Before the start of the fall season, we listed Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Ringer as one of the top 10 new shows to look out for. Now the drama has entered its midseason hiatus and it’s time to take stock: has Ringer lived up to our expectations?
In the first half of Ringer‘s premiere season, we were introduced to the twin sisters Bridget and Siobhan, who led very different lives. But Bridget, fleeing from a scary criminal, ended up taking over Siobhan’s life – as Siobhan staged her own death. Unbeknownst to Bridget, a pregnant Siobhan has been chilling out in France while Bridget attempted to pick up the pieces of her sister’s messed up life: Bridget has broken off Siobhan’s affair with Henry, fixed her marriage with Andrew and begun to bridge her relationship with stepdaughter Juliet.
Meanwhile, Bridget’s former sponsor Malcolm has been through kidnapping, torturing and rehabilitation after being forcibly injected with the drugs he had been addicted to. Detective Machado is still chasing Bridget, believing that Siobhan (Bridget) knows the whereabouts of her sister. And finally, Siobhan’s best friend Gemma discovered that Henry had an affair, that it was with Siobhan, and that Bridget was pretending to be her, only to be kidnapped by bad guy Charlie, who after several episodes of holding her captive finally shot and killed her – only to himself be killed by Siobhan, who has finally returned to New York.
Phew. You’d think all that was a lot to cram into the first 10 episodes of the season, but really, the pacing of Ringer so far has been surprisingly slow. It is definitely living up to its Noir genre, but the question remains whether fans will really continue to respond to that.
While Sarah Michelle Gellar’s acting has been great, we are definitely lacking some exploration of Siobhan’s character. So far, it seems there has been a very clear distinction between Good Twin/Bad Twin, despite the fact that before the beginning of the show, it was Bridget who was the washed up drug addict and Siobhan who had turned her life around and got what she’d always wanted (even if that was to marry rich). What turned Siobhan into the cold-hearted, scheming and cheating woman she has become? While all the questions about her are sure to be explored in the second half of the season, it has so far left Siobhan quite an unengaging, abstract ‘villain.’ Add to that the fact that she has been conveniently hiding in France with a (seemingly irrelevant) new boyfriend, and the whole twin factor kind of loses its impact. Plus, she’s pregnant, and we assume it’s Henry’s – so does she love Henry? What will she do with the baby, how will it feature into her plans? We don’t know anything about Siobhan yet, and I’d have liked to have seen more of her before the midseason break.
Luckily though, we know a lot about Bridget, and she is a great character to watch struggle not only with her addiction but also to really do something right with her life. While it is disturbing watching her get so attached to the people in her sister’s life, it also seems realistic that Bridget would come to care about these people; it was a protectiveness born out of loyalty to her sister, yet as she began to that her sister was not as nice to these people as Bridget would have been, she got attached to them, and the way some of these characters’ attitudes towards her have changed (Andrew’s and Juliet’s especially) have given Bridget a feeling of worth.
Still, there are peripheral characters whose reasons for being in the story we still have to question. Malcolm Ward started the season being a potential love interest for Bridget: he’s lied to the police for her, endured days (or weeks?) of torture for her, and uprooted his life to come to New York to protect her, only to find her in love with her sister’s husband – so what now? He seems to just be sticking around now as a partner in crime to Bridget, but what is his purpose? Why did he survive? What is his goal and arc, as an individual? Not knowing makes him an uninteresting character to watch.
And what about Machiado? Nestor Carbonell was one of the actors associated with this project whom fans were most anxious to see (mostly because of his previous role in Lost), yet the character has literally had no purpose so far. He has failed to convict the villain, he has failed to realise that Siobhan is Bridget, he has failed to make any sort of headway at all, and if his only role in the show continues to be chasing false leads, well… that would be a waste of a good actor and valuable screen time.
Finally, there is Gemma. For 10 episodes we have learned about her, seen her slowly piece together all the information, and then she was kidnapped. Had she been killed then, it would have been shocking and had real impact. Had she been killed in the next episode, it would also have been shocking. Had she been killed in the midseason finale by the first shot, that would have been heartbreaking. But seeing her survive kidnapping, weeks of being held captive and a shot to the head only for her then to die? That was lame. Sure, they were going for a noir, ‘no one is safe’ theme, but why bother keeping her around for as long as they did? Again, it feels a little bit like the writers have a good story, but are dragging some elements of it out for far, far too long.
That seems to be Ringer‘s main problem. The series is very intent on building suspense, but so far, the characters and storylines have suffered for it. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying watching the show, and liking the way Bridget is slowly settling into Siobhan’s life, but the pace, to me, is off. I hope that when the series returns, they will pick up the pace. Siobhan’s back in New York now, and the main character death raised the stakes – so let’s see some action!
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