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This was going to be the next show I watched from Netflix, mainly on the recommendation of a fellow movie critic whose opinion I respect, but also because I had a general sense that it was one of those underrated cult shows (it lasted two seasons on the WB in 1999-2001) and I have a soft spot for teen melodramas anyway. So I really was primed and ready to like this show, and kept wanting it to be better than it was as I made my way through the first four episodes on the disc that Netflix sent. But it just wasn't, and even though I tried, I couldn't convince myself that it was worth making my way through the whole 22-episode first season just on faith that eventually I would see what other people clearly enjoyed.

To be fair, I did see some of it: There's an obvious camp element that becomes a little more pronounced even over the course of just the first four episodes, and Tammy Lynn Michaels and Leslie Grossman clearly have a good time hamming it up with their characters. But the rest of the characters are just so goddamn whiny and unlikeable, and in between the minimal campy amusement is all your boilerplate teen drama bullshit, which I do enjoy when it's done with a modicum of genuine emotion and some decent acting and characters that I can have a little investment in. But this is sort of sub-par Dawson's Creek rip-off stuff, at least in the initial episodes, and I just don't have the patience to sit through more of it for no reason. I almost never turn a movie off in the middle, no matter how much I hate it, but it seemed sort of excessive to watch 22 episodes of a TV show just so that I could finish what I started. If it had been as short as some of the other shows I've watched recently, I might have stuck it out. But I suppose I'll remain ignorant to whatever pleasures this show (allegedly) had to offer.