Hidden Palms: Discussion Thread

[Ryan]

This is the first time I've enjoyed a teen show in years. I was a big fan of "Dawson's Creek" in the beginning, but it began to suck so I stopped watching.

I feel this show can fill the Veronica Mars/O.C. void. I'm not a fan of KW's over the top self-aware "I know this about that because...." dialog. Hopefully it'll decrease.

This show has the potential to be great, it's unfortunate that they shipped it to the summer time, but I hope it gets picked up for a full season next year.

[Drew]

the premiere only pulled in like 1.6 or 1.8 in ratings

they should have held off on the last couple of weeks of OTH and used Top Model to launch it.

[Sylph]

And now – what the critics are saying:

[Sylph]

Teen angst, antics engage in ‘Hidden Palms’

By turns engaging and preposterous, the CW series sets its sexy and mysterious goings-on in Palm Springs.

By Robert Lloyd, Times Staff Writer

May 30, 2007

A wildly uneven but nevertheless fairly engrossing teenage soap-opera murder mystery, “Hidden Palms” premieres belatedly tonight on the CW, having pushed back from March to the edge of June. While much of it is silly, corny or clichéd and relies more on easy effects — the power ballad, the overwrought sex scene — than on the subtle explorations of people and place that the pilot seems to promise, the series is, on the whole, highly digestible summer fun. And here and there, in a look or a line or the framing of a shot, it grows into something big.

Concerned as it is with precocious rich kids and their troublesome parents, living in an exclusive Palm Springs community, “Hidden Palms” would seem to present a kind of inland “The O.C.” — all the more so as its male leads, Taylor Handley and Michael Cassidy, are “O.C.” vets. It would be better described, however, as an amalgam of creator Kevin Williamson’s two best-known projects, “Dawson’s Creek” (on which Handley also appeared) and the “Scream” franchise, with the emphasis slightly on the former.

As did “Dawson’s Creek,” “Hidden Palms” begins with the arrival in town of a young person with a past and a problem. Here, it is Hamlet-sullen Johnny (Handley), just out of rehab and following mother Gail O’Grady and stepfather D.W. Moffett — who have married in haste, like Gertrude and Claudius — from Seattle to Palm Springs. By the end of the first episode he will meet an Ophelia named Greta (Amber Heard), and by the end of the second a ghost — sort of — not of his father but of the boy who killed himself in Johnny’s new bedroom.

Also new to his life are Cliff (Cassidy) — the Reggie, in “Archie” terms — who lives next door to Johnny and has a gothic sense of humor and an unusually close relationship with his mother (Sharon Lawrence). (We see him removing the bandages from her latest nose job: “It’s bruised,” he says, “but it looks like the nose two noses ago.” “Well,” replies his mother, encouraged, “that’s what we want.”) And there is Liza (Ellary Porterfield), who first appears as a figure in a hazmat suit, gazing from the garage across the street. She is what you might call nerd-cute — not hot enough to date the lead, even though she’d like to — and she may be the series’ Nancy Drew, or its Tom Swift, or something darker.

The kids are all enigmas, except Johnny — who is merely a mess — and his old rehab friend Nikki (Tessa Thompson, making a strong impression), who is also a mess, and a bigger mess, but a mess without secrets. Still, all claim to be different from what other people think they are, and as revelation piles upon revelation, each only grows harder to pin down. The whole show might be seen as a giant metaphor for the adolescent feeling of being misunderstood.

Except for Porterfield, however, none is a genuine teenager. This is standard TV practice, of course, and here as elsewhere a mitigating strategy to make the underage sex and drinking more acceptable. Because it’s easier to sell statutory rape on prime-time network television when it’s obvious that the younger party is played by someone actually well over the age of consent.

From scene to scene the show can play as preposterous, mysterious, suspenseful or moving — depending not only on what the actors are required to do or say but also on which actors are doing it or saying it. Leslie Jordan, who appears in a few episodes as Johnny’s drag queen AA sponsor and lets Nikki sleep on his couch, is welcome every moment he’s on screen; other actors grow more real playing around him. As much holds for Kyle Secor, as Greta’s awful but possibly not irredeemable lawyer father.

Of the seven episodes I’ve seen, the first two, written by Williamson and directed by fellow executive producer Scott Winant (“Huff,” “My So-Called Life”) have, not surprisingly, the most flair and feeling. As is often the case, the pilot benefits from having been filmed in the place it is set — the production moved from Palm Springs to Phoenix afterward, and the difference shows. The local texture the pilot takes as part of its subject dissolves into the more usual business of revealing an Awful Truth. Tim Suhrstedt (“Little Miss Sunshine,” “Grey’s Anatomy”), who photographed the pilot, has done a fine job of translating the colorful shimmer of the desert light and of capturing the poetry in its night — it brings out the best in the text, and helps evoke that sense of immanence peculiar to being young, that moment when one still believes the world to be a place that can be known and feels oneself on the edge of knowing it.

[Sylph]

[All My Shadows]

I think it's an enjoyable series and I'll be tuning in every week, unless they do something that really turns me off.

The second episode was miles, miles, MILES, ahead of the first episode in terms of quality, that's for sure. Taylor Handley, I have to say, is obviously trying to find his way on AMS's List o' Boyfriends I Can Never Have. Not only is he extremely attractive (every time he does the requisite "brooding," I just want to jump on him and make it all feel better), but he's a really natural actor. The scenes where Johnny and Nikki caught up with each other at the rehab center, he just really impressed me with how natural and doesn't-look-like-he-is-acting he was.

Could so do without that Greta though, but I guess she's a necessary character in this whole Eddie-died-in-your-room! thing.

[Southofnowhere]

I FLOVE this show! The little gay dude is my FAVE! What's the deal-eo with the ending of the second episode? Is Eddie alive or what?

[All My Shadows]

Looks like it will be ending earlier than planned:

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/blog/2007/06/...udes-month.html

That sucks. I wasn't expecting it to make it past the end of summer, but I at least wanted it to last throughout June and July.

[Drew]

I knew by the premiere's ratings this wasn't going to last. I did hear they made 7 episodes, so atleast we're going to get to see them all. And since this was a midseason show, I'm hoping ep 7 was written as a season finale.

[All My Shadows]

They made 8 episodes. On Wednesday (June 20), episodes #4 and #5 will air back-to-back, and on the next Wednesday (June 27), episodes #6 and #7 will air back-to-back. The final episode, #8, is gonna air on the Fourth of July.

They're not doing the encores on Sundays anymore either.

[Casey]

It's very disheartening to know that this show will be over so soon. I actually enjoy it and it could've been one of my new guilty pleasures! I have no idea why they didn't give this show a real chance.

Me and the CW are 0 for 10 at this point.

[Drew]

had they held this for fall, I'm sure it would have caught on.

[All My Shadows]

It's an enjoyable show, and I love watching it, but there are so many things, for me at least, that work against it.

It has absolutely no edge whatsoever to it. It's exactly what it's supposed to be. It's predictable. The character of Greta and the relationship between she and Johnny is just a big fat cliche. Brooding stud moves to new town, meets mysterious girl, falls in love. All before he even unpacks his bags.

But there are so many good things that draw me into the show because you don't really see it on any other teen drama. The relationship between Cliff and his mother is *great* stuff to watch. Cliff, altogether, is an amazing character. He's very complex, I think, and there could easily be a reason to his actions, but I doubt the show would explore that.

I hate to make every show be based around gay characters, but it would have been SO interesting if Cliff turned out to be one of those types of guys who's got it going on, knows it, and has no problem picking up any gender he wanted. The chemistry between Cliff and Johnny can't be denied.

[Rhiannon]

I'm in the same boat, the shows I liked that were on the The WB then The CW have been cancelled or have ended .......

[Drew]

I just watched eps 4 and 5 last night, and the show's starting to lose me. They're burning through this storyline way to fast and the emotional connection between viewer and character has not clicked in yet for me to fully enjoy the revelations we've had on this eddie story and the character's personal stories. It's definitely gone downhill from the pilot.