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 ack in 1989, Oprah Winfrey brought a dozen hot-to-trot, single Alaskan men to her studio for what would become one of her most famous shows. The episode flaunted a statistic, repeated ad nauseam but never quite substantiated, that in Alaska there are ten single men for every single woman. Ten to one, ladies! It certainly seemed plausible. What did we know about Alaska, anyway? If she had told us there were ten magical polar bears for every talking moose, could anyone really argue? As it turns out, the statistic is bunk (a recent Wall Street Journal cites the percentage of single men to single women at 119%), but it still created a brouhaha, resulting in at least one beefcake calendar, a raft of television segments, and several horny women vacationing in Sitka. The episode made quite an impression on me, too. Not because I was hot for Alaskan men — at fourteen, my blood flowed with the River Phoenix — but because these men seemed so unappealing, so average in their bolo ties and acrylic sweaters. And women were still ripping out their hairweaves over them.
Apparently the show made an impression on Jenny Bicks, too. A writer best known for her work on Sex and the City, Bicks is the creator of Men in Trees, a new one-hour ABC dramedy inspired by the famous Alaskan myth. Anne Heche stars as Marin Frist, a relationship counselor and bestselling author whose own relationship implodes on the same day she has a book-tour appearance in a small, unnamed Alaskan town (actually Vancouver, looking plausibly like Haines). "Women all over the country thought I knew the secret to finding their man," Marin tells us at the outset. "I think I was just a good talker." Heartbroken and disillusioned, she arrives in Alaska with her fussy curls and her big-city ways, and what ensues is your typical cold-fish-out-of-water comedy. But there's a twist (kind of): The town is teeming with men, and Marin is in major distress mode — showing up drunk to her book appearance, blathering to the locals at the bar. She even oversleeps and misses the only flight out of town. (Of course!) But this, being television, means Marin may get what she needs after all: The counselor is in need of some counsel. She decides to stay and write another book, this time about men. After all, Marin always tells her female audience to "Watch for the signs!" The day she arrives in Alaska, a sign literally falls in her path. It reads, "Men in Trees."
As romance shows go, it's not the worst premise ever (see The Littlest Groom, Fox, 2004). Playing the show's prissy, know-it-all protagonist, Anne Heche is good enough to make you forget about the real Anne Heche, unhinged and writing books about her split personality. The city has a warm, backwoods kookiness that will be welcome to those still mourning the death of Northern Exposure. The supporting cast is filled with familiar faces, from Felicity's Derek Richardson as a breathless, unsubtle but occasionally endearing naif named (gag!) Patrick Bachelor to a crusty old pilot played by Good Times' John Amos.
But the more I watched Men in Trees, the more I felt like I was in a time warp, back in 1989, back inside that Oprah episode. One of Marin's catchphrases is "stinkin' thinkin'," an '80s self-help chestnut even before Al Franken
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The town actually has a hooker with a heart of gold.
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spoofed it on Saturday Night Live. Couldn't anyone be bothered to think of something original? When the show's sage bartender (ER's Abraham Benrubi) makes a grand sociological observation about women — something we are meant to see as profound, and something I fear will happen throughout the season — he says, "Every woman thinks she wants Dirty Harry, but what's really getting you ladies all hot and bothered is Clint Eastwood." First of all: Whaaa? Second of all: Ewww. And lastly: I don't know about you ladies, but I want Jon Stewart. Fuck Eastwood, man.
The script lurches on like something Nora Ephron scrapped fifteen years ago. It's riddled with the kind of cutesy implausibility Bicks' old SATC cronies might have gently steered her away from over a cup of chamomile. A raccoon invades Marin's closet and eats her best purple flats; she falls through a thin sheet of ice on a cigarette run and must spend the evening shivering and naked in a tent with a biologist who looks like a Lands' End model. He has a mysterious scar running down his arm (and, we suspect, his heart). Actually, that sounds a lot like Sex and the City, doesn't it? But there's no edge here, no wit, and too many clichés. It turns out the town actually has a hooker with a heart of gold. "I want to leave the hospitality business," says the hooker (The Dead Zone's Suleka Mathew), "but it's hard to find a guy who likes me for me."
The show wants to puncture all of Marin's smug self-help slogans, but it ends up embracing the same stuff Oprah's been spouting for years: Be comfortable in your own skin. Learn to be alone. Love yourself, and maybe a Lands' End model will love you back. In the pilot's last moments, Marin rides her bike to a cliff and throws her tattered wedding dress off the side. "Against all odds, I am still an optimist," she says as the dress flutters to the ground below. Fine. But maybe after a few months in Alaska, she won't be such a litterbug. n°
Men in Trees debuts tonight on ABC.
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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Sarah Hepola has been a high-school teacher, a playwright, a film critic, a music editor and a travel columnist. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, The Guardian, and on NPR. She writes the Scanner blog for Hooksexup and lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. |
©2006 Sarah Hepola and hooksexup.com.
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