The New Season: ABC Up a Tree
On the positive side, ABC is doing its new romantic comedy-drama
Men in Trees a huge favor by previewing it tonight (Sept. 12, 10 pm/ET) after the two-hour opener of the much-anticipated guilty pleasure
Dancing with the Stars. On the negative side,
Men in Trees will next be seen (by a potentially much punier audience) on Fridays. (Most weeks the lead-in will be an ?encore? of
Grey?s Anatomy, and its lead-out will be the warhorse newsmag
20/20.)
Which begs the question: Does
Men in Trees have a chance? And from my point of view, should it?
Much depends on your threshold of tolerance for
Anne Heche, a fine actress but not one especially given to winsomeness and charm. She?s especially spiky and snotty in the early scenes of tonight?s contrived pilot, in which she?s introduced as Marin Frist, a glib relationship expert/author who?s convinced she has all the answers when it comes to men and romance. Naturally, she doesn?t. And much as you may be rooting for this smug socialite to get her comeuppance, you may wish it would come in a more original way than having local yokels in a remote Alaska town (Elmo masquerading as Cicely in this less inspired
Northern Exposure knockoff) show her the light.
She tangles with a raccoon, wears inappropriate shoes for the elements, pines for a spinning class (Alaska being apparently gym-free), insults a hunky wildlife warden who later rescues her from a fall through metaphor-rich thin ice (resulting in them cuddling together for warmth, sans clothes). And so on.
This may be just the sort of gentle escapism that stay-at-homes on Friday are pining for. But something tells me that
Men in Trees will find Fridays an even less hospitable environment than Marin does the quirky wilds of Alaska.
