By Chris Ryall
July 8, 2004
Kelly Osborne is a regular on an ABC drama. While you digest that disturbing little bit of news, I’ll press on and discuss her show, ABC’s LIFE AS WE KNOW IT, as a whole.
ABC seeks to capture some of the WB audience here, with this high school drama based on a book by Melvin Burgess. A group of horny high school kids goes through various motions to get some action. All of them break the fourth wall to tell us about their feelings, a trick people are familiar with all the back to FERRIS BUELLER (it actually predates that movie quite a bit but that's the most familiar point of reference, as opposed to, say, a Shakespearean play or KUFFS). This move always feels like a bit of a cheat, offering quick insight into the characters without actually taking the time to develop the characters and let us get to them at our own pace.
Still, high school dramas always resonate a bit, especially when they're not following the DAWSON'S CREEK forumula. This show is billed as having a pedigree from one of the creators of FREAKS AND GEEKS, but it's not creator Paul Feig or Judd Apatow that's involved in this show. Instead, it's F&G Supervising Producer Jeff Judah. Of course, another Producer on this show was responsible for PARTY OF FIVE and TIME OF YOUR LIFE, so let's hope this one doesn't turn too drippy.
The pilot starts off with a pretty typical high school drama plot: one of the kids has a crush on his teacher. Said teacher also conveniently teaches dance and gyrates in front of him while he harbors this secret crush. Then she changes clothes while he sneaks a peak, only she sees this and gives him a small smile. The plotline, seen twice in new Fall pilots already, is racing the "parents accidentally take drugs" plotline for most-overused story. Good thing BOSTON PUBLIC isn’t still around to sue for plagiarism.
Another one of the leads on the show has a long-term girlfriend who likes to kiss but is saving herself and won't go any further than that. Which causes problems because, as he tells the camera, he can get action anywhere but he really wants it to be with her. Of course, then when she stops him from pulling her pants off, he scolds her, “You better start giving it up because I can get it from anywhere.” This sort of sweet-talking doesn't go over too well with her. So he decides to take a different tactic, telling her that she’s right after all, they should wait, he’s not ready. He’s convinced that this will trick her into actually wanting to do it. Not in my experience, pal.
The third kid (I'm not sure if it's my laziness or the show's that I can't recall their names or faces after it was over) tells us he’s really only had one girlfriend. And as he says, "She told me I could do everything but. But I couldn’t find it. Where the hell is she hiding that thing?" What, exactly, was he looking for that he couldn’t find if they weren’t doing it? I love when shows try to force the risqué dialogue when it doesn’t make sense.
He’s friends with Kelly Osborne’s character, a plumpish girl who’s so crushing on him that she sometimes forgets to speak without an English accent. But she’s the cool chick, see, the fun friend who’s open about her feelings. He thinks he could get along good with her, they could maybe hit it off, and he thinks she wouldn’t laugh at his fumblings in bed like the previous girl. But the problem is, she's, er, "midwestern skinny," not waif-like. So he’s a little worried about what his friends might say.
Still, later on, they meet up at the local carnival (as much a teen show staple as teacher/student affairs. See: 90210, DAWSON’S CREEK, etc.) and she hands him a beer. “It’s really bad and it’s really warm but at least it’s wet,” she says. To which he replies, “Don’t talk that way about yourself,” which, in turn, gives her a chance to over-act and get embarrassed and…anyway, it got me thinking that some bad warm beer might help the writers improve their forced sex-talk.
Osborne is mostly fine on the show, as are the leads (even if it’s jarring to see D.B. Sweeney playing one of the kids’ fathers). But it’s funny – I watched the show (twice, in fact), and yet when I read ABC’s description of the three leads: ” There's Dino, the handsome jock with the secret sensitive side; Jonathan, the artist who sees life through a camera lens; and Ben, the straight-A student who still can't make his parents happy. You know them. You grew up with them. Maybe you were them,” I couldn’t even figure out which characters on the show were being described here. Maybe a few more weeks would actually differentiate them for the viewer, but as of now, they’re all a bit generic.
It's not a bad show, but at the start, it all felt a bit too familiar. Which isn't a problem, per se, but it's not yet distinctive and a little bit too desperate to “push the envelope” in ABC’s overly safe, non-envelope-pushing way. But it did do one thing for me – reading about it on ABC’s site made me again want to throw in the FREAKS AND GEEKS DVD and see the gold standard of teen dramedies.
ABC’s LIFE AS WE KNOW IT airs this Fall on Thursday nights at 9:00 PM.
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