Blamblog - Brett Lamb's Blog

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Fast 3am Review: Being Erica's Season Finale

After so much promise, Being Erica's first season ended with the ratings in the toilet ... the result of stories that didn't adequately milk the show's premise. The final episode was one of the weakest of the season BUT the bit in the middle of the show demonstrated the kind of playful storytelling that should have run through the series: Erica returns to the present, having changed the past, to find herself living the life she wanted and it's great ... but is sadly bookended by a tonne of melodramatic tripe and, at the end, some dialogue and a sex scene with the new boyfriend that make tooth decay seem like sweet relief in comparison.

Playful storytelling is something Canadian tv in general and the CBC in particular seem unable to grasp. By 'playful', I'm not talking about silly and fun like Ugly Betty. By playful, I mean "lively": high, low, sharps, flats ... things happen and things matter. The Wire used a great recipe of lively storytelling and was really playful at times.

The last episode also falls into the CBC trap of being a downer. Remember MVP? The show about the sexy hockey wives? That show could have been great if they'd just stuck to the sexy premise but instead they veered off on a bunch of dark, downer storylines. It's still baffling why they threw in all that weird shit. That's typically what happens on CBC shows. In the last Being Erica, it's Dr. Tom who gets all serious and it just doesn't play. In fact, it didn't even make sense. Erica screws up, then she gets a do-over and fixes the issue and learns her lesson ... and it's so easy, it doesn't seem like it should be a big deal. The consequences are too arbitrary and forced. "Downer" is not the same as "drama". Know the difference.

Actually, my least favourite part of the episode was the casting of Dr. Tom's replacement ... in my suggestion post I said cast Lisa Ray, dammit! Hey, Joe Clark left a comment about that:

Um. Lisa Ray? A total zombie of a performer, and the whitest Indic in the country? A wax doll? Rilly? You must be straighter than I thought.

Yes, she still would have been a good choice.

Sophie was just cancelled for low ratings so the creators of Being Erica are probably under a bit of pressure to pull up those numbers. Hopefully they'll stick to raising the storytelling game and not tinker too much with everything else that mostly works. And hopefully we'll never have to see Erica have sex with Ethan ever, ever, ever again.

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