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soap of family secrets
Engaging Fox mystery suffers from thin characters
By Elizabeth White
Calling Fox’s "Pasadena" a primetime soap opera may be accurate, but it’s about as misleading as calling last year’s "Titans" a serious drama.
"Pasadena" is basically a melodrama about super-rich people, their vices and their power trips. But rather than succumbing to the outlandish stunts and eccentric story arcs of most primetime soaps, "Pasadena" takes the form of an unraveling mystery.
That gives the show an immediately compelling narrative direction, and the voice-over commentary, supplied by the 16-year-old daughter, gives the viewers of "Pasadena" a distinct point of view that they can sympathize with. Both of these elements are unusual for soap operas but a definite plus when it comes to "Pasadena."
The daughter Lily (Alison Lohman) belongs to the Greeley-McAllister clan, a flawed but private and exceedingly powerful Los Angeles family. When a man kills himself in the living room, he becomes the complication that Lily tugs at until family secret after family secret is exposed.
This promises to be good to watch, and it certainly stands a better chance of reviving the primetime soap opera genre than the caricatures and tired plots found on "Titans."
But "Pasadena" also has many flaws, not the least of which is its time slot on Friday nights at 9 p.m., following "Dark Angel."
For starters, "Pasadena’s" female characters other than Lily are poorly drawn, which is a shame since the series snagged Emmy winner Dana Delaney to play Lily’s mom, Catherine.
Delaney’s character, a mother full of suburban rage, runs a tad on the conventional side of nut case, but she shows flashes of being the true psychopath behind some of the scandals. Hopefully she’ll soon be doing more than redecorating the dining room.
Her mother, the matriarch of the family (Barbara Babcock), is little more than a royal bitch, and her sister (Natasha Gregson Wagner) is little more than a thinly sketched wallflower.
"Pasadena" clearly wants the dynamics between these women to be one of the driving forces of the show, but instead the show comes across as cheesy and hackneyed, the very worst of primetime soap.
Even if these characters later round out, "Pasadena" would still have problems with its time slot.
Fox’s pairing of "Pasadena" and "Dark Angel" makes some sense. Both shows are dark in tone, both will appeal to younger viewers with their young, female protagonists, and both are escapist fare, well-suited for a Friday night audience.
But the similarities stop there. "Pasadena" is fundamentally cynical about human nature, showing how its characters self-destruct in a modern, consumer world, while "Dark Angel" is optimistic about human potential, pitching good versus evil in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world.
The difference is almost as jarring as if Fox had paired "Pasadena" with "Ally McBeal."
Tellingly, "Pasadena" lost 30 percent of "Dark Angel’s" lead-in audience last week.
And not only does its pessimistic tone make it hard for "Pasadena" to hold onto its lead-in audience, the chances of it attracting viewers from rival feel-good fare like NBC’s "Providence" at 8 p.m. or CBS’s "That’s Life" at 9 p.m. are slim as well.
There is an audience out there for moody, mysterious soap operas like "Pasadena." Unfortunately, they may not find the show until it’s too late.
October 5, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Elizabeth White is a staff writer for Media Life.
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