Ringer Pilot

Spoilers for the pilot episode of Ringer follow. Massive spoilers.

Let's be honest. I'm a total sucker for Sarah Michelle Gellar. I mean, I grew up on Buffy*. So of course I tuned into tonight's season premiere of Ringer. It's probably a good thing that I didn't exactly have high hopes.

First things first, Ringer is not Buffy. Despite an ad campaign that focused almost exclusively on the fact that SMG would be returning to the CW** on Tuesday nights, the show makes it clear right off the bat that this is not Buffy in an opening scene that has SMG on the losing end of a fight with a masked man.

From there, the show proceeds to throw a dozen balls into the air. And I guess we'll spend the rest of the season either witnessing an impressive juggling act or a complete disaster. So what happened in the pilot? I believe we need a list.

• Bridget (played by SMG) is a former stripper and recovering addict. They never specify what her drug of choice was, but she's been sober for six months
• Bridget is the key witness in a murder trial for some big bad guy. Possibly with ties to the mob? If I heard correctly, he killed her fellow stripper by dismemberment.
• Bridget has a crush on her sponsor (I believe that's against the rules). Her sponsor seems to reciprocate those feelings
• Bridget is so terrified of the big bad that she breaks out of protective custody, assaults a cop, steals his gun, and runs to New York
• In New York we meet Siobhan, Bridget's estranged twin sister. They haven't spoken for six years. What better way to reunite than a boat ride? 
• Siobhan conveniently hasn't told anyone that she has a sister
• The boat had some of the worst green screen/CGI I've seen in a long time.
• Bridget takes a nap, like you do, and when she wakes up Siobhan is gone, along with all her prescription drugs
• Naturally, Bridget assumes that Siobhan killed herself. The next logical step is to assume her identity
• Bridget calls her sponsor to tell him all of this.
• There's an FBI agent looking for Bridget because of that whole key witness thing. Also the assault of the police officer thing.
• Siobhan's husband, Andrew, is distant. They don't seem to have any sort of relationship anymore. He doesn't trust Bridget's attempts to mend this relationship.
• Siobhan had a big orange book that she wrote down all of her appointments in to keep track of her busy life. This would be pretty handy for Bridget to flip through, but she seems to forget about it the moment she discovers it
• Siobhan's best friend Gemma is renovating a penthouse apartment for Siobhan and Andrew
• Gemma thinks her husband, Henry, is cheating on her
• Henry is cheating on Gemma. With Siobhan
• In 2005 Siobhan had a son named Sean (quite the tongue twister). She does not have said son any longer. Bridget may have had something to do with this.
• The FBI agent visits Bridget-as-Siobhan to ask her about Bridget's whereabouts. Bridget lies and says they haven't spoken in years. (Technically it was true a week ago)
• Siobhan has a teenage stepdaughter, Juliet. Their relationship rivals the one I have with my own stepmother. But Bridget doesn't know this and is trying to play nice, despite having walked in on Juliet having sex with some random dude.
• Juliet just got kicked out of boarding school.
• Apparently it was for possession of the same drug that Bridget used to be addicted to
• So Bridget tries to kick Juliet out of the house
• A doctor calls to inform Bridget that Siobhan was pregnant. Bridget missed the appointment because she didn't bother to read her sister's incredibly handy appointment book.
• The baby is probably Henry's but there's a slim chance it could be Andrew's. Clearly Bridget herself isn't pregnant, though. But she seems to think this could repair her relationship with Andrew. Glee already did this, and it didn't work out so well.
• The FBI agent finds the letter that Bridget sent Siobhan (she stowed it in a bike locker in the Hamptons. Of course he found it.) He deduces that Bridget-as-Siobhan lied to him. But he still thinks she's Siobhan.
• Gemma calls Bridgett and asks to meet her because she knows who her husband's having an affair with.
• A masked man attacks Bridget (this is where the episode opened, before flashing back to "nine days earlier")
• Bridget shoots the masked man with the gun she stole from the cop
• The masked man was actually looking for Siobhan (if you consider that he accosted her in the very place Gemma asked to meet, this doesn't seem quite as suspenseful as the show wants you to believe it is)
• Siobhan is still alive. And apparently trying to kill Bridget. There must be an easier way to fake your own death.
• Somewhere in there the man that Bridget was supposed to testify against kidnapped her sponsor.
• There are mirrors everywhere. I guess for the symbolism. Nobody owns that many mirrors though. Someone will walk out of the frame, and then you'll see them again crossing the right side of the screen in a mirror. Then they'll appear in a mirror on the left side of the screen. Then they'll finally have exited the scene. It's ridiculous.

So all of that happened in the hour-long pilot. Which is really only 42 minutes when you account for all of the commercials***. Some of these plots seem unnecessary (do we really need a pregnancy?). Some of them probably could have been held off for a few weeks (Juliet's drug possession and expulsion). Some things could have been utilized better (Oh my God, Bridget, read your sister's appointment book). But it will be interesting to see where the show goes from here. I predict disaster. Hopefully it will be an entertaining disaster.

*Probably the best role she's ever had
**Though Buffy actually switched to UPN before the WB became the CW
***Apparently they're remaking The Transporter with Ryan Gosling as Jason Statham.