"Hidden Palms" Episode 1: Welcome to Scream Creek

It’s always a wonderful thing for a recapper when a TV show can do the work of snarking itself. The premiere episode of Hidden Palms helpfully offered a handy self-diagnosis when a character commented, “This place has a severe tonal problem.” And I couldn’t agree more, since I practically got whiplash as the show careened from creepy melodrama to campy soap to pretentious teen angst-fest.

Leave it to Kevin Williamson, the master of the self-referential quip (remember characters in Scream recapping horror movie rules?), to throw in a line of dialogue that reflects on his own writing. But then again, according to a recent New York Times profile of Williamson, ironic self-reference is no longer in fashion. So you won’t hear any characters on Hidden Palms say things like, “Hey, this is just like that episode of Dawson’s Creek - you know, the one where James Van Der Beek’s grotesquely ginormous head blots out the sun.” Nevertheless, Hidden Palms’ pop cultural references couldn’t be more obvious:

Twin Peaks. Peaks, palms, same diff. What is it with creepy TV serials set in small towns named after foliage? In addition to Twin Peaks, there was also the mini-series Wild Palms, and of course, Men in Trees, which features the world’s scariest actress/space alien. You’d think that everyone in Hollywood must have been traumatized by The Lorax. And there were other David Lynchian moments right out of …

Blue Velvet. Palms pays a kind of tribute to Velvet’s gruesome lopped ear with a dismembered hand thrown through a window. Other images also have a disquieting Lynchian feel, particularly the sight of a goggled, aproned figure standing in a suburban garage. But the bloody hand winds up being just a childish prank, and the ominous garage figure nothing more than a brainy chick who uses the Internet for makeup tips. We’re not in Blue Velvet territory, we’re in the land of …

Desperate O.C. Housewives. The basic premise: Johnny, after the world’s worst father-son chat EVER, comes with glamorous Mom and gropey New Dad to live in ritzy Palm Springs. The rebellious new kid on the block soon befriends a group of bored rich kids who look sad during pretty montages set to trendy lite pop tunes. Sound familiar? The parallels to The O.C. are Pacific Ocean clear, given that Palms stars former O.C.ers Taylor Handley and Michael Cassidy. And you just know that Palms is going to be one of those shows that ends each episode with, “Featuring music by [insert name of band that fortysomething studio executives think teens listen to].” At the same time, the show’s depictions of bitchy housewives squabbling about the homeowners association and addicted to nosejobs (including one southern-belle harridan played by former Housewife Sharon Lawrence) – plus hints at some BIG MYSTERY that everyone’s covering up – are totally Wisteria Lane. But Palms goes one better by adding to the mix …

Priscilla Queen of the Desert. There’s a telling line in Hidden Palms, when one character comments about it being home to “gays and greys.” Given how gays are being treated over at that other TV Grey’s – Anatomy, that is – let’s hope gays have a better time here, particularly with out producer Kevin Williamson calling the shots. So far, Leslie Jordan’s kindly drag queen Jesse Jo seems happy enough. (Although that’s really the best drag queen name they could come up with? It sounds like it should be a sit-com starring Christina Applegate as an Australian woman who decides to open a bar in Texas.) And he’s probably not the only gay in town given the show’s allusions to …

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope. Bad boy Cliff’s first appearance is right out of Rear Window. But, as a sadistic preppie who gets off on bullying his peers, one of whom happens to be dead, he more closely resembles Hitchcock’s homoerotic take on the infamous murderers Leopold and Loeb. And although he hasn’t been officially outed, my gaydar’s pinging off the meter with him, given how touchy-feely he is in every scene with new best bud Johnny. Great, just what TV needs, another Andrew Van De Kamp. And speaking of troubled kids, there’s also a reference to the prince of angsty youth …

Hamlet (Ethan Hawke version). So Johnny’s Mommy (Gail O’Grady) got married too soon after Daddy died? Boo hoo! This is where this show starts to lose me. I’m fine with it as a trashy guilty pleasure, but when it has pretensions of something more – when an Ophelia-like sad chick named Greta (Amber Heard) dances through golf course sprinklers, or when the big cliffhanger is which Pablo Neruda poem Johnny will read next – my eyes start rolling so much I start to get a migraine. This snootiness is at its worst when Johnny and Greta have an insufferable conversation at a café where he feels compelled to psychoanalyze her and list his points “a, b, c” - like the world’s most boring college professor. Which makes sense, since I feel like I should get college credit after suffering through this. Where have I heard teens talk this way before? Ah yes, on …

Dawson’s Creek. So we’re back to Williamson’s most famous creation. The teens are talking all pseudo-serious again. And the dynamic among the characters even mirrors the Creek’s, with a contemplative dude pining for a troubled knockout, and being pined for by a slightly less pretty brainiac. If this is the next Dawson’s, it at least leads to the fun of speculating if these actors will have similar futures: Will any be nominated for parts in independent movies about gay cowboys? Will any marry egomaniacal cult members/movie actors of questionable talent? And will any simply disappear into the void?

Actually, I already know the answers: “No,” “Probably,” and “For damn sure.”

Finally, an apology: In my preview blog item last week, I teased about a startling sex scene I saw in the original pilot I screened. That scene, unfortunately, was cut from the episode, as was the threesome-loving twosome featured in it, since some things apparently need to stay hidden even on Hidden Palms. With them gone, the most interesting reason to keep watching is to see how many other trite ways they can code Cliff as gay without actually making him gay. A pink shirt and an overbearing mother? Really? Was this written in 1950? Why not just put him in a dress and have him sing “I Feel Pretty.”

So, what did you think of Palms: Episode I? Will you be back for more next week?