Review: Reunion

Show: Reunion
Episode: Series Premiere
Originally Aired: Thursday, September 8th 2005

Quick Synopsis: Funeral. One of six friends is dead. You see what their life was like over the summer of 1986 after high school graduation.

Long Synopsis: The show opens at a funeral. One of a group of six close friends, 3 females and 3 males, is dead. You don’t know who it is or how he or she died, except that it was a murder. A cop is investigating. Then you are taken back to 1986 and their high school graduation. The major events of their summer are told. The poor kid covers for his rich best friend because he feels guilty for cheating with his friend’s girlfriend. The girlfriend in question is pregnant by the poor kid. The rich kid doesn’t know about it. The poor kid thinks she is but is told it was a false alarm. The poor kid ends up in jail after covering for his friend. The girlfriend heads off to London with the shy awkward girl who is the only one that knows she is pregnant. The awkward girl is in love with the geeky guy who is in love with the low self-esteem girl who hooks up with anyone and everyone except the geeky guy. By the end of the show the geeky guy got the low self-esteem girl and then lost her. The rich kid is off to college by himself, the awkward girl is not the dead one and next week is all about significant events of 1987.

Review: The first show was ok. It has potential. Had I not already known what the overall plot of the show was, I think I would have not gotten enough from the first episode to keep me interested. The characters are portrayed well, but they all seem very stereotypical. We have a rich kid, his poor best friend, the rich kids girlfriend, the weird girl, the geeky guy and the no self-respect slut. The only thing original about the show is the time element. Showing them over the course of twenty years and not starting as a normal nighttime soap usually does, one that starts now and follows the characters forward.

I enjoyed watching it for the 80s references and music they used to put you back in 1986. This, I think is a reason to watch the show, to see how each successive year is portrayed as they head back to present day. I don’t know if this will be enough though.

One of the main problems with the show is that these people are supposed to be tight. The best of friends, yet each is holding something back, lying to each other, cheating or taking advantage of the others. If these were great friends then I would hate to see how this show would portray enemies. I guess that is part of the murder mystery. Because of a life with these types of events, did one of them kill and if so which one? By the end of the show though I didn’t really care for any of these characters. So I really didn’t care who was dead or who might have done it.

I will give it another chance though next week. If for no other reason than there is nothing else new or old on next Thursday that I want to watch. Maybe early premieres for some Fox TV shows were a good idea. Well, at least until CSI and Everwood are back on the air on the 22nd and 29th respectively.

Rating: 2 out of 4 Stars