Recently I was shocked to discover that the CW airs other shows besides Gossip Girl and Top Model. While abroad I have occasionally been struck with pangs of homesickness that I have found are best cured by things distinctly American – mostly bagels and frothy nighttime soaps featuring actors with pore-less skin and American Girl hair (thanks Blair). To satisfy my hunger to see these pretty young things pout, cry, and stare blankly at the camera, I have turned to The CW and discovered three of its newest offerings – the Melrose Place reboot, Twilight knockoff The Vampire Diaries, and Mischa Barton show The Beautiful Life.

Melrose Place

Never having seen the original Melrose, I can’t say how the makeover stacks up, but after two episodes I am officially kind of interested. Attempts at relevancy aside (kids like Twitter and Lady Gaga, right?) the show has struck a nice balance of high camp and high drama. The central murder mystery is particularly juicy, fueled by a scarily unhinged performance by Mrs. Ashlee Wentz. Other highlights include a hunky homo and a bitchy junior publicist who says things like “If I would have done it, it wouldn’t have been so messy,” while staring moodily into the camera as her pretty but indistinctive face is swallowed by a darkly lit flashback. Yes please. The show falters when it tries to drive the emotional core of the story with newly engaged couple Jonah and Riley. So far neither has schemed, lied, or sexed strangers for money. Yawn. Hopefully this will be remedied in future installments.

The Vampire Diaries

Next I checked out The Vampire Diaries, despite my aversion to chaste love story Twilight. I mean, it had Boone in it, how bad could it be? Answer: really really bad. As if directly insulting me, Boone doesn’t even show up in the pilot until three quarters of the way through. To add insult to injury, his appearances are marked by cheap fog machines reminiscent of my 5th grade production of The Wizard of Oz. He plays the bad boy brother, while some nameless handsome actor attempts to usurp RPattz’s throne. Nameless handsome actor (NHA) writes painfully hackneyed entries into his diaries that he narrates via voice over, which would be bad enough were it not for the fact that his leading lady, sassy high schooler Elena, also narrates her shitty entries. No one here is as sexy a bloodsucker as Robert Pattinson, and the show is light years away from the wit and gravitas of HBO’s True Blood, so what’s the point anyway?

The Beautiful Life

Finally, I managed to view Mischa Barton’s comeback vehicle, The Beautiful Life (which producers desperately want us to refer to as TBL, even inserting the abbreviation into the opening credits. No thanks producers, I will abbreviate as I see fit thank you very much). Beautiful Life focuses on the “fast paced” and “glamorous” world of modeling. We know that their lives are such from the gratuitous shots of busy New York sidewalks and whirring taxicabs. The show is campy enough fun, but it places too much of an emphasis on a model’s importance in the fashion industry, treating most of them like mini-celebrities. Mischa Barton’s Sonja is easily the best thing about the series, a former top model now reduced to party crashing in sparkly Versace mini dresses with matching eye shadow in order to land campaigns. Less impressive were the wooden Chris and Reina, this shows’ supposed answer to Ryan and Marissa. Total miss.

All in all, a so-so slate of fresh programming from the CW. Would it have killed them to let Privileged lead a slightly longer life? And I would have definitely been up for at least one season of the aborted Gossip Girl spin-off. But this is the hand the struggling network has dealt us, so I will continue to tune in to Melrose, and I’m on the fence about The Beautiful Life. I will be skipping Vampire Diaries, although, I am apparently in the minority since, still riding the crazy vampire obsession, it scored big time in the ratings (so many emo teens must watch The CW). Overall, the network seriously needs to replace their shabby squad of TV writers and give us something fresh. Hopefully season 3 of Gossip Girl will deliver big time.