|
|
| TV Reviews | |
|
|
|
| TV Reviews | |
or perhaps neither For ABC Family's 'Karate Kid' me-too teen drama Jun 22, 2009
That advisory often leads off a review that gives away crucial plot points. But in the case of “Make It or Break It,” a new drama about girl gymnasts, virtually every scene is a spoiler, telegraphing the hackneyed action that’s about to occur. That predictability may render the series, premiering on ABC Family at 9 p.m. tonight, too dull for the teens and tweens who are already tuned in to the channel for “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” Younger gymnastics fans will probably find the action (and some of the slightly racy dialogue) a little mystifying. The series is set in an elite gymnastics training center in Boulder, Colo., where we first see the gym’s three female Olympic contenders pulling into their reserved parking places, amid cuts to gymnasts in action. The tight focus on the teen athletes’ various body parts probably isn’t aimed at male fetishists; it’s probably because the camera can’t show faces since all the real stunts are performed by doubles. We immediately learn that Lauren (Cassie Cserbo) is the villain among the three top dogs, because she has a permanent scowl on her face and wears too much eyeliner. Plus, her father (Anthony Starke) is on the board of the gym and is a lawyer. (Hiss!) Enter Emily (Chelsea Hobbs). We like her right away because her mother, Chloe (Susan Ward), drives a beat-up station wagon. It turns out that Emily won a scholarship to the gym. “That’s the girl you’ve been telling me about?” says Lauren’s mean dad. “The one they found on a playground?” Well, guess who turns out to be so good that she threatens to upset the pecking order at her new gym? And guess who starts plotting against her to make sure that doesn’t happen? In one of many echoes of “The Karate Kid,” we learn that Emily’s dad is out of the picture. And Emily is a fish out of water in her new town. “I don’t belong here,” she tells her mother. “I don’t belong anywhere.” Unlike “The Karate Kid,” however, this series starts with its main characters already at the top of their game, so we’re cheated of an inspiring montage of our heroine gradually achieving mastery. But the premiere does evoke many moments from Daniel’s confrontation with the Cobra Kai dojo. To their credit, the writers make an effort to keep the dialogue snappy. And the actors are generally attractive and gamely try to power through the clichés. TV fans will be glad to see Candace Cameron Bure (D.J. Tanner from “Full House”) and Peri Gilpin (Roz from “Frasier”) working regularly again. Gilpin plays the mother of Payson (Ayla Kell), potentially the most interesting character. A precociously disciplined athlete, she raises the issue of whether it’s fair to ask young girls to devote their childhood and adolescence to a career that may be over before they can vote and that may end in failure even if they do everything right. By the end of the premiere episode (the only one that ABC Family made available for review, in a rough cut), the girls are already on the verge of qualifying to represent the U.S. in the Olympics, which, as one of them says, would be the culmination of their careers. In TV time, that would mean that “Make It or Break It” would have to end in a season or two. What’s more, if the girls do get to the Olympics, it’s difficult to imagine the producers creating a reasonable facsimile of the games on a basic-cable budget. It’s a bad sign if a premiere leaves viewers relatively unsure of where the series is going and relatively sure they don’t really care.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
© 2009 Media Life Privacy Statement |
