Men in Trees: Tiiim-ber!
Anne Heche Goes Tree Chopping
Poor Anne Heche. After all of these years and all the acting work she has done since, and notwithstanding her excellent former stint as the bewitching twins Marley and Vicky Hudson on the long-departed daytime soap opera Another World, I still think of her first and foremost as comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres’ ex. That just goes to show how tightly entwined an actor’s personal and professional lives can be. It also may explain why, despite the general okay-ness of Heche’s new hour-long comedy drama on ABC, Men in Trees, she’s just not viable in the lead role of relationship coach and bestselling author Marin Frist.
Instead of suspending my disbelief in order to “buy” Heche as Frist, someone whose career success is 100 percent dependent upon her ability to accurately analyze the dynamics of male-female interactions, I found myself simply nitpicking the details of her performance that confirmed my prior belief that Heche probably knows as little about making a romantic relationship work as the next person, if not less. Why ABC execs didn’t see such a state of affairs coming is anyone’s best guess, but somebody in their ranks should have at least understood beforehand why Heche might have been miscast in the starring role.
The pilot of Men in Trees introduces the Frist character as a popular author of relationship advice books that focus on empowering women to take the lead in their own lives by becoming less reliant on men to supply the direction, stability, and happiness they crave. Her witty refrains and quotable prose lose quite a bit of their effectiveness after Frist, on her way to a remote Northern Exposure-ish town in Alaska to promote her second publication while in the midst of eager wedding plans, inadvertently discovers that her fiancé is cheating on her with another woman she knows.
There goes the wedding, of course, because a woman who tells other people how to conduct their relationships for a living cannot possibly walk down the aisle when she couldn’t even foresee the troubles in her own personal life. To make matters worse, Frist’s Alaskan destination turns out to be a man hunter’s mecca, with ten men for every one woman—exactly what she doesn’t need after her most recent marriage disappointment. The irony is not lost on our heroine, particularly when it is compounded by her repeated inability to get out of the forsaken place due to a lack of regular, reliable transportation. Good for her, then, that the she eventually succumbs to the sheer beauty of the back-to-nature surroundings and decides to stay for a time among the town’s quirky denizens, mostly men though they are.
Whether audiences will likewise stick around for Men in Trees is another question all together. The series debuted Tuesday night at 10:02 in a preview slot. This Friday, a night that historically draws fewer viewers overall, it moves to its regular 9pm slot (after a repeat of the pilot at 8pm). CBS has had the most success of late in this difficult prime-time period with the one-two-three punch of the supernatural Ghost Whisperer, starring fan favorite Jennifer Love Hewitt, the female-centric legal drama Close to Home, and the hit crime drama Numbers. As the network’s lineup amply demonstrates, viewers tend to gravitate more towards shows that deliver a dramatic wallop, when they watch TV on Friday nights at all. Can a romantic dramedy about a know-it-all giver of advice—even if she weren’t portrayed by Heche—and the peculiar people who inspire her fare well under such circumstances? Only time and the Nielsen ratings will tell; but unlike men and women trying to make their relationships work, the numbers won’t lie.
The Verdict: B
Men in Trees currently airs Fridays at 9pm EST on ABC
Men in Trees photo courtesy of ABC
