ABC's Mixology Shakes Up the Recipe for TV Romance

One bar. One chance. One night.
On ABC's new comedy Mixology, which premieres Wednesday at 9:30/8:30c, 10 people have ended up at New York's hottest bar mix looking for love, distraction, relief and maybe even themselves. Having written big-screen comedies The Hangover and 21 and Over, executive producers and writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore are no strangers to turning around the lives of characters in one night, mainly assisted by alcohol.
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The idea for Mixology was born from trying to write a romantic comedy film but without the predictable outcome. "You have the $20 million actor and the $20 million actor and you're like, 'I know how this ends. There are two people on a poster,'" Lucas told reporters during a set visit. "Well, let's try a love quadrangle. What if you get six people in it? What if you get eight people in it? This is just starting to get so complicated that you need a show to do it."
The writers room had to do research into current bar culture, which results in a wacky lexicon of terms like "prairie-dogging." "It's where you walk around the bar and your friends watch to see who's watching you," Moore explained. "That's something that they actually do. I thought, 'Oh my God, that seems so smart. I never thought of that. I never did that. I should've prairie-dogged all of those years.'"
Naturally, with the bar comes drinking, and since this takes place over one night, the drinking progresses throughout the season as closing time nears. "The later the night gets, everyone has had a few more drinks," Blake Lee, who plays Tom, said. Andrew Santino, who plays Bruce, added, "Stuff gets a little bit crazier. Situations are a little sloppier. It's fantastic."
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Let's take a look at the 10 characters who make up the relationship cocktail that is Mixology:
The Three Amigos: Tom, Bruce and Cal (Craig Frank)
Tom is the nice guy who got dumped by his fiancee and needs to find his mojo. "Sometimes it takes him a little while to get the courage up," Lee said. "But he has these two jerks [Bruce and Cal] to push him in the right direction."
Bruceis the ginger-bearded friend who has his own problems in the romance department. "I'm probably the biggest troublemaker and these two are my fix-it men. I'm usually going after women I don't deserve," Santino said about playing Bruce. "I'm disgusting. It actually says in the character description, 'Disgusting pig from New Jersey.'"
Cal rounds out his group as the supporter. But when will he look to his own needs? "He's there to pump Tommy up. He's there to keep Bruce on an even keel," Frank said. Santino added, "Cal is kind of like the wild card. He's the guy who lays low and attacks when he sees the weak animal."
The Single Ladies: Maya (Ginger Gonzaga), Jessica (Alexis Carra) and Fabienne (Frankie Shaw)
Maya is a cutthroat attorney who is supposed to meet her engaged pal Liv (Kate Simses), but gets distracted by Tom's bumbling attempts to get her number. Gonzaga, who plays Maya, is also a stand-up comic who is one of the show's narrators, along with Santino, another comic. "We like the idea of a he-said-she-said-y thing where you're getting guy perspective and female perspective on what's going on," Lucas said.
Check out photos from Mixology
Jessica is a single mom who hasn't given up on finding love yet. Carra explained, "I think Jessica wants to feel like she can go out and have fun and do that but at the end of the night, she's like, 'OK I want to be responsible and find somebody who's crazy enough to marry me because I've got these two kids.'"
Fabienne and Jessica had dreams of running off to Paris after graduation to pursue their fashionista dreams, but Jessica became pregnant and had a family. Fabienne continued on that path and is back in New York. "It's a little bit of a facade, but she does have this incredible strength to go after what she wants," Shaw said. "Her values are a little bit mixed up right now. I think reuniting with her old friend brings out in her something that she's been repressing for awhile. She has a profound change."
The Odd Couple: Liv and Ron (Adam Campbell)
Liv is Maya's friend and a bride-to-be who is already on the path to her dream life... or is she? When she meets the handsome Brit Ron, she's not so sure, but she does eventually reveal to him that she's already engaged. "Liv has just been checking off the boxes, doing what's been told to her, and when she meets Ron, she for the first time feels some sort of intensity, a chemistry," Simses said. "He challenges her to think outside the box and think what is it that you want in this moment instead of accepting whatever comes down the road."
Ron is the dashing Brit who has made -- and just lost -- millions. "Ron is a bit of a player and he's really been out for himself. His whole life he's just abused people's friendships to get something out of them," Campbell said. "As a result, he's become very successful and very rich, but also incredibly lonely. Women, he's just seen as a means to an end until meeting Liv, and Ron is actually struck by not only how he's perhaps been living his life in not a great way, but he also realizes that meeting the right person could transform the way he seems himself. She kind of sees through his facade and his awkward charm and she sees the guy inside."
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The Bar Staff -- Kacey (Vanessa Lengies) and Dominic (Adan Canto)
Kacey the waitress and Dom the bartender are dating... or are they? "You just feel like, 'Aww, you're a delusion little squirrel. I hope you get the nuts,'" Lengies said about her character. "[Their relationship] is fantastic to watch because you have him who's this serious, fun-loving, go-with-the-flow kind of guy, and then my character is the opposite. You find out about her that she's actually quite a businesswoman. She is very ambitious."
Dom prefers to keep his mouth shut and stay mysterious, even if he's taking his shirt off, which he does in the first episode. "You'll root for Dominic because he's just been looked over because he's so beautiful," Lengies observed. "Sometimes you forget that beautiful people have more to them than their looks. We treat them a certain way without asking them what's underneath." Added Canto, "We're people too!"
At the end of these 13 episodes, will these 10 people find love? "There will be some sort of satisfying connections where characters get what they want," Moore promised. "There are going to be some characters who don't get what they want, but they sort of get what they need. And then there are going to be some sad or bittersweet ones where people don't get together."
Check out a preview of Mixology:

Mixology airs Wednesdays at 9:30/8:30c on ABC.