It’s Rachel’s other sister; new setting, same prada-wearing devil. Christina Applegate goes small screen in her self-produced sitcom in this week’s
TELEMUMBLE
Wasting your time faster than the real thing
Been putting off reviewing this sitcom since the start of fall season. Majority of the cast is supposed to play insensitive, upper-middle-class, guys-you-love-to-hate roles, and they do it so well you’re tempted to just watch Paris, Lilo, and Brit on E! News for the same effect.
SPOILER ALERT
Samantha Newly wakes up an amnesiac after a week-long coma. She meets her parents then is told she hasn’t spoken to her mother, who accomplishes her mission of being annoying, in a couple of years. She meets her best friend Andrea, who didn’t know she was even in a coma and accomplishes her mission of being annoying. She decides to stay with her ex-boyfriend Barry, who’s not annoying, at a condo with a non-annoying doorman Frank. Like all other fresh amnesiacs who are having identity crises, Samantha decides to go clubbing and finds out she’d been cheating on Barry, so she confesses and he kicks her out and she goes back to live with her parents.
END SPOILER ALERT
The love-to-hate bits work great for the Bluths of Arrested Development and everyone’s favorite Dr. House, and incidentally for Applegate in her award-winning role as Rachel’s sis on Friends. In Samantha Who? she’s turning a two-episode bit into a full-blown series, and shared the character traits around with a couple or so others. To be fair, though, the direction of the series is going to have her make up for her devious past. So that just leaves the mother and best friend to play love-to-hate, and to be frank I wish I had selective memory loss to block them out after watching this. Don’t get me wrong, the writing’s pretty good and this is a ratings darling, but it’s not meant for your Psych, Back To You, or Two and a Half Men crowd which would probably rate the pilot a 7.5 out of 10. Ditto here.
Samantha Who? airs 9PM Monday nights on ABC. A dozen episodes made it through before the writer’s strike so you get to have a more or less thorough feel for the series before it’s renewed next season, which it most probably will.
Technorati Tags: TV Review, Samantha Who, ABC, Christina Applegate