Pilot Season: Ringer (Is This The Best You've Got, SMG? Really?)

Wait, is this show about mirrors?

Hey look, multiple posts in one day!  It’s just my little way of making up to the three of you who read this (hi Mom!) for missing Wednesday.  Also, I’m bored and this diner hasn’t kicked me out yet.

So, onward with the pilots.  I swear, we’re almost halfway there*.

RINGER (CW Tuesdays 9 EST)

Yeah, this show aired a while ago, and I watched it when it aired, so I really have no excuse to be posting this so late except…

I don’t get it.

And I want to.  I loved Buffy.  More than is probably emotionally sound.**  Sure, the character sometimes made me want to throttle her, and I am totally doing a piece later on about how much I question her choices in the later seasons, but she was first and foremost awesome.  Sarah Michelle Gellar rocked it out.

So why the hell is she coming back to television with this crap?

Totally a show about mirrors.

Ringer is (apparently) about two twins.  The crappy twin, Bridget, sees the rich twin, Siobhan, commit suicide, and decides to take over her life.  Because that’s what people do.  Not call for an ambulance, or her husband, or one of the fifty kajillion cops Bridget knows.  Nope.  This is the sane choice.

And so she tries to take over her twin’s life, except her twin had a complicated life, which Bridget knows nothing about, since they hadn’t spoken in six years, and Bridget is a terrible liar.  But somehow no one notices (HOW?!) and Bridget stays hidden.  Oh yeah, and Siobhan was pregnant.  And is apparently still alive.  WTF.

It’s not that I object to soapy, melodramatic CW shows in principle.  I watch Gossip Girl.  It’s horrible about that.  I love it.  It’s that Ringer doesn’t add anything new to the formula except some really awful CGI backgrounds and a premise that is about 10 episodes of plot from a soap opera.  And they know how to milk things.

Siobhan has giant pictures of her own face.  Yeah.

How the hell did Sarah Michelle Gellar, kicker and puncher of all that is evil, end up in such a washed out, dull as dishwater show?  And as such a lame character too?  Siobhan (probably) had some grit to her, as we see from her philandering, faked death, and plotting.  I would totally watch a show about her, even if she is a bit of a sociopath.  Gellar plays her like she’s been let out of her cage. 

But Bridget is boring.  Really, really boring.  She’s an addict, but she goes to meetings.  She’s a stripper, but reformed.  She used to be an interesting person, but aside from having some really weird ideas of what makes for a good decision in a crisis, she’s not anymore.  She’s just muddling through.  I do not like my soap characters to muddle.  I want them to scheme.

Feel something.  Please.

I don’t want to pigeon-hole Sarah Michelle Gellar as an actress, but I guess I came to expect more from her.  I don’t want her to play just another wilted woman, being shuffled around so much, she’s literally not even living her own life.  I want her to be awesome.  I want her character to be awesome.  She doesn’t have to be an action star, she just has to be active.  You know, as a person.  Inside.

But if all you’re looking for is some silly soapy fun, then watch Ringer.  You’ll at least enjoy the CGI backgrounds.

Definitely a show about mirrors.

*We still have Pan Am, Playboy Club, 2 Broke Girls, Unforgettable, Secret Circle, Once Upon A Time, I Hate My Teenage Daughter, and Apartment 23 to go.  At least.  Yay!

**Ask my high school boyfriend.  It was a strange aspect of our relationship.  Me making him watch Buffy, him wondering why he was dating me...