The Niches of 'Eastwick'

There is one solid way to describe Eastwick, ABC's new prime-time drama: Desperate Housewives meets Charmed. It's as if the genetic codes of both shows were spliced together in a secret underground laboratory and released into the general population. Based on The Witches of Eastwick, the popular and somewhat controversial novel by John Updike, this supernatural dramedy tells the story of three women (Rebecca Romijn, Lindsay Price, Jamie Ray Newman) who live in the titular fictional town and discover that they have magical abilities. This realization is heralded by the arrival of one Daryl Van Horne (Paul Gross), a mysterious and charismatic entrepreneur with strange ties to their new abilities.

I have no idea why I didn't dislike the first two episodes of Eastwick. Every part of me, infused with years of experience in critical analysis, told me I should not be enjoying myself. Yet I did. There's some sort of charm to Eastwick that makes the forty minutes go by quickly and harmlessly, and it has a lot to do with the minimal demands it places on the audience. It is far from clever, there are no procedural investigations, and it doesn't try to pluck on the heartstrings or force any kind of unnecessary emotion. Its biological parents- Desperate Housewives and Charmed- had one thing in common: they made a point not to take themselves too seriously. They wavered from the course at times, and each show's quality dipped accordingly. Eastwick borrows this comfort zone perhaps more than any other quality, tapping the adolescent silliness of Charmed and bits of Housewives' offbeat satire.

Jamie Ray Newman adds a ginger spice to the cast, playing an adorably pale-skinned, redheaded interpretation of Updike's Sukie (now renamed Kat Gardener... because the only thing in this world more lovable than a pale-skinned, redheaded nurse is the image of a kitten trying to plant flowers in the front yard).

Kat Gardener

Cat gardener

Rebecca Romijn, looking good with a few extra healthy pounds, plays the role of Roxanne, a liberal mother who sells crafts and is way too cool for her teenage daughter, who clearly wishes she had a mother who would set rules and boundaries. This sounds like a preposterous notion for writers to suggest, but it does happen and I myself have stumbled upon extremely awkward encounters with craft-selling mothers. They're an odd bunch. She owns a store, but doesn't seem to need it since there's apparently a street fair every day. I'd like to live there.

Finally, there's Lindsay Price, who portrays her character Joanna as a bizarre combination of Clark Kent and Lois Lane. She's bookish, awkward, and always says the wrong thing to Peter Parker- er, Will (Johann Urb). He is the handsome, bespectacled newspaper photographer, and though it hasn't come up yet, just by looking at him there is no doubt that he slings webs in his spare time.

He gets the best pictures because Spider-man is his close personal friend

Kat learns she has the power to control Mother Nature (pagans are very big on anthropomorphism, after all), which of course plays off the idea that she has no control in her personal life. Joanna learns that she has the power to manipulate men into doing her bidding, which of course plays off the idea that she is a mousy modern woman living in a world run by sleazy men... or something. Then there's Roxanne, the main object of Daryl's affection, who promptly tells him that she won't put on that dress tonight (I had to go there, sorry). She discovers she has the power to dream the future, which I suppose is handy for the 2-3 hours of REM sleep she gets each night.

There are clichés abound, and a couple moments that make you wonder if the writers have ever actually met real people before. Luckily, those incidents are few and far between, and when in doubt, just assume it's quirky humor (even though it probably isn't). For instance, Kat's husband is a beer-drinking, shiftless layabout who threatens her with violence and refuses to get a job. It's as if he were pulled out of a modern-day Tarot deck full of cliches and heavy-handed emotional struggles. There is a hint that the writers want to add a third dimension to him somewhere, but as of this review it has not been followed through.

Overall, Eastwick is a chick flick, and perhaps the first of its kind to reach such a broad age bracket since Gilmore Girls. Still, it may be too silly for the moms in the house, and too grown-up for the daughters. Oddly enough, I found myself intrigued mostly by Paul Gross' portrayal of Daryl Van Horne. The show may not be spectacular, but at present he is without a doubt one of the most entertaining characters on TV. Updike's concept of a misogynistic deceiver has been upgraded to that of an oddly likable douchebag. It works because it gets people like me- who unshakably despise the classic romance-novel hero- to fall for his charm and appreciate his very strange presence. Instead of confusing the hell out of the girls and making them kill their husbands, he sort of plays Charlie to their Angels, making it a lot less controversial and a little bit more whimsical than the source material. Whether that's a good or bad thing is entirely up to the viewer.

Eastwick airs Wednesdays at 10/9c, on ABC