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Fox's REUNION
Thursdays at 9 PM
By Chris Ryall
July 19, 2005
Time After Time: Chris Ryall looks at Fox's REUNION, the teen drama/murder mystery which follows friends from the Class of '86 every year to the present
It’s one thing to move THE O.C. out of its comfort zone on Mondays to the unknown of Thursdays at 8. But if Fox is going to do that, and go right up against the mediocrity that is now NBC’s tired remnants of “Must-See TV,” why not make a move to own the entire 8-10 PM block?
That’s just what Fox has done with their new drama, REUNION, which will follow THE O.C. on Thursdays at 9 PM.
Say what you will about THE O.C., but one reason it’s caught on like it has is the fact that it (mostly) successfully merged a teen drama with an adult soap. Hence Sandy Cohen (Peter Gallagher)’s increasing prominence in the show’s storylines. So… how does Fox go about offering up another show that doesn’t feel derivative, but that also appeals to people in their 20s and their 30s? Why, through that old faithful, nostalgia, of course.
REUNION is a drama, filled with all the angst, jokey lines and pop culture references (albeit dated ones) of any other teen drama, and just enough jumps ahead to the adult scenes to keep the older crowd watching, too. And, just for good measure, the show offers up the best hook this side of 24—the debut episode starts in 1986, and each subsequent episode this season will take place a year later, until we get to present-day 2005.
Why does the show do this? Because it’s also a murder-mystery. As the show opens, in sleepy Bedford, NY (a town just small enough to allow Warner Brothers, who produced the show, to shoot scenes on their familiar backlot. In fact, while the kids were meeting up at their local café, I was looking for Lorelei Gilmore out the window.), we cue in on a large church. A car, driven by a cop, Det. Marjorino (whose name doesn’t sound like he’d be played by “Keith” on SIX FEET UNDER, Mathew St. Patrick, but he is). He steps inside and witnesses a wake, one that concerns a death that happened twenty years ago. Someone starts to speak to the people in attendance, discussing a group of six high school friends (one of whom is the reason they’re all amassed there), talking about what a special group they were. And with that, we cue “Don’t You Forget About Me” by SIMPLE MINDS.
Now it’s 1986 in Bedford, and the Class of 1986 is celebrating their high school graduation.
There, we meet the six friends:
Will (Will Estes from AMERICAN DREAMS), the nice guy of the group, the poor kid who had an affair with one of the girls in the group
Craig (Sean Faris from LIFE AS WE KNOW IT), the spoiled, rich, Tom Cruise-in-RISKY BUSINESS clone (does every movie or TV show set in the ‘80s have to feature a kid based on Blaine in PRETTY IN PINK?)
Samantha (Alexas Davalos, of THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK), Craig’s girlfriend who’s got a secret she hasn’t shared with Craig yet (although Will knows it and is the potential cause of it)
Jenna (Amanda Righetti, familiar to fans of THE O.C.), the beautiful, spoiled actress-in-training
Aaron (Dave Annable, who needs to tone down his Seth Cohen-like antics)
Carla (Chyler Leigh), the hometown girl, who starts out innocent and awkward
All six are intertwined with one another—either they’re sleeping with each other or want to be sleeping with each other or are such good friends that one would chose to take a fall for his friend. Each one—other than Carla, that is—have plans to leave the town and head off to college or other pursuits. Carla is the ordinary girl who thinks she’ll never get out of town. Fate conspires to change everyone’s lives almost immediately, and things start to spiral out of control from there.
The show cuts back to present-day, as the detective talks to one of the former high school kids (a bit changed from the way they were presented back in the ‘80s). It’s two decades later, and the murder of one of the six still hasn’t been solved. But over the course of the next twenty episodes, you can bet it will.
Fox seems to be cornering the market on time-coded serials, only this one allows for many more outfit changes than 24. Every episode takes place in a given year, in chronological order, starting in 1986. The teaser for episode two, 1987, promises to amp up the intensity a bit more. It’s a nice conceit for a show, this approach, assuming the characters develop enough to make us care to follow them for two decades. So far, it’s off to a good start. I have to assume that Craig, the rich kid who even quotes RISKY BUSINESS in one scene, has more depth than he seems to have tonight (otherwise, he gets my vote for Most Likely to Be the Stiff, since we don’t quite know who was killed yet).
The show so far is a nice mix of typical teen dramas (which I’m easily sucked into, I admit) and ‘80s nostalgia—the soundtrack included your basic K-TEL music compilation, “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Addicted to Love,” “Living on a Prayer,” and also tunes by THE ROMANTICS, WHAM, MODERN ENGLISH, BANGLES, DEAD OR ALIVE, Bonnie Tyler, FGTH, Cyndi Lauper, A-HA and MISTER MISTER. Rather than just follow THE O.C. with another teen drama, it’s nice to see Fox at least attempt to push the concept a bit. It might be more than I can take for two hours on Thursdays, but that’s what TiVo’s for.
Next Time: War of the Worlds, Part 1: NBC's FATHOM SURFACE
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