Sunday, August 06, 2006

It's only the end of the world again

I'll say this for "Three Moons Over Milford," the series that premiered on ABC Family tonight: At least they're not going to any special trouble to disguise the fact that they're a blatant rip-off of "Gilmore Girls."

The channel even scheduled the heavily promoted pilot episode tonight following another of their periodic marathons of "Gilmore" reruns. The producers of "Moons" clearly want me to compare it to "Girls." Bad move.

On the bright side, now I know more about what a "Gilmore" produced without the Sherman-Palladinos will look like...

The (seemingly scientifically-dubious) premise is this: After being hit by a meteor, the moon has broken into three pieces which are going to crash down to earth, ending "life as we know it." This could happen in a matter of hours, or it could be years-no one really knows for sure.

Therefore, the inhabitants of a small town are acting even more self-conciously "quirky" than usual.

One of the things that bothered me about "Commander In Chief" wasn't its certain unavoidable similarities to "The West Wing" but the way they seemed to go out of their way to accent them rather than standing clearing on their own.

What's most blatant about "Milford"-it was obvious even in the commercials-is the star performance by Elizabeth McGovern. McGovern is a talented and lovely actress in her own right, but in this part her hair has been cut and dyed, her makeup has been done, and she has been dressed so that if you squint, she is a virtual twin of Lauren Graham's Lorelai Gilmore. And just because the producers really think we won't notice the difference (or they simply do have no shame) they've actually gone so far as to name the character Laura. Making her a Laura-lie, as I like to think of it.



Will the real Lorelai Gilmore please stand up?

The similarities continue.

Lorelai comes from a monied family but ran away to muddle through on her own.
Laura used to be married to a rich man but he's just run away leaving her to muddle through on her own.
Lorelai is a single parent and now, Laura is too.
Lorelai's daughter Rory is an overachieving bookworm.
Laura's son Alex is a computer genius.
Lorelei's love interest is a truck-driving, handy but smart and sensitive diner owner.
Laura's love interest is a truck-driving young lawyer who moonlights as a plumber and whose best friend is a diner owner.
Lorelai attends town meetings packed with comical, gently scolding townsfolk.
So does Laura.

If there is any reason to watch the remaining episodes (and that is a mighty big "if") it's the performance of Samantha Leigh Quan, an actress whose name is new to me. She plays a young professional woman who falls for McGovern's son without realizing he is only 16.

Her character had one of the worst parts of a pretty bad script-a speech where she has to tell the boy that he's so cool and smart she can barely keep her hands off him. Why yes, two men did write this script, why do you ask? Yet Quan somehow remained both appealing and (almost) belivable.

Which is more than I can say for the show's one big name. Though I meant it when I said McGovern is talented-I refer you to "Ordinary People"-judging from her performance tonight, one of three or four things (or possibly a combination) has happened:


  1. She's had bad plastic surgery that leaves her less able to move her face.
  2. She's zombie-walking through a money gig she doesn't think will be picked up beyond its initial eight episode order-and it can't be good for the ego to be asked to so neatly replicate the appearance of another actress.
  3. Or she simply hasn't aged well.


None of these things are crimes, of course, just unfortunate at best, disappointing at worst.

1 comment:

Man said...

I thought it was more of a Picket Fences rip-off which of course perfected the wacky town smart daughter genre.