FN Blog - Seven heads are better than one!

My family and I don’t visit our dead on All Saints’ Day. We’re not heathens, just practical. We prefer making our annual trip to Lolo and Lola’s patch of green and concrete after the streets have been rinsed of the urban pilgrim crowd that manages to make a cemetery look like a Woodstock concert venue. Plus, there’s the traffic. I live in Alabang, and my beloved are buried in Sucat’s Manila Memorial. Sucat on a regular day is already a force of nature―and there are TWO major memorial capitals here enough to cause a jam. So we pay our respects during “off peak visiting hours.”

Given that and nothing to do, I set camp on my couch and reap the harvest of my online torrent video downloads. First on the playlist are the first four episodes of The Starter Wife, a mini series (now showing on Hallmark) about a high-profile homemaker who has to start over in true “who are my real friends” fashion after being unceremoniously dumped by her Hollywood studio exec hubby. By second ep, I knew that I loved the show it could have been, but am not so hot about the show it turned out to be. Premise was good enough for meaty plot and even meatier dialogue―woman’s wrath is always good material. But three things got in the way: a script that doesn’t consistently “bring it,” a slow walk to Cliché Central, and one huge casting glitch.

A Script That Doesn’t Consistently “Bring It”:
I’m usually forgiving of any pilot series’ first two episodes. It’s common for a show to get off on a tentative start, then put pedal to the metal from the third ep onward. That’s how it hooks a loyal following that hankers for more. Sadly, that doesn’t apply here. Because aside from generally unremarkable dialogue and plot progression, there were actually lines that made me puke seven shades.

Here’s a taste:

Oh.
My.
Gawd.

There’s the cheesy line that serves as a device for parody or mockery. But this wasn’t a device for anything other than to turn my stomach. This was the worst kind of cheese: the earnest kind. I don’t think even traditionally sapped-up daytime soaps pack in as much cheese in their scripts these days. They cough up more of that and they’re gonna put New Zealand and the French out of business. I sat there with my jaw to the floor, too stunned to even be appalled. If a show’s bad, I simply tell my friends not to bother. But I pestered one of my buddies to watch it for that scene alone. It wasn’t right for me to be the only witness to such phenomenal suckage. When something hits unbelievably new lows in a pop cultural landscape of mediocrity, you give it the attention it deserves!

And it’s too bad because there are actually quotable gems here:

There’s a great scene in the third episode, I think, where Joan (Davis) asks Molly (Messing) to visit her at rehab and pretend to be her antagonizing older sister, Bambi. The sibling confrontation was upon the recommendation of Joan’s rehab life coach, “to release your demons, to finally have closure…” (The man’s obviously never had a drink in his life.) Anyway, the entire exchange between a skanked-up “Bambi” and Joan, who is feeding Bambi hints of information as they go, ratchets up decent entertainment points. Then the plot flatlines again, the intervals between the likes of “I might ignite” and the likes of “I haven’t eaten in 12 years” packed with non-descript dialogue that elicit no more than a forced chuckle.

A Slow Walk To Cliché Central
Then there’s the treatment. A few comedic devices are employed to ratchet a punchline, but none you haven’t already seen in Ally McBeal or Desperate Housewives. There’s this scene where Molly almost accidentally drowns and, while still underwater, sees a newspaper with the headline “40 Year Old Woman Commits Suicide Across Celebrities’ Homes;” and another scene where she steps on a weighing scale and the LCD screen fictitiously reads “212 lbs,” prompting Molly to think aloud: “I haven’t lost a husband, I gained a hundred pounds.” You know how there’s a really good joke, but Kathy Griffin called in sick so they send Martha Stewart to tell it? That’s the general feeling you get. You know it’s supposed to be funny, except it’s not.

Even some plot twists lend a sense of déjà vu: Sam the male budding romantic interest has a mysterious past and is suspected of murder, and when Molly gets wind of it, an eerily familiar Double Jeopardy-esque tune scores the scene. You find yourself wondering if Desperate Housewives did a complete recast…or if this show has enough fight in it to take a final, bloody stab at even just a modicum of originality.

One Huge Casting Glitch:
Debra Messing and Judy Davis do such a fine job considering all the work cut out in their respective roles as starter wife and caustic Martini-nourished socialite. Miranda Otto, the show’s counterpart to SATC’s Charlot, could use a few more character quirks given her acting chops. But she manages to punch classy substance into and make the best of such a cookie-cut role. Peter Jacobson is effective as Kenny Kagan, the self-absorbed and sickeningly shallow Hollywood studio exec who dumps wife Molly for a young singing sensation, rallying enough rage in you to burn your bra and shove it up his rear end. And the seasoned Joe Mantegna, as the classy but glitz-weary film studio CEO, Kenny Kagan’s boss, and a true gentleman who seems to be Molly’s deliverance from Hollywood hell and life in general, proves that sometimes men get more dashing with age. Even the non-headliner Chris Diamantopoulos, who plays the requisite gay friend is charming enough.

But there is one casting glitch. Its name is Stephen Moyer.

He plays Sam, the rugged, brooding, and mysterious beach body who sets Molly’s knickers ablaze. Good-looking enough, Moyer did torch my loins when he debuted on my computer monitor. But it was a sizzling moment that lasted all of 30 seconds. First of all, the chemistry between him and Molly is shot. They make you anxious for another power scene with Judy Davis instead of rooting for them. And if you fail the loveteam-frenzied viewer that is every Pinoy, you do not have a chance. He says his lines with such wooden passion and contrived pa-mysteriousness that even his sandy locks, sapphire blue eyes, and roguish are galaxies away from ever being able to rescue him. And speaking of looks, that’s the worst thing about him: the way he looks, not his appearance but literally the way he sets his eyes on someone. During intense sexual tension moments between him and Molly, when I think he goes for “smoldering stare,” there’s something fundamentally wrong with how he does it, it just comes off as creepy! Hindi ka kikiligin, nenerbyosin ka. I’ve watched TV loveteams that I wasn’t really over the moon about, but none that have made me cringe! So when the story later reveals his dark past and alleges his involvement in a murder, instead of the typical “No…he didn’t do it…or if he did, it was self defense!”, you’re more like “Lock him up. Now na.”