When I was giving my DVD report yesterday, I forgot to mention life as we know it. This was another show that ABC screwed over -- it got dumped onto Thursdays, before ABC and Grey's Anatomy conquered that night. (This was 2004.) Then there was a half-hearted attempt to engage the young people by airing re-runs on MTV, but the show never really caught on, which, again, is too bad.
Another problem life as we know it had, besides the timeslot hustle, was indifference from critics and the online tastemakers who should have been its core audience. You see, the creators were Jeff Judah and Gabe Sachs, two of the writers of actually brilliant but canceled Freaks & Geeks and not actually brilliant but occasionally very funny and cancelled Undeclared. I'm not sure what happened, but life as we know it, while interesting and occasionally really satisfying, feels generic and false in ways that those other shows don't. Did the network micromanage?
Anyway, if you get past the hyper-attractive cast, the ridiculously glamorous shabby/chic set design and the time-suck storylines devoted to the parents, there are good things. I got completely caught up in the secondary love story, covering the torrid affair between 15-year-old high school student Ben (Jon Foster) and 24-year-old English teacher Miss Young (Marguerite Moreau).
Surprisingly number of familiar faces: Missy Peregrym, who kind of sucks here, is now playing Candace the shapeshifter-or-something on Heroes; Chris Lowell plays the exact same character he plays on Veronica Mars; Lisa Darr was on The Office last night; Natasha Melnick (Cindy Sanders from Freaks & Geeks) is almost unrecognizable -- and really good -- in a recurring role; Busy Philipps appears to be playing herself; Connie Britton and Ione Skye have small parts; Peter Dinklage and Donnelly Rhodes slum for several episodes a piece.
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