The heat makes people boring

So right out of the gate Taylor Handley is not even remotely believable as a math geek. Also, the guy playing his dad was really unconvincing as a drunk.

Ah, the mom in denial. Nice. So far these conversations are all the type in which each character is saying things that are not related to the things any other character is saying. We get it, there's a disconnect. There's also a thing called subtlety.

Nice, the Garden State soundtrack. That is so hip...three years ago. Obviously Kevin Williamson didn't watch any of the shows he's stealing from. If he had, he'd have known that the first thing to do before even writing a pilot was to find a good music supervisor. This is going to be sad. I predict that I will repeatedly be pulled out of the show by rehashed music that was hip several years ago.

All of his neighbors are the type that stand still looking straight ahead and staring blankly as means of introducing themselves. Or the whole neighborhood is obsessed with Hitchcock. That could be good.

Okay. 23 and 24 year olds playing 16-17. Good to know nothing's changed in the world of teen drama. Boy this neighbor kid is weird. In kind of a closeted gay way. (I'll take this moment to mention that Michael Cassidy is so much cuter with this haircut than his old OC look.)

Wow, whole town full of people with severe mood and/or personality disorders.

Oh, my favorite line so far: "It looks like the nose two noses ago." Plastic surgery is fun.

I think in my initial summary of the show I cast the girl across the street as Veronica Mars. Now I can see that I was incorrect and she is, in fact, Joey Potter. Way to move out of your comfort zone, Kev!

Ooo, continuity error. Cliff's collar has gone from popped to unpopped back to popped. Greta doesn't seem too enigmatic so far. She's way to friendly and un-emotionally tormented to be Marisa Cooper.

Honestly, I don't see how our main character emotionally connecting with a past-middle-aged transvestite is going to be what this show needs. Why couldn't it have just been a past-middle-aged Southern woman?

Oh, I see, Greta reads. She's much more enigmatic now.

With Johnny's weird hipster hair I almost feel like I'm watching the Veronica Mars spinoff starring Dick Casablancas that I've been dreaming of all year. But now it's been ruined because that is the worst explanation for being a virgin I've ever heard. Now it's like he's the Dawson in Dick Casablancas' body. Which is bad.

Cliffy has a weird definition of dark. His life must be just candy and puppy dogs for him to think her, with her totally boring and predictable attempt to be...come to think of it, he also thinks she's enigmatic. This seems to make Cliff the most 1 dimensional person ever.

2nd favorite line: "My mom likes to rotate the plants." Despite his complete idiocy, I can tell I'm really going to like Cliff. Until he becomes all angsty when he finally deals with what happened to Eddie. I'm assuming they'll tell us (and Johnny) about his murder towards the very end. I wish this was really a combination of the OC and Lost and we could be theorizing things like "maybe Palm Springs is some kind of purgatory."

These kids do a lot of reading. Is there no TV in Palm Springs? Can this Greta girl move without flipping her hair around? Girl needs a headband.

So far the Greta/Johnny relationship has two main themes: Water and Laughing. I don't feel that these are necessarily the strongest foundations on which to build a relationship. Wow, I don't like Greta at all. She's really annoying.

A party! I knew something'd been missing up to this point. Hmm, no fight so far. Uneventful party.

So, Cliff and Greta killed Eddie? Cliff has kind of a Michael Rosenbaum as Lex Luthor thing going for him.

Okay, one of the main reasons I hate Greta: she blinks really slowly. It's like she's falling asleep all the time.

It seems that I also miscast Cliff's mom as Julie Cooper(-Nichol) when it's actually Johnny's mom who's Julie. I see an attempt at sleeping with Cliff in the future. That'll be fun. I don't know why Johnny hates Bob so much. Bob seems like a nice guy to me.

Dammit. I really wanted to be able to like Cliff. Honestly, did he have to kick a dog? Couldn't he have slapped his mom or something?

I think that really long, unnecessarily loud song at the end with all of those shots was supposed to ramp up the emotional tension or something. It really wasn't working. Also, did this episode have a plot of any kind? If so, I didn't notice it.

Well, maybe the next episode will be better. And Greta won't be so hair-flippy and wierd. I am dreading the moment that Tessa Thompson shows up though. Jackie Cook 2.0 is not really what I'm looking for in this show.