As part of her sister's bachelorette party, Bella Bloom (Elizabeth Reaser) -- yes, she's a florist, and isn't that just too cute for words -- gets a reading from a psychic, who tells her that if she isn't married within a year, she never will be. Further, Bella's soulmate, the man she's meant to be with, is a man with whom she's already had a romantic relationship. Right off the bat, this doesn't strike me as an appealing premise for a show. We're going to be spending our Friday nights watching a romantically desperate woman revisiting one failed relationship after another? But The Ex List is based on a successful Israeli TV series, so apparently the premise can work. In this incarnation, though, it doesn't.
The main reason it doesn't is Reaser. If we're going to have any sympathy for a woman who spends her time throwing herself back into the lives of men who've already broken up with her once, then that woman had better be extraordinarily likable, and Reaser's Bella isn't. She's a bit on the whiny side; she gets pouty and petulant when things don't go her way; and she's utterly clueless to the most obvious things. Her most recent ex, Elliott (Mark Deklin), for instance, is so obviously the man she's meant to wind up with that he might as well be wearing a big neon sign reading "Bella's Soulmate," but she continues to chase him away. (They still see one another because they have "shared custody" of their dog. Yes, this is the kind of show that thinks it's adorable to talk about pets as if they were just as important as actual children.)
The other cast members are pleasant enough. Adam Rothenberg is Bella's best friend, Augie, and Alexandra Breckenridge is his girlfriend, Vivian; they have an appealing bantering chemistry, even when saddled with the most embarrassing subplot in recent memory. (Note to the producers: No one wants to hear a couple arguing about the details of her vaginal waxing.) And Amir Talai, as the fourth housemate, Cyrus, has a nice way with a bitchy punchline.
Even Eric Balfour, that insufferably annoying show-killer, is more appealing in the pilot than Reaser is. Balfour pops up as Ex #1, doing a splendidly vicious version of the overly sensitive rock musician boyfriend who turns every conversation into an ode to his own feelings, and every moment into a bathetic ballad.
But I keep coming back to that awful premise. All the men on Bella's list either dumped her, in which case they probably don't want to see her again, or were dumped by her, in which case they probably went through a painful period of getting over her. In either case, her reappearance in their lives isn't likely to be met with much happiness (and even if it is, the nature of the show demands that every episode end with another breakup between Bella and the Guy of the Week). Whether the fault lies with Reaser or with the writers, Bella simply isn't a likable or charming enough person that I want to watch her making another guy miserable every week.
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