"You mean to tell me — all those games, cheering, shouting — you were faking? What else were you faking?" —Andrew
Brace yourself, readers, for the most bold claim you may ever read this early into the new TV season. Stop what you're doing. Lower the volume on your TV, turn that ever-so-loud AC unit off, and give the following your undivided attention.
Ringer is my favorite new show of the season.
Don't adjust your computer screen, you read correctly. And I'm not ashamed of it. I've been questioning how I could actually be enjoying this show for so long, deciding whether it's guilty pleasure material or genuine entertainment, and I've decided it's somewhere in between… maybe it's both, but whatever it is, I have jumped on the bandwagon. I'm wearing
Ringer Tees, I'm proclaiming my
Ringer loyalty through bullhorns, you can catch me on the corner wearing a
Ringer sandwichboard and ringing my bell.
I've sat through the following new shows:
2 Broke Girls,
Hart of Dixie,
Terra Nova,
The Playboy Club,
New Girl,
H8r,
Up All Night,
Free Agents,
Revenge[*],
Charlie's Angels,
The Secret Circle, and
Whitney (I don't believe I missed anything but I might have), and none of them have caught my attention as much as
Ringer has. None.
2 Broke Girls is funny, but tries to go for the jugular more than your gut at all times;
Terra Nova actually thinks its dialogue is good;
Charlie's Angels is way too serious with lines like "We're not cops, we're Angels";
Free Agents is just god-awful;
New Girl is a hit but inexplicably so; and so on.
*Okay, to be fair, I actually like Revenge
a whole lot (apparently, I'm into really outlandish soaps based around rich people who have Hampton homes this season). But I don't feel the same for that show as I do Ringer
. Let's see how I feel after four episodes of Revenge
. Oh, and also the first two minutes of Homeland
were probably better than any minute of all pilots I have watched this fall, so there's that. And I must also note there are some shows that have yet to premiere, of course.
Yep, I'm a
Ringer fan. But that doesn't mean I won't point out every single one of its flaws, because I'm about to. After all, isn't that what love is all about?
Ringer is like my little sister. I love her and I just want her to succeed. And doing that takes brutal, strong criticism so that she can reflect upon her misguided mistakes.
Like those visual effects. Apparently the terrible ocean visual effects wasn't atrocious enough the first time around, so here they are attempting it again. But that was just a small scene.
Ringer's biggest flaw, arguably, was its choice in music. So by episode four, it decided that… no music was best? I didn't like the bubblegum indie rock, either, but I don't know how I feel about absolutely no music. Agent Eyelashes finds the surveillance video of Bridget getting her duffelbag: nothing. Eyelashes tells Gemma about Bridget: nada. Gemma finds out about her husband and Siobhan's affair: zip, zilch, nothing whatsoever! I had to make up for it with outlandishly loud gasps. "Bridget, her twin sister—" GAAAASSSSPPP!!!!!! I thought my lungs would collapse on that one alone. Imagine how faint I was with that cliffhanger ending!
But what's really catching up with me is the fact that no one seems to perhaps think just a little bit that Bridget isn't who she claims she is. I can understand that no one knew about Bridget, fine. But Gemma found out. Does it not go through her mind how different she's been acting? Or perhaps the fact that she ate meat for the first time in three years? And Eyelashes
does know. When he enters her home and picks up her phone (which I believe is…somewhat illegal, maybe just a tad?) and sees she's called Malcolm or that she picked up Bridget's duffelbag, he didn't have the slightest clue that
maybe it's Bridget? I hope he's not an indication of anyone that's actually doing work for the FBI.
And our characters aren't making the best of choices, either. I love you, Bridge, but what are you doing letting the FBI stay in your — ahem, Siobhan's — home after he tries to interrogate you again? Escort him out! And why would you reveal your biggest secret with the FBI agent just feet away and the door wide open? And why would you reveal it at all? Isn't the point of assuming Siobhan's identity to keep yourself alive? Who cares about a marriage going into shambles? (Wow, that makes me sound dead inside.) I think the most risky of careless acts, however, was Henry and Siobhan's flashback when they're doing the deed a floor below their significant others. Then, they finish and just stay in the buff. Perhaps you should put some clothes on in the slight possibility that one of your spouses happens to walk downstairs. I suppose it's just as well. Gemma can hear Henry and "Siobhan" talking but she can't hear them having sex. But still, to do what they did, you need what my people call
cojones, meng!
But it wasn't all bad, of course. Finally we got some progression I was really hoping to see. Namely, Andrew and Bridget talking about sex. Yes, this is seriously one of the things I was most anxious about. It wasn't much, but at least they hinted to sex at some point (the quote in the beginning) even if it wasn't between them. The
Ringer showrunners also decided to go full speed ahead with everything, which may be good or bad I don't know but at least it's entertaining. Also, Sarah Michelle Gellar is doing a fantastic job with her two characters. There's this subtle, and yet completely distinguishable, difference in the way she plays both characters — even her voice changes inflection for both Siobhan and Bridget. It's done exquisitely.
I won't lie to you,
Ringer is not the smartest show ever, it's not the best, and it's definitely not the most meticulous, but it's certainly compelling. It's fun. Who says every hour on television has to be endlessly thought provoking? It doesn't screw its audience around, in terms of story. It's not going to
The Killing you into watching an entire season, wasting all your time on red herrings and leads that go absolutely nowhere. It proved that tonight. And it did so while trying to throw its audience off its feet and shake things up.
I can certainly mention worse ways to kill an hour. But gladly, I'm having way too much fun watching
Ringer to even think about them.
—
Read my other
Ringer reviews:
Episode 1.01 Pilot
Episode 1.02 "She's Ruining Everything"
Episode 1.03 "If You Ever Want a French Lesson"
