By Matthew Bitz
ABC premiered its newest drama, Wasteland, last Thursday. Having seen so much hype during the past week, I decided to tune in and see what was so good about it.
Im still waiting.
Much to my disappointment, it went absolutely nowhere for an entire hour, which I must say was the only thing I found impressive about it.
The show started off by clumsily introducing its cast, who are three women and three men all in their late 20s; all seem ridden with angst and spend most of their time looking like they just lost their best friend.
What little of a storyline there was seemed to focus around Donnie, a young, attractive, angst-ridden girl who is writing her thesis on the Wasteland, a period of time between the first coming of age and the second, of which I was not aware currently existed.
Donnies friends: a struggling musician who tends bar and is in love with the stereotypical spoiled rich girl now trying to make her own in the real world; a swimsuit model who decides midway through the show that he is gay, and lastly, a woman who just may or may not be in control of her life.
Anyway, this group who manages to cover almost all the politically correct bases throws dear sweet Donnie a big birthday bash which her old high school boyfriend shows up at and opens up her old wounds.
As it turns out, he seems to have cheated on her with just about every other girl around, and Donnie, blissfully unaware of all of this, has her world brought crashing down around her when she finds all this out.
Mr. Perfect apologizes for his past infidelity and gets not forgiveness but a stinging slap in the face. He tries again, possibly thinking that she heard him wrong when he said, Im sorry.
Slap.
Apparently at this point the writers must have sensed that their script was going nowhere and tried to divert the viewers attention by writing a poorly done scene in which the two ignite their old flame by playing some music from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. It seems to work for 15 minutes until Donnie decides she really does hate him and throws him out, and we end the show with everyone torn with pain and conflict.
I really did expect better from the writers of Shakespeare In Love and ABC who has had well-written programs for as long as I can remember, but the bottom line is dont waste your time with Wasteland.
Play Monopoly, it moves lots faster.
