Deadly Furniture

First…

Big Love. To be honest, my opinion of this series opener was doomed from the start. Bill Paxton, the show’s main character, is one of the people on my list of “Actors That I Don’t Like But Have No Real Reason For Not Liking.” Nothing in the world would compel me to watch an entire se

ries (of five seasons no less) that would force me to watch Bill Paxton each episode. However, I remembered the show getting some buzz way back when it started and it’s in the midst of its swan song so I thought that I would put all prejudices aside and watch it.

I was not impressed. Sure, 90% of this may have been my failure to put my aforementioned thoughts about Bill Paxton aside, but the other 10% is entirely rational. The general premise is the life of a polygamist, Bill Hendrickson, and his three wives. As one would imagine, the politics of handling three different families is not only psychologically stressful, but also financially troublesome.

Each wife has their own problems and each want to believe that Bill loves them the most. Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) is the newest, youngest wife who actually comes from outside of the religious community that the rest of the family comes from. She’s barely treading water trying to live up to everyone’s expectations. The least sympathetic wife, Nicky (Chloe Sevigny) likes to online shop and is stealing money from the family’s general fund to fuel her addiction. The most sympathetic wife, Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn who has the greatest last name of all time) was married to Bill for more than a decade before he married Nicky and is perhaps the only sympathetic and interesting character in the pilot. Halfway through the episode, I was screaming at Barb to leave this man and go and be incredible somewhere else. She has a job, she has her children, get out and get out fast. But, of course, she didn’t listen and I was left frustrated.

Perhaps it was the overly long opening credits that actually make-no-sense (I mean, the Beatles?), or perhaps it was boring religious stuff that I confess I didn’t really care about, or perhaps it was that troublesome Paxton, but this just isn’t a world that I want to re-visit. When I wasn’t bored or disinterested, I was angry and frustrated.

Speaking of frustration….

Ugly Betty. Second confession: I didn’t actually make it through the pilot. In my defense, I almost made it to the end and I knew how it was going to end anyways because the plot was that predictable and boring. Oh my goodness, she’s ‘ugly” (more like gorgeous under some uglyclothes) and she’s going to work in the fashion industry? Can this work? HIGHGINKS!!

I can see the feel that the show was going for. Very like Pushing Daisies, the show is supposedly set in a “real world,” but it has a very Alice In Wonderland-esque quality to it. The easiest I can describe it actually comes out sounding sort of creepy but here it goes--it looks like everything is in a way magically edible. Far from a dark realistic world like in, say, Damages, there is something very fantastical about the world of Ugly Betty and, although you know that the setting doesn’t actually exist in the real world, you continue to want to search for it. For a further example, I believe that somewhere, out there, there is a pie store that has Lee Pace behind the counter. One day, I will find it.

Where it succeeds with art direction, Ugly Betty fails in characters. With ten minutes or so left in the show, I suddenly came to the startling conclusion that I didn’t care about what happened to any character the last thirty minutes had spent time on. Sure, you’re supposed to care for Betty (America Ferrara) but I guiltily found that I thought she was pretty dumb. I understand having your own style, but all she needed to do was put on a suit and all her problems would be solved. She’s smart enough to realize that. And then everyone else is so over-actingly horrible that you don’t bother to learn their names or pay attention to what they’re saying because they bother you so much.

I couldn’t bare another minute of it so I turned off the television and re-watched clips from Pushing Daisies.

Which leaves us with…..

However unlike these other two pilots, it seems like a disservice to try to lay out the plot of such a complex show in a short summary and to then go into a short discussion on how cool and cinematic the whole episode felt. It would be like trying to describe “Pilot: Parts One and Two” of Lost and capture the brilliance of the opening episodes. In fact, Lost may be the easiest thing to compare to Damages. Sure, one is about a cut-throat lawyer and a new, young associate who becomes caught up in a bloodthirsty, cruel world and the other is about (insert long discussion about the brilliance of Darlton and how their show is “about” something different for every viewer here). But “Get Me A Lawyer” utilizes the same flashback techniques as the ABC show, and has its own sense of cinematic style that makes the pilot seem like it is the opening act of a thirteen-part movie.

Damages falls short of Lost as the big mystery is more or less announced at the end of the pilot episode. The twists are a little too easy to figure out for avid television viewers, and “Get Me A Lawyer” lacks the complexities of Darlton’s shows. However, there is a point where the comparisons to perhaps the greatest television show since forever and Damages becomes unfair. Glenn Close’s Patty Hewes is no Ben Linus, but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t a compelling villain and that Glenn Close doesn’t act the frak out of the part. The plot points aren’t as surprising, but when (my one spoiler) that dog died and the murderer isn’t who we think it is, I may have smiled a little and said, “Nicely played, Damages, nicely played.”

I have a feeling that Damages isn’t the type of show that I’m going to want to marathon. It may actually take me a while to get through the series. But unlike Big Love and Ugly Betty, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to continue watching it. This, for a viewer that has perhaps the shortest attention span ever, is saying something.

Series to Watch: Pushing Daisies and Lost