Privileged

I see a pattern with those short lived CW series. They start out great, with an interesting premise, and a light tone. Then it becomes overly dramatic, with plots straight out of a telenovela. Hellcats had the same issue. As for Privileged, it was a nice girly show you could watch between episodes of Gossip Girl and 90210. With characters that aren't too annoying at first, and the infamous hip music selection to broadcast new hot artists/CDs. It was made out to be a win for the network. Only, like I said, the story strayed too much from the light tone of the first episodes, and became a glorified soap opera, by the end of its only season. It's a shame it never got a second one, though...

The best part about this show are the delicious men.

Sure, the Baker sisters are fairly entertaining albeit inconsistently so, as is Anne Archer in her posh, business Grandma role (she's the senior poster girl for lip gloss). We like Marco (Allan Louis) the in-house gourmet chef for his wit and irony, but Joanna Garcia (Megan) in the lead is just hands down - annoying.

Can she please stop twitching her head every time she says something (which is literally all the time)? Someone else commented on "Privileged" comparing it to "Gilmore Girls". Perhaps I should have read that before I started watching this show. There is no show on this planet more annoying than "Gilmore Girls". Joanna Garcia is not quite as annoying as those Gilmore girls, but she's quickly becoming my pet peeve of this show. Who knows, a few more episodes and she might be running for the gold medal of Most Annoying Protagonist.

So why watch it? Really. Three reasons, plain and simple.

*Charlie (Michael Cassidy) *Jacob (David Giuntoli) *Will (Brian Hallisay)

Yum, yum and yum. I want to marry Charlie.

At first glance, I assumed many people, including myself, thought this series was just one of "super rich girls do anything they want" stories. Fortunately, after watching 5 episodes now, this is certainly not the case. There were actually motives and backgrounds to the characters which I thought was one of the most forgotten aspects on creating this type of series.

It is true that this series is more close to Gilmore Girls than 90210 or Gossip Girl. I thought the dialog are witty and the characters are interesting, especially our main girl, Megan (played effortlessly by JoAnna Garcia). She is quite wise for her age, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have any flaws, in particular regarding her relationship with her sister.

Overall, I hope CW will pick up this series for a whole season, just because the story potential are endless and the characters are interesting. And for those reasons, I think Privileged is one of the best new series this fall.

This is the best new CW show of this season and I LOVE it. I am a fan of Gossip Girl so when I saw the preview for a story of 2 rich girls, I immediately thought of that. I thought, "great, another show about rich kids" as if reality TV isn't enough. I decided to watch the first episode because I love Joanna since watching her on Reba. This is a show that I could easily watch with my parents or whoever and I don't have to worry about someone having sex in the next minute or so. It's more than the lives of the rich, rather it deals with real-life issues that any high school student faces. I wish there was more shows like this that had substance. Every episode of the show has a theme, a moral to the story. The other great thing about this TV show is the music! This is the only show that I actually dig around trying to find out what music played during the episode. Here's hoping for another fantastic season.

Network: CW; Genre: Teen Drama; Content Rating: TV-PG (some language and suggested sex); Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 – 4);

Seasons Reviewed: Series (1 season)

Part a star vehicle for the adorable Joanna Garcia ("Reba") and part an adaptation of Zoey Dean's book "How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls", "Privileged" as a bubbly, agreeable even addicting guilty pleasure. The show starts promising and then does all it can to let the air out of all the fun.

Garcia stars as highly-educated and seemingly unemployable college grad Megan who is presented with an opportunity of a lifetime. In exchange for tutoring Ann Archer's spoiled daughters, Sage (Ashley Newbrough) and Rose (Lucy Hale), she gets to live in a gorgeous Malibu mansion, drive a sports car, hang out with her best friend Charlie (Michael Cassidy) and get advice from the mansion's chef Marco (Allan Louis), who serves as the show's all-knowing advice-giver for Megan.

Starting with what I like about "Privileged", the greatness of casting Garcia in the role cannot be underplayed. Her personality and buoyancy floats in and carries the show. Megan is cute and intellectual, but also thick-headed, judgmental and self-absorbed. She is not a good person, but she sure thinks she is. It's a more complex character balance than you'd expect from a show like this. But the rest of the cast doesn't quite stack up. Sage and Rose are the Legally Brunette figures who like their designer labels and boy toys and use those things to craft their own success – and naturally Megan succeeds in making them look a little bit deeper into what they want to be and do with their life. Archer is the usual hardass boss.

If this all sounds familiar to you, it felt that way to me too. "Privileged" can't just be a light guilty pleasure finding humor in girls and their toys in the lap of luxury. It can't just have fun in the sun with Megan, her romance with the neighbor stud Will (Brian Hallisay) who, of course, is in love with her and her BFF Charlie (Michael Cassidy), also in love with her, as I think "Privileged" would have played out best. Instead it settles into the type of relationship angst and familial melodrama you'd find in any old high school series or prime time soap. Megan's's backstabbing sister, her alcoholic father, her absentee mother who returns so Megan can give the "you can't just waltz back into my life and be my mother" speech. Rose and Sage date guys who aren't part of the societal uppercrust. One by one by one these story lines squeeze the fun out of the show, turning it into an empty melodrama where Meg does a lot of wining and crying about how "screwed up" her family is to anyone who will listen – all based on a past we haven't seen and have no point of reference.

Had it had the commitment to go for the guilty pleasure brass ring "Privileged" could have filled a television void for light-weight, glassy-eyed guilty pleasure. Instead it's worse - a drama with the empty head of a guilty pleasure (the last thing I want is a show like this lecturing me about gay marriage). It can't think of any other way to fill the time than with anything but the most familiar family drama clichés and self-aggrandizing comedy that isn't at all funny.

* ½ / 4