentlemen readers who are, somehow, still reading this review after the prior paragraph shrugging.

The year is 1984. Carrie Bradshaw is a sixteen-year old about to start the first day of a new year at high school. But there's a change... because her mother died of cancer three months ago. This year is different. Carrie's fourteen-year old younger sister, Dorrit, has reacted to the trauma by developing a pot habit and biting Carrie when they fight. Their father, Tom, is generally clueless to the fact that Carrie's mother always took her shopping for a new outfit for the first day of school, and so, being Carrie Bradshaw, Carrie Bradshaw is depressed and passive-agressive about this until Tom does the unthinkable, and opens the doors to his late wife's untouched closet for her to peruse.

Hey, it's 1984 and she's 16. I'm okay with her being materialistic in the Age of the Material Girl. The show isn't quite playing to the "isn't this ridiculous" tone of Clueless with it, but whatever.

Carrie lives in generally affluent suburban utopia somewhere in Connecticut. Sucks to be her, right? She has a smart, loyal friend who spent the summer interning in DC, Jill aka "The Mouse." Then there's Maggie, overtly sexy, who is the son of the chief of police / sheriff. Maggie is dating a very obviously in the closet (he says, looking back from 2012) boy, Walt. And so we have our core group of friends that are a close proximation but not exact copies of Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha. Being high school, there's a mean girl (the somewhat hilariously, somewhat laughably named Donna LaDonna) and her minions (The Jens). Maggie lost her virginity, The Mouse lost her virginity... but Carrie is still a virgin. There's a very frank discussion of what happens when a girl loses her virginity.

In walks Sebastian Kydd, the new boy in school. And he knows Carrie from two summers ago. And they kissed. But Donna LaDonna has her sights set on the fresh meat, too.

But then, a shocking twist! As Carrie is about to ask Sebastian out, she sees her dad in the school hallway, reminding her of when/how she found out about her mother, and she passes out. Tom and Carrie's guidance counselor develop a way to help Carrie get a new beginning: intern once a week in Manhattan at a law firm (because Carrie wants, at this point, to be a lawyer).

So, it's not quite Jane by Design, but you can kind of tell that's where it may be going, right?

Anyway, Carrie goes to Manhattan for the first time, and hates doing filing work at the firm. But she ripped her panty hose on the way to work, so took them off and, being the 1980s, receives a very stern talking to about that from what I assume is The Horrific Future Version of Joan Holloway. She's told to go the Century 21 to get a pair of hose during her lunch break, and when she walks in, she finds herself in "what will become her fashion mecca." There, she meets Larissa, a female style editor at Interview magazine, who basically sweeps Carrie along for a crazy, glamorous night in Manhattan that will set a template for Carrie's life 20 years later.

This section reminded me of that episode the The Simpsons where Homer becomes a famous artist for five seconds because he smashes a failed attempt at a backyard BBQ pit. "Carrie, this is everybody. Everybody, this is Carrie. That's Dominick, he's an artist who works with found objects and wax..." (this is a direct quote from TCD).

There is some actual conflict with her home life, because this magical night in Manhattan is happening on the same night as The New Beginnings dance at high school, where Carrie and Sebastian may become an item and/or do the nasty and she has a curfew (of midnight). Instead, Carrie pops her Manhattan cherry (*the script makes this thematic point, it's not me being crude*) and Donna gets Sebastian... for now. But Carrie has been changed forever.

This is a definite, "um, we'll see how it turns out." Combine the soap of teen drama, the overt sexual nature of SATC, and the challenges of a period piece... who knows. It seems to fit in what the CW's old wheelhouse was, under Dawn Ostroff. You don't want to completely alienate that audience by completely changing the nature of every series, but this seems more risque than risky. But maybe risque can pay off.

Pilot Script Review - Cult

CULT
Network: CW
Written By: Rockne S. O'Bannon
Draft Date: January 6, 2011 (I suspect the title page means 2012, but that's what's on it)
Pages: 63

Disclaimer!

Scripts like Cult are what I like to read. It's imaginative and ambitious, to say the least. Ambition and a distinct voice are what broadcast shows need if the networks want to stop ceding ground to cable and its supposed hands-off executives and creator/showrunners' creative license and freedom.

Which is not to say that Cult is going to work, mind you, as either a pilot or a series. I just like the fact that someone (Mark Pedowitz) picked something like this up to shoot. This was the third CW script I read and, IIRC, the first pickup made. When I read it (and I held off on reviews until I'd read all five of the dramas picked up so far), my first thought was "If Cult is the vision Mark Pedowitz has for the post-Dawn Ostroff CW, then things are really going to change on the netlet." Now having read and reviewed Mile High Medical and read The Carrie Diaries... well, let's just say that some bets are being hedged.

Cult is about as far away from Gossip Girl as you can imagine. It's a swing-for-the-fences kind of show. The thing about trying to hit a home run is (*note: I have no idea if this is actually true in baseball*) you're going to miss more often than if trying to just get a solid on-base hit.

Or something about a pop fly to left field? I don't know. Sports aren't really my thing.

Anyway, Cult is one of those shows that is either going to be a hit or a spectacular failure. These kinds of big idea shows tend to be one or the other, and for every Lost or Heroes, there's... every show that was spawned by the networks trying to make a compatible lead-out or get their own version of said hit.

But what is Cult? I'm still trying to answer that question. It's a show so darkly meta I don't quite know what to make of it, where obsession with television and television shows and the delusion that fiction might be bleeding into reality is, itself, the point. It kind of winks at you and says "it's just TV!" then asks, "but wait... is it?"

Cult is about a detective, Eric Collins, whose family has been kidnapped, he believes, by this really nefarious cult leader, Billy Grimm. But Billy's smart. He has minions, lots of minions. Brainwashed minions. They do his bidding, so his hands are clean. But our hero is sure that he's responsible. And, naturally he wants his family back.

But wait. That's just the plot of Cult, the television show within the show Cult. This show. Man, people are obsessed with it. It's kind of creepy, and it's got all of these audience-participation add-ons, online components, etc. It's the kind of show you watch with a group or people but no one is allowed to talk, or alone in a dark and you turn your cell phone off because god forbid someone calls you during it. It's the kind of show where even if you work on it, like go-fer Skye Yarrow, you don't know what's coming next. You've never met the boss, Steven Rae. The crew gets annoyed when they're told some small detail, like a graffiti symbol in the background, isn't right because, dammit, the smallest details are just that important because THE FANS WILL NOTICE. The network brass want to make the show more accessible, etc.

But, really, Cult is about Jeff Sefton, a shamed reporter trying to rebuild his reputation whose younger brother, Nate, is obsessed with the show Cult (and we're talking way beyond the obsession of, say, a Lost fan who wrote 4 8 15 16 23 42 on a chalkboard after Numbers aired in 2005... not that I'm admitting to anything...), who is scared for his life, believes that the show Cult is something more than just a show, and goes missing or, perhaps, has been murdered... leaving clues only Jeff can pick up on. Will Jeff jump down the rabbit hole for his brother? Can he believe that something more than a TV show is happening? Jeff's first attempt at finding the truth is to visit the set of the show, where he meets Skye, and eventually an unlikely partnership is forged between a skeptic and a believer.

Oh, and there are a helluva lot of other plots and characters (like meeting the actors who play the characters on the TV, a number of scenes from the show (which is, actually, kinda of arch/big), and more.

So... is your head spinning?

There are elements I don't love. I think that some of the crosses between the show-within-the-show perilously teeter from "thematic" to "redundant." What with the hero-detectives and their missing-maybe-murdered family members and such. But, again, that's the point. Some of the in-show marketing for the show-within-the-show is... well, let's just say that it's probably not how an actual marketing department would market anything.

I don't know if Cult is going to work, if it can find an audience, or if it can keep that audience hooked without confusing the crap out of everyone. But I'm excited to find out, and I want to know more. And that's really all any TV pilot script can ask.

Pilot Script Review - Mile High Medical

MILE HIGH MEDICAL
Network: CW
Written By: Jennie Snyder Urman
Draft Date: December 22, 2011
Pages: 63

Disclaimer!

If you ever watched Grey's Anatomy (particularly the pilot) and thought "this is just too subtle for me" and "gosh, I wish Meredith had a lot more voiceover" and "that Meredith is just too put together, I wish she were more neurotic," then Mile High Medical is for you.

Emily Barnes was not a popular girl in high school. She was insecure and lacked confidence. Now she's a surgical intern starting her first year at Denver Memorial Hospital and she is still insecure and lacks confidence. So much so that she yells at a frizzy-haired high school girl who she kind of creepily watches before walking into her first day (because the high school is across the street from the hospital, naturally) because the girl called her a loser.

Honey. You're a mess.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for flawed characters. I prefer them, really. But Emily comes off as so needy and pathetic that it's a major problem for me (also a major problem: her pervasive voiceover where she spells out her thoughts and/or the subtext of everything, i.e. "He's touching you. Do not spaz out. Do not. Spaz. Out" or, when a patient starts to code she yells "I need a doctor!" is told she is a doctor, and then thinks "A real doctor! Get a real doctor!" WE GET IT). Her one saving grace is her super ability to have bedside manner. But it doesn't really help her escape the bottomless pitiable pit she's jumped into. And this is the show's lead?

The show seems to make the point that we don't grow up. We are all the children/teenagers/whatever we always were, just trying to ignore the fact that we're older and still the same. I get it. I just don't want to watch it.

The other interns:

- Cassandra Kopelson. She's the mean girl who made Emily's high school life hell and just happens to also be starting the internship program. Neither Emily nor Cassandra seem to be able to let certain elements of high school go. Tell me if you've heard this one before... hospitals are like high school. Seriously. Seriously! Pretty sure the hospital departments as different high school cliques was in the Grey's pilot (even if the various departments were labelled differently). Seriously. But that phrase is repeated so often and so verbatim that I actually think Denver Memorial is more akin to kindergarten than high school. Now, of course, Cassandra has some hidden damage that Emily wasn't aware of... but she's still that mean girl you wished would get run over by a bus. And wouldn't you know it, she seems to be romantic rivals with Emily for...

- Will Rider. Charming, went to med school with Emily. Emily spends approximately every waking moment lusting after him, and even has a heavy-handed metaphor-patient in the form of a 12-year old girl who talking about Twilight (hmmm, maybe Emily is cut from the same cloth as Bella... that would explain some of my frustration with her) is also dealing with the issue of being too worried about rejection to ask the cute boy out. It goes better for the patient than it does for Emily, who overshares in her startling confession to Will, and then is treated to the most on-the-nose rejection I think I've ever seen: "I'm so sorry. I just don't see you like that. But I'm so touched by what you said, I really am. And I hope that we can still be friends, because I really value your friendship." I have no doubt that passage has been uttered in real life. But, come on. That's the first draft cardboard dialogue block you write when you just need to power through the vomit draft and you're going to come back and write something more specific to the character and not nearly so cut-and-dry.

- Tyra Granger, who has very little to do in the pilot except explicitly tell Emily on the first moment of their meeting that she is the Chief of Surgery's daughter and a lesbian. Which would be fine if Tyra were at all presented as out-and-proud (it turns out she isn't actually out to her dad). She kind of disappears (since she and Emily don't share a medical case in the pilot). The Chief, for his part, has a long-winded speech and also basically disappears

Then there's the interns' resident, Micah, who we're clearly supposed to believe will eventually be Emily's love interest post-Will rejection. His mother is dying of pancreatic cancer. And, of course, the hard-nosed, famous-within-the-world-of-the-story attending surgeon Gina, who has terrible bedside manner and whom Emily must prove herself to if she hopes to survive.

You know what this show is. Interns struggling to survive (although if I read the times indicated on the slug lines correctly, the first shift was a whopping 10 hours from 8AM to 6PM... and I totally buy that a patient who needs her heart reconstructed can be closed up and awake and texting 65 minutes later, so, thanks for the specificity). Being competitors, friends, rivals, and lovers. And patients and surgeries reflecting on the characters' personal journeys.

I'm not saying the Grey's formula can't be done ever again, but... come on. Who are we kidding with this one, folks. At least try and make it a little different.

Hart of Dixie Series Premiere Quarter Hour Breakdown

HART OF DIXIE

9:00-9:15
- 1.716 million viewers
- 1.2/2 HH
- 0.7/2 A18-49
- 0.8/2 A18-34
- 1.4/4 W18-34

9:15-9:30
- 1.903 million viewers
- 1.4/2 HH
- 0.8/2 A18-49
- 0.8/2 A18-34
- 1.5/4 W18-34

9:30-9:45
- 1.938 million viewers
- 1.4/2 HH
- 0.8/2 A18-49
- 0.8/2 A18-34
- 1.4/3 W18-34

9:45-10:00
- 1.952 million viewers
- 1.4/2 HH
- 0.8/2 A18-49
- 0.8/2 A18-34
- 1.4/3 W18-34

Significantly up in viewers versus Gossip Girl premiere (1.373 million for GG versus 1.877 million for HD) and especially older viewers (0.3/0 to 0.8/1)! But young adults and women far underperforming (GG's 1.1/3 versus HD's 0.8/2 A18-34 and 1.7/5 versus 1.4/4 W18-34).

I'd venture this is a "yikes"-appropriate result? No breakout hit for CW this year!

Ringer Episode Two Quarter Hour Breakdown

RINGER episode two (please note, this will not be a regular thing, and I don't expect to do it for all new shows... but several requests came in)

9:00-9:15
- 1.968 million viewers
- 1.3/2 HH
- 0.9/2 A18-49
- 0.9/3 A18-34
- 1.2/3 W18-34

9:15-9:30
- 1.773 million viewers
- 1.1/2 HH
- 0.8/2 A18-49
- 0.8/2 A18-34
- 1.1/3 W18-34

9:30-9:45
- 1.979 million viewers
- 1.3/2 HH
- 0.9/2 A18-49
- 0.9/3 A18-34
- 1.3/3 W18-34

9:45-10:00
- 2.057 million viewers
- 1.3/2 HH
- 1.0/2 A18-49
- 1.0/3 A18-34
- 1.4/4 W18-34

As I said last week, 90210 as a lead-in is a weakness for Ringer... and it continues to improve on 90210, but obviously by less this week. Potentially good that the show built by the end (I have no idea what the commercial load situation is for why 9:15-9:30 took a dive).

The Secret Circle Series Premiere Quarter Hour Breakdown

THE SECRET CIRCLE

9:00-9:15
- 3.279 million viewers
- 2.1/3 HH
- 1.4/4 A18-49
- 1.4/4 A18-34
- 1.9/6 W18-34

9:15-9:30
- 2.960 million viewers
- 1.9/3 HH
- 1.2/3 A18-49
- 1.2/4 A18-34
- 1.9/5 W18-34

9:30-9:45
- 2.871 million viewers
- 1.8/3 HH
- 1.2/3 A18-49
- 1.2/4 A18-34
- 1.9/5 W18-34

9:45-10:00
- 3.080 million viewers
- 1.9/3 HH
- 1.3/3 A18-49
- 1.3/4 A18-34
- 1.9/5 W18-34

Not a ton to say here. Solid retention both from lead-in and throughout the hour (especially among older demos and teens... oddly just not in the 18-34 range!) Evidently a 1.3 A18-49 is going to be something for the CW to celebrate this season... but there is now a LOT riding on the next couple weeks for post-premiere retention with both Ringer and Secret Circle, not to mention Hart of Dixie now being the netlet's only shot at an immediate break-out success.

Ringer Series Premiere Quarter Hour Breakdown

RINGER

9:00-9:15
- 2.863 million viewers
- 1.8/3 HH
- 1.3/4 A18-49
- 1.2/4 A18-34
- 1.6/4 W18-34

9:15-9:30
- 2.737 million viewers
- 1.8/3 HH
- 1.2/3 A18-49
- 1.1/3 A18-34
- 1.5/4 W18-34

9:30-9:45
- 2.949 million viewers
- 1.9/3 HH
- 1.3/3 A18-49
- 1.2/4 A18-34
- 1.6/5 W18-34

9:45-10:00
- 2.810 million viewers
- 1.8/3 HH
- 1.2/3 A18-49
- 1.1/3 A18-34
- 1.6/4 W18-34

Not sure where the commercial loads were. Seems to act like the Nikita premiere from last season, 0.2 lower in each of the listed key demos (and 0.4 down in A50+, 1.0/2 vs 1.4/3), although Nikita had a far stronger lead-in with The Vampire Diaries (and Nikita fell in key demos versus that, while rising in older viewers) than Ringer had with 90210 (improving in every demo I see, only tying in T12-17 at 0.6/2). Always good for a series to not see huge decreases at the first 15 minute mark (people see what it's about then say "not for me") but this is, obviously, not a huge hit out of the box... and one where weeks two, three, and four will really tell the tale. Perhaps the two scheduled replays will help.

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)

Pilot Script Review - Hart of Dixie

HART OF DIXIE
Network: CW
Written By: Leila Gerstein
Draft Date: December 9, 2010
Pages: 59

I didn't dislike the script for this project so much as I found the arena overly-trodden. This is gonna be a short review, because it's just a gut reaction. Everything could change when I see it on screen, but... haven't we been here before? How many times is the "sophisticated city girl goes to a quirky/charming Midwestern or Southern town" thing going to be developed?

Now, to be fair, I think there is quite a bit of charm and several heapfuls of soap in this script. Once the lead character, Zoe Hart, gets to BlueBell, Alabama (after flashing back to the setup-y why of it all... she's passed over for a fellowship position at the most prestigious Manhattan hospital because she has terrible bedside manner... oh, and also her best friend got the position and is now engaged to her ex-boyfriend), she almost immediately picks up two potential suitors, one of whom it turns out is engaged to the daughter of the man who is most interested in getting Zoe to leave BlueBell.

Years ago, Zoe was offered a job by a nice man who heard her speak at her med school graduation and he has hounded her with postcards every month since... so she finally accepts because, apparently, there are no jobs for extremely skilled but impersonal doctors anywhere in America. Which... I don't buy. But whatever. When she gets to BlueBell, it turns out the man has passed away, but left her his half of the only medical practice in town. Brick Breeland, the other owner and, until Zoe's arrival, the town's only remaining doctor, wants her out because he wants the practice all to himself. And thus a rivalry is formed.

We get the usual moments of City Girl in the Country. We get quirky characters. We even get people referring to themselves in the third person. It really just feels like a been-there-done-that, the only slight change to the trope is that our City Girl is a highly skilled surgeon. I know this script will have its fans. I suppose it's just not my cup of sweet tea on the page.

Pilot Script Review - Heavenly

HEAVENLY
Network: CW
Written By: Richard Hatem
Draft Date: undated
Pages: 67

Oooh, so close.

Guys, I am so close to liking this script. And then it just schmaltzes out. WHY OH WHY!?

Heavenly is the story of Dashiell Coffee. Dashiell was an angel. His job was saving people in moments of crisis, and after having saved the same woman twice (once when she was a child and once just now, when she is an adult... it's the first time in hundreds of years that Dashiell saved the same person) something sparks in Dashiell. Emotion. Feelings. He wants to experience them and so he asks God to make him human so he can live among us... provided he can still save people. God agrees (but with the twist of removing most of Dashiell's powers, so he must help in more conventional and convoluted ways... the power that remains seems to be that his touch influences people to open up and be honest about their feeling with him).

Or did God agree?

Dashiell might just be a crazy person. It's just a question of whether or not you believe. The signs and narrative certainly seem to point around 99% to "yes, he was an angel." But there is a tiny bit of room for doubt. Just not much.

I wish the room for doubt were bigger. Is he or isn't he?

There are echoes of Rob Thomas's Cupid here. In fact, if I had to pitch Heavenly as X meets Y, it would be Cupid meets Touched by an Angel (you see where the schmaltz comes in...)

Dashiell Coffee, much like Trevor Hale, assumed his name from found objects when he is first asked to identify himself (after he tries to work his brand of magic/miracle and discovers that his heavenly powers have left him). He has moments where he seems like a child or certainly has that sense of wide-eyed innocence... after all, being human is quite new to him. Dashiell isn't as big a personality as Trevor, though, and the script doesn't have the same wit as Cupid.

There are two people filling the "Claire" function from Cupid here. In Cupid, Claire simultaneously played the voice of reason and the love interest. Here, the voice of reason is Owen, a pastor seemingly without faith. Dashiell stumbles into his church tells Owen his story, expecting a man of God to believe him. Maybe helping Owen find his faith is part of Dashiell's quest... on top of finding the woman whose life he saved twice. Owen helps Dashiell on his way, and naturally, the woman he's sent to, Lily, is the very woman in question (and the "love interest" side of Claire... and of course there's a triangle brewing because Owen and Lily used to be a thing). She's a lawyer at the pro bono wing of a big law firm and currently questioning if she's really doing any good. Dashiell talks his way into becoming her paralegal and we're seemingly set up to have Dashiell and Lily "save" people on a weekly basis through sheer force of will and the occasional court scene (but not with anywhere close to the banter of Trevor/Claire).

The case in the pilot involves Lily defending Jared, a straight-A pre-med student, accused of killing his best friend in a car accident. It won't shock you to know that the emotions on both sides are played to the fullest and that the student didn't commit the crime. Dashiell at first complicates and almost ruins the case, but then is actually able to do more than the justice system ever could: get two families who used to be close talking again, and forgiveness. Sch-mal-tz.

I call into question the end of the lawyer side of the pilot, where the crack team has figured out that Jared is innocent and calls back to the witness stand the person who actually committed the crime and, with little persuasion, he actually confesses. It's called taking the 5th. I don't understand why people don't do this.

There's also a confusing bit at the end where it appears that Dashiell, who all the while has avoided telling Lily about his being an angel, seems to, but doesn't quite, or maybe did? The script read like a dialogue block had been chopped out and I was missing the part where Dashiell either implied or explicitly said it. One moment he says "I worked in crisis management. In a context I can't really get into" and then in his next line, where Lily has said nothing, he says, "I asked for a transfer. And it was granted. That's when I became a human being."

Unlike Cupid... I'm not sure what Dashiell's series arc is. Not that Cupid ever got there in either rendition, but we knew, off the bat, that he believed if he matched 100 true loves, he'd be let back to Mount Olympus. Dashiell doesn't have anything comparable. His drive here is murky. Is it to help Lily? Owen? The world? I'm not sure. And it's not like Lily and Owen are trying to find Dashiell's "true" mortal identity.

One final thing. Dashiell is something of a slut. After getting drunk for the first time (on a mai tai), he goes home with Lily and kisses her (she pushes him away) and then after the case, he gets drunk on mai tais and winds up sleeping with Sasha Nouri, the opposing counsel (and one of two yoga practitioners who saw him naked in Lafayette Park when he "arrived" from heaven). This is probably a good thing because as of yet, besides women who take him home, I'm not certain where he's living.

Sasha, of course, says, "Oh... God" as Dashiell beds her.

There are a couple conveniences taken in the script. I don't mind that Lily is the person Owen sends Dashiell to, or Owen and Lily's relationship. That's just part of the setting up the soap. There's a needless, at least for me, "sign" involving an origami bird that is on the sign to the legal clinic Lily works at that connects to an origami bird Dashiell received from a convenience store clerk when he touches her and she opens up about her very sick grandson. I just didn't need the extra "sign."

I can't say I disliked this. I just hope that some of the more treacle-y parts can be scrubbed out. Then again, Cupid was tried twice and failed both times, while Touched by an Angel ran for nine seasons. So maybe it's best for CW if the schmaltz stays in. I certainly think there's an audience for it. I might even be among them if I ever need a particularly feel good hour.

Pilot Script Review - Awakening

AWAKENING
Network: CW
Written By: Glenn David & William Laurin
Draft Date: January 2011
Pages: 55*

I don't like the font. Seriously. For some reason, this script wasn't written in a monospaced font, much less industry-standard Courier. It was annoying to read on a practical level for that reason.

*It also means that the page count isn't really 55, because monospaced fonts take up more room, so this is probably somewhere in the 60s.

But, y'know, I can get over that.

What I can't get over is, well, the content of the script. Depending on how you look at it, it's wildly imaginative or completely inane. I'm firmly standing by the latter.

I started my read knowing only the logline: "Two sisters on the verge of adulthood who find themselves on opposite sides of a zombie uprising."

Let's tackle this one piece by piece, as it's almost entirely misleading.

"Two sisters." Yes. Jenna and Jayce (and, note to new screenwriters out there... try to not name main characters with the same first letter, and if you must, at least make the names different lengths, because not only can it be confusing to a skimming reader... you can interchange them and not notice... like Glenn and William did once or twice).

"On the verge of adulthood." Well, Jenna Lestrade is 30, and Jayce is 25 even though she ACTS like she's 16. So, no.

"Who find themselves on opposite sides of a zombie uprising." Easily the most confusing part of the logline. How the hell are two sisters going to be on opposites sides of A ZOMBIE UPRISING!? And have that be part of a continuing series?

Here's what the logline isn't telling you.

Jenna and Jayce are both zombies.

Yes, gentle readers, the zombies in Awakening are walking, talking, sentient beings with an ability to fit into normal life and, on a mere whim, "zomb out" meaning go from a "normal" look to, y'know, decayed flesh. Also they age and can have babies.

It's... a departure, for sure.

There's a point made by a zombie about how human (or "pre-dead") movies present them as lumbering, thoughtless brain-eaters. But... isn't that what fans of zombie movies like? Isn't that what they're looking for? I get that you want your zombies to be different. But you've basically just made them into undead cannibals. The mindless, decayed, ravenous horror is what's so frightening!

And, of course, Jenna, an ADA and a recovering bulimic when we meet her, is the family's "vegetarian" zombie (there's always a vegetarian...) meaning she doesn't eat human flesh. She's trying to fit into human society and even has a human boyfriend, Matt, who doesn't know her secret. Her parents don't know about him, either (there's a lot of "racism" overtones to the whole zombie vs human thing).

Jayce is an "organic" zombie. She likes her meat fresh. She likes to hunt. Which is a problem for her parents, because the whole "zombie" thing isn't out there in human society. They don't know zombies still exist. They did know, once, back in the 60s, when there was an "Awakening" which seems to be the "uprising" the logline refers to. Evan, Jenna and Jayce's father, is a survivor of the war (and a battle at a nearby tourist trap called Dellamore that gave me hope because it was a vague, off-hand reference to a hilarious zombie film with Rupert Everrett called Dellamorte Dellamore), and doesn't want to see that happen again.

So he and his wife, Eunice, get corpses from a restaurant, Macoute's, that has suppliers from morgues, medical labs, pathologists, etc. And the flesh is cooked.

The moment I stopped reading the script as a seriously toned zombie story and said, "wait, I think this is supposed to be campy horror comedy" was when, at the family dinner, Evan asks Eunice to pass him the lady fingers.

Y'know, like, a bowl of real lady's fingers.

Groan.

So, I adjusted my mind to be critical of what I thought I was reading. Campy horror comedy. If the entire story had been in the Lestrade household, or at least in that tone, it would easily have won me over. Because that's some seriously campy, over the top shit. It could be zombie Dark Shadows.

Unfortunately, that's a minimal part of the pilot and there's the rest of the story, which is so drawn out and mind-numbing I refuse to look back at pages to summarize it.

Yes, some humans do know about the zombies. And there's a zombie hunter closing in on Jayce through a circle of friends (who want to start a new Awakening) she keeps. Naturally, he turns out to be Matt's father, and as he's said that zombie hunting is passed down through families, even though Matt shows no signs of knowing anything about zombies, it implies in the future that he very well could be coming after Jenna.

Here's the problem, as I've said above.

It's a departure. It's too far from the "zombie" lore we're used to, and it simultaneously commits the same mistake I felt Secret Circle did... there isn't enough "normal."

Whereas I looked at Secret Circle through the lens of The Vampire Diaries (same source material author, same two producers adapting it), I think Awakening, more than anything, wants to be the True Blood of zombie television series. So let's look at it like that.

Yeah, there's the gore, the camp, the horror. But it's from the wrong point of view, and you really don't get much in the way of seductive romance between Jenna and Matt.

We're not in the POV of Sookie Stackhouse and the residents of Bon Temps dealing with their first real vampire coming to town in the aftermath of the vampires "coming out of the coffin" (granted, I definitely do not think the pilot of True Blood was its strongest hour). We're in the POV of the zombies. Lots of zombies, who have their whole culture and community and it's all just immediately thrown in our faces without anyone besides Jenna, the vegetarian zombie, to connect to on an emotional level.

Is an audience really going to connect with Jayce, the homicidal, human-hunting, flesh-eating zombie? She's not even a delicious villain in the way you knew Damon Salvatore was going to develop into in TVD, or Eric Northman in True Blood (who... not introduced until, what, episode 10 of the first season?)

There's a reason Twilight was told from Bella's POV. There's a reason Elena is the main character of The Vampire Diaries. There's a reason Sookie is the main character of True Blood. They're the humans (okay, that's not entirely true of Sookie). They're us. And a crazy world is unfolding around them and we get sucked into it with them, as they fall in love with a "vegetarian" representative of the supernatural. Jenna, who in the preceding examples would be the Edward/Stefan/Bill, is the main character, instead of her human love interest.

There's also a reason why most zombie fiction (that I'm aware of) is about the human survivors. That's what we connect to. Survival.

Awakening lacks both those things. It's missing the human side.

UPDATE: Oh, I forget to mention something I tweeted about as I was reading. Let's play a game of "You know it's a CW script when"! You know it's a CW script when even the mid-50s mother character, Eunice, is described as "sexy." I'm not saying people in their mid-50s can't, or aren't, sexy. I just think pointing it out is a very "CW" thing to do in the script.

Pilot Script Review - Secret Circle

SECRET CIRCLE
Network: CW
Written By: Andrew Miller
Draft Date: February 3, 2011
Pages: 54

Two years ago, I reviewed a little show called The Vampire Diaries. In that review, I called it, among other things, boilerplate and Twi-light.

I completely stand behind those opinions of the pilot episode of The Vampire Diaries.

But something happened to that show that started after episode 3 or 4... it got damn good. It shed any Twilight trappings, built a still-deepening and engrossing mythology, and the supporting cast came into their own and really started standing out (I mean, who isn't in love with Caroline and Matt? And Caroline just in general). It is currently my favorite network TV drama (yeah, that's right, The Good Wife).

So, keep that in mind as I complain about this draft of Secret Circle, the new CW pilot based on another LJ Smith book series (and another series that I have not read, so I have no preconceived notions). I'm actually not sure if this "Andrew Miller draft" has been touched by Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec, who only boarded the project recently.

I want to like this because, like The Vampire Diaries, it has a lot of the things I love in a TV show. Teen romance (shut up, I'm a product of the 90s), supernatural forces, tragic pasts, and a core of real human emotion.

Secret Circle has all those elements. I just don't think that it's doing everything it can do with them. Yet. Thanks to what TVD became, I'm willing to give this series a LOT of room to grow on me.

But there is a nagging feeling I have that says this show can't be what TVD became.

Not because magic and witches and covens aren't as "sexy" as vampires. Not because TVD already features a witch. The magic works on a similar principle in Secret Circle as Bonnie's in TVD... minus some of the limitations. I think that's part of what's different. It's so important in shows with supernatural elements to make sure the audience knows "the rules." Y'know, like "Vampires can't walk in the sun without magic rings" or "Into every generation a Chosen One is born with the strength and skill to fight the Vampires. She is the Slayer."

Every series is allowed its own set of rules, and you either buy into them or you don't. The pilot is the opportunity to explain those rules (ideally in a way that doesn't just feel like exposition).

Secret Circle hasn't really explained the rules yet. It has given vague hints.

The other problem? Basically everyone in the script seems to have "powers." There aren't a terribly high number of "normal" people. How much drama has TVD gotten out of bringing character after character into the supernatural fold? And even there... many of the characters are "aware" of the supernatural, but are, themselves, normal and human and powerless (something that True Blood almost got rid of entirely in its third season, where I think Jason and Andy are the only two human people left in Bon Temps... yes, it's hyperbole, whatever).

There's also a minor romantic triangle between three of the kids in the coven, but it's very under the surface.

Okay. Secret Circle. Here's the plot (minus one major event that I'm choosing to not spoil).

CAUTION!

VERY!

VERY!

SPOILERY!

SERIOUSLY!

Cassie Blake lives in Florida and is driving home when she suddenly gets a flat. Which is a good thing because, back home, there is an eerily beautiful shadowy man causing magical fire explosions (standing outside and using matches to light giant fire plumes inside) in her house and killing her mother, Amelia, in the process.

A month later, Cassie arrives at her grandmother's house in New Salem, Maine and is to start school the next day. Not sure what took her so long or, since her house burned down, where she got all "her belongings" but whatever, that's entirely besides the point. Cassie finds a pendant of her mother's and puts it on (given how important "magical artifacts" became to TVD, one must suspect that this pendant has more than just emotional significance).

Cassie goes to school, meets the Vice Principal (who was one of her mother's close friends, though we are pointedly told several times that Amelia never talked about her life in New Salem... and even claimed to not know who Cassie's father is), then is given a quick, terse guide through the school by Sally Waltman, who turns out to be the only "normal" teenager in the entire town (okay, no, just in the script). "The cliques are pretty standard," we're told.

Weird stuff keeps happening, like Cassie being unable to open her locker until Faye (the Vice Principal's daughter) and Melissa, the school's popular bitches, arrive. Like magic! Cassie also meets Diana in a class. Diana is described as smart and sexy (as usual, half the characters are described as sexy, so you know it's a CW script... because otherwise they might let an unsexy person slip through the casting process?) Diana lives two doors down and says she's been excited about meeting Cassie. And a bunch of other things that are REALLY WEIRD AND UNNATURAL AND CLUNKY DIALOG OH GOD, PLEASE SOMEONE POINT IT OUT HOW WEIRD THIS STUFF ALL IS!

Anyway, Diana invites Cassie to the Mystic Bar & Grill Marina's Boathouse Bar & Grill to meet people that night. Cassie is apparently a girl of quick temperament changes because I swear to god, she's put at ease and made uneasy about five times in two pages. She leaves, but her car won't start and then it catches fire and the doors won't unlock. Faye is testing her, seeing if Cassie has powers. She either doesn't or doesn't know how to use them, as Adam, Diana's boyfriend, has to save Cassie from the car. The fire mysteriously dies. Cassie, rattled, gets driven home and hums herself to sleep with a song her mother taught her... which just so happens to be MAGIC and points the way to a secret compartment in her mother's old room where a book of magic spells is kept. Yay!

Cassie attempts to boil water in a pot using magic and fails. She shrugs it off with a laugh until she sees that she accidentally boiled the water in a glass in the sink. She goes to the Boathouse to pick up her car, but she's told Jane has already had it towed. She meets Ethan, Adam's dad, who is drunk and cryptic and SAYS THAT HE AND CASSIE'S MOM WERE MEANT TO BE TOGETHER. Oh, and he says that Cassie and Adam are meant to be together, too (thus providing the beginnings of a potential love triangle that isn't really a key factor here). Ah, twisted adult relationships that reflect on / are repeated by their children (Rufus/Lily and Dan/Serena, anyone?) Adam is there and he takes Cassie to the woods and teaches her how to float dew water and then hundreds of droplets rise in the air and it's pretty and crystal-like and kind of reminiscent of Edward revealing himself to be a sparkly vampire in the meadow in Twilight.

Anyway, Adam takes Cassie to the secret coven cabin in the woods and she sees Diana, Faye, and Melissa and meets the other two dudes in the coven, Doug (football jock) and Nick (drug dealer, lives in the house next door to Cassie, their rooms look at each other so Cassie has seen him shirtless, oh, and he and Faye are an item but their sex life is only a 6 or a 7 - her score and his, respectively).

There are rules for the coven. Diana's rules, as she's apparently the strongest. She's also the only other one to have found her family's Book of Shadows (what they call the book Cassie found). They practice together. They don't use their powers for evil, or steal or cheat or hurt others... but those moral lines are slightly murky as they've used magic to help Doug realize his full potential as an athlete and helped Melissa get a B in Chemistry after failing the subject by "opening her mind up to it so she could understand it." They need to keep their power a secret, of course.

Per my (way) above complaint... those are self-imposed rules about the moral use of power. They aren't rules about the limits of power (i.e. Bonnie's nosebleeds when she uses too much magic or, say, her Grams DYING from over-channeling).

Cassie learns the history. There are seven of them; there were seven families who fled Salem (as in witch trials) and founded New Salem. These seven kids are the descendants. And they're all witches! And Cassie makes the circle complete! Yay!

Only Cassie wants no part. She's established herself as a loner, and she's sticking to that. We also see a bit of a power struggle between Diana and Faye. Faye says she's been practicing on her own (breaking Diana's rules) and she gets out of control making it rain later that night at the annual town Lobster Festival. Then she loses control and Diana almost drowns because of it, but is saved. Beyond this, the festival is surprisingly uneventful other than a run-in with "normal" Sally and Cassie meeting Thomas, Diana's father... who the audience will recognize as the guy who killed Amelia, Cassie's mom. Also, Jane talks with Dawn (the vice principal), worried that the kids are together and practicing magic (just like Dawn and Amelia and that entire generation of seven). Dawn denies it, strongly, as it would be absurd! She'd know! The lady doth protest too much (way too much, because she's either an Ignorant Adult or a Manipulative Villain) and it turns out she does know, and she's in cahoots with Thomas, and they need Cassie to do something that's left incredibly vague by the end of the pilot.

And then Cassie, putting her Book of Shadows back in its hiding place, finds a message from beyond the grave from her mother. Which tells her to not go through things alone, and apologizes for not preparing her for what's to come. And so she joins the other six in a magic bonfire circle.

Trimming The Fat (CW Edition)

I am and have in the past been a fan (at times vocal) of shows with mild-to-disastrous ratings.

See, for instance, Veronica Mars (still miss you, Ronnie!)

Of course, when we have personal attachment to shows, we make excuses for why a network should renew / order additional episodes. Upscale incomes. Highly concentrated demographics. Change the timeslot and give this great show a chance to find an audience... it's too damn good to cancel, dammit!

But take your Fan Hat off for a moment. I know, it's hard. But your hair looks fine. Trust me. Let's talk brass tacks.

I was going to extend this post to all networks, but decided that, hey, maybe I'll get to blogging more often if I separate things out a bit. So, for now, we're just talking CW.

This development year was the first in two that failed to produce a "hit" premiere - let alone a "hit" series. For a limited shelf space, limited budget, niche-appeal network like CW with rapidly aging shows and a finicky audience... this is disastrous.

In 2008, CW gave us 90210 2.0 which may have rapidly sunk post-premiere, but for a CW show that premiere attracted eyeballs. Almost 5 million of the (same day). In 2009, The Vampire Diaries' premiere also almost attracted 5 million viewers. Unlike 90210, Vampire Diaries has actually held onto a sizable-enough portion of that audience to be considered CW's lone viable television program (though, unlike True Blood, it failed to see big season-to-season gains... too bad, though).

In a "perfect" world with an infinite budget both for production and marketing and without any personal attachments coming into the mix... The Vampire Diaries is the only show that would survive a real "trimming the fat."

Of course, we, and the CW, don't live in that supposedly "perfect" world.

You can make W18-34 arguments for Gossip Girl (GG, despite having about half the overall audience as TVD, does have basically the same W18-34 audience as TVD... and, according to an article I recently read, GG is tied with The Office for the highest concentration of "upscale" A18-34 viewers). That's two hours of programming.

Supernatural has done respectable business on Fridays and I suspect it will remain there next year. The question is: how does it do without the Smallville lead-in next year? There is also a back-end argument to be made for Supernatural as it's syndicated on TNT (I don't have per episode figures) and the show does well on DVD (genre shows tend to overperform at DVD compared to their audience size). That's three hours.

America's Next Top Model? It's long in the tooth. It's been showing its age since Cycle 10 and this is, what, Cycle 15? The ratings weren't reinvigorated by the "actually a high fashion prize with better designers and photographers" change this cycle. Which I have to imagine added to the cost of the show. Still, this show isn't going anywhere for a while. And ANTM has syndication value. That's four hours.

That's still six hours to program. There are (flimsy) arguments to be made for more seasons of both 90210 and One Tree Hill. But CW isn't a network that can afford to reprogram 6 hours. Reprogramming 4 is still quite a stretch.

Do Hellcats or Nikita fit in?

Probably not. And here's why: Life Unexpected was canceled.

I feel like the experiment of a second season of LUX should tell CW what to do about its two freshmen, Hellcats and Nikita. Neither of them had huge series premieres even by "CW standards" (ah, love that phrase). Hellcats with 3 million, Nikita with 3.6 million. And now they're both lucky to hit 2/3 of those numbers. Nikita's W18-34, behind CW's number one show, are actually the worst on the network (some times, even LUX has higher W18-34). Now, I'm not putting the possibility of either show suddenly catching fire totally out of question. I mean, it's always possible. But is it probable? No. CW hoped LUX would catch fire in its extended break, and it didn't.

Gossip Girl "blew up" thanks to anticipation built during the Writers Strike hiatus, a bold new marketing campaign, a timeslot change, limited competition thanks to the strike, and (JMHO) stellar content in the initial 13 episode order. Then it grew more after the summer... and it was never as popular again as it was at the top of its second season.

Don't expect miracles for either Hellcats or Nikita. Especially because none of those things that helped Gossip Girl "explode" seem to be in the cards (he said without haven't watched any of Hellcats beyond the pilot presentation, and having watched two episodes of Nikita... but I haven't gotten any indication that either are the Best TV Show I'm Not Watching, so...)

The lesson from LUX, then, seems to be that when you don't have enough of an audience to slowly trickle off through several seasons... cut your losses and don't go beyond one season.

Even Hellcats. It rebounded in W18-34 last week... but only to a 1.7 (which is under 90210's season three levels). LUX was pulling 1.7s out of One Tree Hill last season. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results (not that anyone has accused Dawn Ostroff of being sane...)

But CW doesn't even live in a world perfect enough that it can program 4 new hours of TV next fall (yet another reason why this fall was disastrous: a complete lack of midseason replacement backup... we've yet to hear how CW is planning to fill Tuesdays at 9pm after LUX runs out of episodes).

So there may be a season two of Hellcats (and, hell, there may even be a season two of Nikita... which will not be indicative of Nikita itself, it will be indicative of the sorry state CW finds itself in). Don't expect much more.

In short... it seems that the CW is in such terrible shape that there is literally too much fat to trim at this point.

Here's an idea for CW, though. Take a page from the first season of Gossip Girl and from the first season of Glee: run a show's initial order out over the course of the fall (and, if you must, January). Take it off the air. Let anticipation build. Have the studio release a Season One, Part One DVD. Bring the show back in late March / early April and run the back order continuously through sweeps. Alternatively, program like the first season of Heroes (a marketing success story), in 3 chunks, and make damn sure the story has the requisite cliffhangers.

There are risks, of course. Does absence make the heart grow fonder? Or do viewers forget? CW isn't programming broad-appeal shows; it's clearly programming niche shows that tend to have a higher concentration of hardcore, passionate fans, if you give those viewers material that makes them care, their hearts grow fonder, though there's plenty of evidence that it's not always the case (just from last year on ABC: Flashforward and V... of course, the ratings for both were on downward spirals before their hiatus). When you program to a niche hoping for passion, sometimes (rarely / not often) you get a show like Glee where there is a large enough core of passionate fans that the show actually is considered a big hit (remember, the first season's fall airings were not anywhere near the current ratings levels... though between you and me, Dear Reader, I think Glee hit its ratings peak in the first two episodes of this season).

I'm not suggesting CW will find something that hits like Glee. But if you can craft a show that people will anticipate and miss and want to watch... what's another little marketing push?

Think of it, if you will, as more like a cable network than a broadcast network. You can be sure that ABC Family is going to be pushing the return of Pretty Little Liars for its midseason return. And I know there's a difference between airing over the summer and airing in the winter against broadcast competition. But I expect PLL will have no trouble viewership (and I actually expect an uptick).

Of course, the material has to be there (with the casting, and the production, and the direction), and even after all of that, the network still has to pick up the damn show (there's no guarantee that happens as almost every season has a couple of "I can't believe they didn't pick this up!!!" pilots). This year, it wasn't.

An optimist or CW apologist might say "But Travis! You just pointed out a reason to give Hellcats and Nikita a season season order so that anticipation can build! They have to try!" Well... unlike LUX, both of these shows will run full seasons before a pickup has to be made, while LUX "only" had the initial order of 13. There was no opportunity for a schedule break for LUX. There is still plenty of opportunity, in the next 6 months, to see what happens with Hellcats and Nikita. As above, I just don't see it in the cards because the pieces that would need to be in place for a surge just aren't.

Take the Fan Hat off. Run your fingers through your hair and feel the cold breeze.

PS - It was interesting to look at the first seasons of Heroes/Gossip Girl/Glee, each with extended breaks and new marketing pushes for the relaunch... their second seasons premiered to the biggest numbers the show would ever get and then quickly suffered (from a combination of overhype and sophomore slump). Yet another reason why I think that "Audition" and "Britney/Brittany" will be Glee's highest-ever rated episodes.