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 The Ex-List

(July 7th, 2008. - Editor)          Elizabeth Reaser (Grey's Anatomy), Rachel Boston (American Dreams), Alexandra Breckeridge (Dirt), Adam Rothenberg (Mad Men) and Amir Talai (Campus Ladies) star in the one hour comedic drama The Ex-List, debuting on CBS on Fridays at 9pm starting in September.

33 year-old Bella Bloom (Reaser), just had a life-changing experience. While celebrating the engagement and impending wedding of her younger sister, Daphne (Boston), the fun included a visit to a psychic, who offered a few insights for the bride, before focusing on Bella for an in-depth analysis. The still-single woman is told that if she cannot find her soul mate in the next year, she will be destined to spend the rest of her life alone. Bella considers her options and decides that a new romance with a new man would take too much time and may not result in a connection with Mr. Right. Instead she elects to review her past boyfriends to see of she have missed something about one of then that would qualify them to become Mr. Right. After all, she feels in her heart that she is destined to find that certain someone special. Friends Augie (Rosenburg), Vivian (Breckenridge), Augie's long-term girlfriend, and Cyrus (Talai) are supportive, but they all think she has gone over the edge this time. Maybe they are right, but that won't stop Bella from taking one last try to find true love.

When Bella was 26 she broke up with a young musician named Johnny Diamont. She decides to give him another chance. At first she is totally turned on when he acts distant and aloof, but when he returns to his old emotionally needy self, she quickly realizes why she left him seven years earlier. Now, once again, she is planning to break up with him, when he turns the tables and exacts a little revenge for how he has been treated. Candidate number one is scratched from the list.

          From the first moment we see star Elizabeth Reaser on the screen, she conveys a special something that will have women rooting for her and men wondering why this great looking girl is still single. She is so much better than the material that I have to think that this series will serve as a springboard to something better for her once this effort has come to a conclusion. The only variable is, if that turns out to be five episodes or five years from now, depending on the ability of the writers and crew to create a future for this series.

The support group of friends and family who surround the star are all interesting characters who provide good comic relief and supporting dialogue, but they will not be enough to sustain an audience. The leading character's search for Mr. Right will be the focus of this series, and it had better get a lot more interesting, soon. The last thing the average television viewer wants to see their lives played-out on the television screen. They want to be shown images of someone else. Someone who is living a much better life, a much different life than the one they live. They want to be lost in a fantasy for an hour. That's the whole purpose of television. They don't want to see a TV character who can't get out of an ordinary life. That is unless they can be witness to and a part of that character overcoming their challenges. In the case of this drama, that can't happen. It would spell disaster for this series if it were to lose the premise of the show and therefore, they can't ever deliver the payoff.

          On the plus side, everything there is to know about this show takes less than a minute. In fact, I'm looking for the opening titles to explain the premise, introduce the characters and give us a pleasant tune all at the same time. On the minus side, everything there is to know about this show takes less than a minute. Now the actors must work hard to keep us interested in their characters, even though they live very ordinary lives. The writers will be out of ideas before the end of season one.

          The plot of this series is better suited to the capsule of a feature film, where the viewer can be introduced to the characters, see the problem, see the solution and be on their way all in the time it takes to eat a bag of popcorn. Dragging this plot over a 22 episode season, and hoping for a second, third, fourth and fifth season is beyond my ability to comprehend. There are shows that could go on forever, E.R. and Law & Order spring to mind, but this effort is not one of those shows. If they are lucky, the poor competition created by last season's writer's strike will allow this one hour comedic-drama to build an audience. But in a year where the Television industry is operating like it usually does, this soft effort would not stand a chance.

The only possible lesson to take from this series is that as a rule, dysfunctional, failed relationships don't get better with age. I doubt you can make a successful weekly TV series based on the fact that when it comes to relationships, there really is no going back again.

 

-- Editor --

 

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