1.1 Pilot So, getting the disappointing stuff out of the way first, Star-Crossed is by its very nature a dated high school show, with a compilation of actors from other series just to draw attention to this fact. We have Aimee Teegarden from Friday Night Lights, Malese Jow from Vampire Diaries, Matt Lanter from 90210, Grey Damon from everything and a whole host of other guest stars/recurring characters who are noticeably recognisable for anyone who’s been paying attention to the US teen drama scene over the last few years. That wouldn’t be a drawback, but I think the show has ambitions above and beyond this target audience. The CW has crafted an entire business model around the popularity of supernatural romance shows, but Star-Crossed, in all its efforts to say something important/new, fails to step out from the shadow of previous series like Roswell, with which it bears much resemblance. It’s one of those shows that always appear at the tail-end of a trend, like everything that followed Lost, but fails to move the genre forward any further. Does anyone actually want or need another Romeo and Juliet-with-a-twist stories that inevitable develops into an ever-revolving love triangle that happens to include an alien? I’m the ultimate CW apologist, and I’m not even sure I do. The story is relatively simple – an alien race has crash landed on earth and humans have attempted to deal with the new arrivals in the best way they know how – control, strict laws and segregation. On the day of the crash, a human child, Emery (Teegarden), befriends one of the Atrians, Roman (Lanter), and years later they are reunited on the first day of school. The love story is obviously coming, given that both of them are outsiders (Emery has spent the last four years in hospital with a vague, yet-to-be-explained disorder) and, you know, ‘star-crossed’, and cool kid Grayson provides the third point to their developing triangle. As an exploration of fraught race relations in America, Star-Crossed has good intentions but emerges pretty toothless in practice. People have been critical of the show for its old-fashioned perspective and shaky character introductions, but experience has taught us all to give shows like this more of a chance. It all hinges on how much focus the love triangle gets over the admittedly intriguing genre stuff but I, for one, have hopes for the future after the final twist. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!
