All's Noir that Ends Noir ...

"Pilot"

[Spoilers follow]

So here's the premise - Sarah Michelle Gellar, my favorite three-named actress of all time, (that's right, suck it Sarah Jessica Parker!) plays twin sisters Bridget and Siobahn. Bridget is a former stripper-addict on the run after witnessing a murder; her sister, Siobahn is an over-privileged member of the Park Avenue elite. Obviously, one twin must be the eeeeeeeevil twin - I mean, SMG started on All My Children, she isn't going to forget her soap-opera roots entirely - but which one?

The show opens with SMG being attacked by a masked man in a ginormous loft apartment (what NYC do these people live in, anyway?) Her reaction - more the girl from I Know What You Did Last Summer than Buffy the Vampire Slayer - is to scream "You have the wrong girl!"

It's possible we all have the wrong girl.

Flashback to Rock Springs Wyoming, 9 days ago. Bridget is in witness protection, being protected by the amazingly-eyelashed Nestor Carbonell (Lost, The Tick, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises). She overpowers the agent watching her room, handcuffing him to the shower (OK, that was pretty bad-ass) and escapes and goes on the run, meeting up with her twin in the Hamptons a couple of days later. (At this point, Bridget is on the run from the bad guy, Bodaway Macawi, a tribal leader who killed a dancer in one of his strip clubs; without her testimony he got a mistrial and was released. She's also on the run from the FBI - they had taken her in for prostitution and possession; and she promised to testify against Macawi in exchange for release from the charges.)

Siobahn and Bridget do a little catch-up exposition in her fabulous Hamptons house before going on the most green-screeny boat ride since MegaShark vs. Crocosaurus. Seriously. In a show where one actor is playing twins, I expected some visual trickery, but good god, that was appalling!

Anyway, after a drink poured by Siobahn, Bridget wakes up on the boat - Siobahn is sio-gone, leaving her ring in bottle of prescription pills. (The ones she used to commit suicide, or the ones she used to knock Bridget out so that she'd sleep through Siobahn's no-doubt elaborate mid-sea departure.) Bridget thinks Siobahn's dead, and makes the not-too-difficult decision to assume her sister's identity and travels to her fabulous Park Avenue apartment, meeting up with her weirdly reticent husband in their ginormous walk in closet. (Seriously. Who are these people? And is it a sign that I've lived in NY too long, when I'm more taken aback by the closet space than by the giant SMG face poster taking up an entire wall of the foyer?)

On a side note: between the crazy-uptight husband and the faked (?) drowning, I'm getting a very Sleeping With The Enemy vibe. Also, I can see how choosing a background song for 'assuming my dead twin's identity' would be difficult; but how the hell did they pick a cover of 25 or 6 to 4?

Over the course of Bridget's assuming Siobahn's identity, we find that she's having a giant loft apartment built out, that she's having an affair with her best friend Gemma's husband Henry, and that her weird marital troubles may also be her own doing. And her stepdaughter got kicked out of boarding school for drugs and hates her. There's some mystery involving Bridget and Sean, for which she needs Siobahn's forgiveness.

Bridget breaks off the affair with Henry; and Nestor from the FBI is hot on her trail. He meets with Siobahn, not realizing that she's actually Bridget in more aggressive makeup. Fooled ya! Gemma calls Siobahn to meet her at the giant loft regarding Henry's affair - and we're back to the beginning, where the masked intruder tries to kill her. Bridget finds her inner Buffy and her hidden gun, and kills the killer. Thinking he was sent by Macawi to kill Bridget, she checks out the killer's pockets and finds a snapshot with Siobahn's name on it. The killer *did* have the wrong girl. Speaking of weird music choices, is Patsy Cline's "I Fall To Pieces" the first choice of construction workers everywhere? And in the end - Siobahn is alive! In Paris! And pregnant. And possibly the one who tried to kill Bridget.

If you were expecting a noir-ish soap opera, with lots of false starts and wrong turns, Ringer did not disappoint. It's a pretty good show, actually - I am kind of excited to see where this is going; but please, get your special effects people and music-choosers in line. One more gigantic green screen faux pas, or weird irrelevant and distracting Chicago cover song, and collective snark could bring down the entire internet. And I don't think The CW wants to be responsible for that.

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