Hidden Palms: The O.C. Meets Hitchcock
It doesn't take long before Palm Springs' newest teen hunk on the block realizes, "This place has a severe tonal problem." That's what happens when you try to combine Hitchcockian mystery,
O.C.-style rich-kid melodrama and
Dynasty-era satirical soap.
Hidden Palms, a slick but derivative vessel of campy intrigue from Dawson's Creek creator Kevin Williamson, is being dumped unceremoniously into network TV's early off-season (premiering Wednesday, May 30, at 8 pm/ET). Overwritten and underacted (by the kids anyway), it strings out its weekly climactic shockers — some of them truly unnerving — with artery-hardening blobs of moldy adolescent whining.
If angst were sunblock, the kids on this show would never have to worry about getting burned by the hot desert sun. That's especially true of the show's hero, Johnny (Taylor Handley), fresh from rehab at 16 (as if), a condition of having been present during his dad's grisly suicide in the show's opening scene. With his mom and a new stepdad, Johnny is starting over in this glamorous resort town of country-club cads and soused sirens, where skeletons lurk in shadows and on computer screens.
The show teems with hyper-verbally precocious teens who act superior to their self-absorbed parents — one calls her dad "the epitome of a useless deadbeat nothing." Except for sober Johnny, these kids put away more booze than the Walkers of Brothers & Sisters. They're all harboring secrets, mostly concerning a dead boy (suicide or murder?). The best reason to watch the show: Michael Cassidy (The O.C.'s comic-book geek Zach) as Johnny's mysteriously manipulative neighbor Cliff, a paragon of preppy charm and smarm.
He's having a blast. I kept wishing I were.
Desperate Wife
Come Memorial Day, many of us are looking for a good old-fashioned beach read, and we may even settle for watching one on TV. USA Network's six-hour The Starter Wife (Thursdays, 9 pm/ET, May 31-June 28) goes one step further: It's a beach fantasy.
This lighthearted but heavy-handed Hollywood romantic fable asks us to sympathize with Molly (Debra Messing in fine sitcom-neurotic form), a studio exec's trophy wife who's suddenly dumped and shunned by showbiz society, yet gets to lick her wounds in the Malibu beach house of her rehabbing pal (Judy Davis). Poor baby.
A diverting if obvious trifle of chick-lit escapism, Wife rarely becomes as captivating or as hilarious as it thinks it is.
As Molly takes in other strays while flirting with a gorgeous but aloof beachcomber, it's hard not to be distracted by Joe Mantegna's welcome gravity as a jaded mogul who senses Molly's true worth. I get a feeling he'd put this project in turnaround.
