Do you remember Sisters? It was a Saturday night staple about ten years ago, the story of four 30ish sisters living in the Chicago suburbs with a terrific cast -- Sela Ward, Swoosie Kurtz, Patricia Kalember, pre-stardom roles for Paul Rudd and Ashley Judd -- caught up in gloriously melodramatic soap-opera stories.
Well, now the WB gives us Related, which is like Sisters for the post-Sex and the City era; this time around, the sisters are ten years younger, twenty IQ points dumber, and a lot more gabby about the intimate details of their lives. They are the Sorellis, and each of them is in personal crisis when we meet them. Ginnie (Jennifer Esposito) fears that her pregnancy will derail her legal career, and hasn't yet told hubby Bob (Callum Blue) that she's pregnant. Anne (Kiele Sanchez) is a therapist whose restaurateur boyfriend is about to dump her. Marjee (Lizzy Caplan) is being evicted, which makes it difficult to get her party-planning career off the ground; and Rose (Laura Breckenridge) has yet to tell Daddy that she's changed her major from pre-med to experimental theater.
It is, I think, not a good sign that though I finished watching the first episode 20 minutes ago, I still had to check the WB website to remember the sisters' names; even now, I'm not sure I could tell the oldest three apart. (Rose, I can spot; she's the one who isn't blonde.)
The dialogue is very Sex and the City; everyone is constantly dropping witty remarks (well, they're supposed to be witty, but the writing doesn't quite get there) that sound nothing like the way real people talk. And even if the writing were better here, Sex and the City had actresses who were talented enough to get away with the heightened artifice and theatricality of that show's writing; the cast of Related is nowhere near that caliber. Laura San Giacomo, who was dropped from the cast very late in the process to be replaced by Esposito, is a better actress than anyone left on the show, and should be counting her blessings to have gotten away from this trainwreck.
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