June 15, 2004 - 4:20 p.m.
I watched North Shore, so you don't have to. Last night was the 3-hour series premiere of the show that is supposed to keep fans of The OC happy for the summer season. Oh no actually I guess it wasn't really three hours, it just felt like it. The premise of the show is...uh...well, there's this hotel in Hawaii. It's a...um, a luxury hotel and uh, the people who stay there are really rich and the people who work there aren't rich but they're hardworking and ambitious! Right? Except in the premiere they get this new director of guest services, who happens to be the daughter of a hotel magnate trying to get out from under daddy's shadow. So it turns out that a really really long time ago (two years) she used to date the guy who's now the director of operatio ns, but she left him suddenly without an explanation. The reason was really that her dad said he would fire her boyfriend (they used to work together at one of his hotels) if she didn't stop seeing him. And she loved him too much to ruin his career so she left him. Other characters include a the owner(?) of the hotel who is kind of like a younger Michael York and built the business from the ground up. A lifeguard who I think is supposed to be Australian, and another guy who I'm pretty sure is a different person from the lifeguard although he looks exactly the same, but he left a career in bond trading in Chicago to start his own adventure company. Then there's this waitress who wants to start a beachwear company. Plus the dad of the Operations Director who has his own surfboard company. Actually the thing about everyone having their own business is sort of oppressive. The surfer dad has this philosophy that's like "If you can stand to paddle out there you're going to be ok." What this means is unclear, I think I can like it because it goes with my philosophy of the week, learned from Troy via Stinky, which is "fight to the death!" I can't see tv very well with my rabbit ears, but it seems to me that everyone on the show is nazty. Like they came from the set of The Swan. The dramatic engine of the show is going to come from there being a new set of guests in the hotel each week. Like next week Hayley from the OC is going to be there, but, in what I think is an unwise move, it's just the actress, not the chara cter of Hayley. Or is it spelled Haile? That would be funny.
Ok but have I mentioned yet that this show sucks? Can you read between the lines? It's terrible. It's hard to pinpoint but I think it's the writing. It was very annoying to me the way things were revealed about people in the most unsubtle way possible. And too much too soon. Maybe my problem with it is that it's not chiefly about teenagers. Like for instance I loved 90210 but never got into Melrose Place. I love the OC but hate North Shore. The OC also has too much too soon and feels like it's 3 hours long, but somehow those are good things.
