Desperation becomes her

"The Ex List" is like "Sex and the City" without the trustworthy friends, the cool clothes and the laughs. Is this a dramedy, or a cautionary tale?

By Heather Havrilesky

Read more: CBS, TV, Sex and the City, Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, Heather Havrilesky

Oct. 2, 2008 | "Sex and the City" made being single look fun. Yes, the search for love was also sometimes tragic, infuriating, humbling, disappointing and irritating. But even when Mr. Almost Right skipped town, the women of "Sex and the City" still had great careers, enormous closets full of clothes and a few trustworthy friends to lean on through the heartbreak.

CBS's "The Ex List" (premieres 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 3), on the other hand, presents a far drearier portrait of singledom. Told by a psychic that her future husband is a man she's dated before, an apparently aimless, 33-year-old female is reduced to sifting through her failed relationships to locate the ex-boyfriend with whom she's destined to live almost happily ever after. But if she doesn't find him within the year, the psychic tells her, she'll be alone forever! (Cue horror movie soundtrack.)

Now sure, this same terrible fate looms ever present in the background of Carrie's foibles on "Sex and the City," just as it informs the thinking of many 30-something singles who field a steady flow of wedding invitations and baby pictures from their domesticated friends. But condemning our heroine, Bella (Elizabeth Reaser, she of the deformed-face guest spot on "Grey's Anatomy" last season), to rummaging through her own emotional dumpster full of hapless, commitment-phobic or highly rejectable ex-boyfriends transforms this picture from laughably relatable to slit-your-wrists devastating. For single women, many of whom have occasionally contemplated returning to thoroughly unsuitable exes just to escape the life of the cat lady, this is Dante's fifth circle of hell.

If Miranda pulled this maneuver on an episode of "Sex and the City," at least it could be chalked up to a brief bout of insanity that would inevitably resolve itself over cosmopolitans, sushi and hearty laughter all around. But on "The Ex List," Bella's desperation never leaves the frame. She spends the first hourlong episode chasing down some guy whom she already decided was totally wrong for her. Yes, there's a reasonable amount of humor that can be extracted from past relationships. "I'm gonna write us a rock opera," says Bella's rocker ex, Johnny (played brilliantly by Eric Balfour, best remembered as Claire's first boyfriend on "Six Feet Under"). "God, every time that I see you, I'm just so into you!" he later tearfully gushes, as Bella cringes. "I wanna, like, get tattoos together and drink each other's blood!" Yes, we've been there, and it was just as wonderful/awful.

But when Bella's not mulling over outdated matches, a process that's about as rewarding as tasting long-expired milk to see if it doesn't make you retch, she trades witty quips with a trio of dopey, "Friends"-lite slackers who seem to spend most of their leisure hours crowded into the same kiddie pool. These three stooges, seemingly unencumbered by jobs or discernible personalities, mostly play the foil via a steady flow of somewhat outdated hipster speak:

Bella: He shot me down! Boom, gone, see ya! It was cold. Dopey friend: Yet you found it hot. Bella: No, I mean, he was hot while he happened to be shutting me down, but it's not like the shutting down itself was hot. I really think he's changed. Dopey friend: Yeah, he's changed into a guy who doesn't like you anymore. At the exact same time he became more appealing. Weird. Bella: He totally still likes me.

Why are these 30-somethings speaking like 40-somethings spoke when they were 20-somethings? The whole charade feels wildly inauthentic, like watching a puppet show where middle-aged people reenact the most trying times from their single years with big, pretty, early-'30s cutout dolls. Instead of appearing casual and realistic (I assume that was the goal), the dialogue just makes these characters come across as losers. When Bella says "Really?" and it's supposed to be a joke twice in the first episode (once when a bird craps on her and another time when her sister says something utterly obvious and she wants to mock her), the whole thing feels disconcertingly cloying and unnatural. You half expect her to say "Helloooo!" or "See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!" or "Where's the beef?" next.

We're meant to believe that Bella has a life beyond searching for a man, of course. She works in a plucky flower shop that's about as realistic as the Pie Hole diner on "Pushing Daisies." Yet it's clear that arranging flowers and watering houseplants at her father's business isn't the sort of career that's going to rescue our heroine from crippling existential crises and a ticking biological clock.

But then, the point of most single-girl shows (and their downfall, not surprisingly) is that we're supposed to derive most of our chuckles from watching these women humiliated in imaginative new ways each week. Think of Meredith on "Grey's Anatomy." Think of "Ally McBeal." Our attractive but self-defeating single heroine swoons, takes a big risk, embarrasses herself, then retreats, eyes wide, face blushing, lower lip bitten in palpable regret.

Next page: Do we want to slouch around with desperate, dorky chicks who call their guy friends "Dude"?