Ooph! With Press Tour almost over, and with nothing really on Tuesday, I’m taking a day off after this. But given that I found a show that seems pretty good that’s airing tonight, I thought I’d make a point of writing it up today.
Please note I’m trying something a little new with the review format – please comment below, especially if you hate it or love it.
Life Unexpected
Safety Rating: Some sexual themes, make sure you watch with your kids.
Friendly Rating: Mature middle school and older
Quality Rating: Very good.
The CW is not normally a channel known for its family-safe programming, and I refuse to assume that its new show, Life Unexpected, airing tonight at 9 p.m., will be perfectly family-safe. But, boy, it has a lot to say about what makes a family.
Lux, a 16-year-old who has lived her entire life in the foster care system (yes, you may have to suspend some disbelief that pretty Britt Robertson, the actor, was apparently not desirable as an infant), decides to emancipate herself. But thanks to a quirk, she finds that her birth father never signed her away and must get his signature for the court.
Problems is, Lux’s father is Baze (Kristopher Polaha), a borderline ne’er-do-well who lives above the bar he owns. Her mom is Cate (Shiri Appleby), an overachieving morning talk radio jockey and commitment-phobe. After a brief encounter in high school with Baze, Cate gave her baby up for adoption believing she would be quickly adopted. Baze, alas, never knew what happened to the baby and is shocked to find her all but grown up on his doorstep one frigid morning.
Court day comes and, guess what? The judge decides that Lux is not ready to live on her own and releases her to Cate’s and Baze’s custody. Again, there may be some room for willful suspension of disbelief, but it does set up a lovely mixed-up family as the two adults have to grow up really fast to get ahead of their all-too grown up daughter.
Safety issues: there is some sex talk and there are a couple scenes of grown ups getting started on some obviously consensual behavior – some of it borderline on the fidelity side. If this is the only “mature” content your kids are getting in their TV viewing, it may be worth overlooking. It’s not overly graphic, for one thing. And I think there’s enough meat in the rest of the story to make for some excellent conversation with your kids. That being said, I would reserve it for older kids and definitely watch with them, since I wouldn’t trust anything The CW puts on for any length of time. As in, things could get worse, safety-wise.
Quality-wise, this is a well-acted, mostly well-written bit of work. Some of my colleagues sniffed at some of the plausibility issues, and in retrospect, I have to give them their props. (I was just hanging with these folks, and guess what, we spend a lot of time talking about shows.) But in the moment, okay, I not only bought it, I was sniffling.
I think it has a lot to say about what makes a family and how we grow up – Lux comments at one point that Baze and Cate couldn’t possibly be parents because they still need parents. And yet, in the end, the two do step up and they do the right thing. Will they always? Probably not. This is a drama and if they don’t screw up, we don’t have a show.
But this isn’t your standard kid smarter than the grown ups situation, and while Baze and Cate have a lot to learn about being adults, so does Lux, who also needs to learn how to be a kid. So while it’s not unlikely I may find myself eating my words down the road, for now, I think the show has more going for it than not.
P.S. If you’ve gotten this far, please comment below on what you think this blog needs or doesn’t need. We’re working on a re-design and need your input!
Anne Louise Bannon
Your Family Viewer