Ah, out with the old, in with the new. The television season is dead, long live the next television season. And to prepare for it, I’m going to review new shows as the pilots become available.

Hidden Palms; CW, TBD (Midseason Program)

This opens rather sadly, as math wiz Johnny Miller (Taylor Handley, The O.C.) witnesses his father’s suicide. We immediately flash to a year later, when Johnny’s mother Karen (Gail O’Grady, Hot Properties) and newly-minted rich husband (D.W. Moffett, Book of Daniel) are moving into a house in a gated community outside of Palm Springs where the neighbors are all rich, spoiled, and eccentric, and secrets lay behind every palm tree.

Taylor Handley and Amber Heard frolic in the golf course sprinklers

Ok, let’s get straight to it. You can almost hear the pitch session; “The show is The O.C. meets Desperate Housewives!” On the kids coming-of-age story side, there’s Greta the beautiful young vamp (Amber Heard), the neighbor (Michael Cassidy, The O.C.) with secrets about a death that occurred in the house Johnny now lives in, and the bookish geek (Ellary Porterfield) who is so smitten with Johnny she puts on makeup for the first time in her life and chases Johnny as he chases Greta. On the suburbia side, there’s the alpha-female - that’s slang for bitch (Cheryl White, Book of Daniel in a wonderfully over-the-top performance), the sex-crazed couple, and the too-too vain plastic surgery addict (Sharon Lawrence, pick a show, she’s been in so many that have failed).

There’s a side-trip that doesn’t really fit in, when Johnny attends his Something-Anonymous meeting; but it’s a chance to see the always-excellent Leslie Jordan (probably best known from his recurring role in Will and Grace, but he did much better work on Boston Public) in drag. Like I said, that whole section of the show sticks out like a sore thumb plot-wise, but it’s great to watch Jordan work. I surely hope his next recurring role is in something more challenging.

The kids side of this show is predictable, and frankly as boring as Handley’s acting style; he’s wooden to a fault, and made me wish he would have off-ed himself instead of his father (played for a brief moment by Tim DeKay, fondly remembered from his role in Everwood). You end up with no sympathy for the kid, because he is so flat and unlikable - this is partially the fault of the writers, who don’t really know where they want to go with him, but mostly Handley just doesn’t have the skill to pull us into the character or carry the show. The adult side brought in a few laughs (I almost liked the whole “property lines have shifted” subplot-of-the-week), but there isn’t really anything you haven’t seen before; scantily-clad jailbait, scantily-clad older women, and young men with their shirts off. Understand, I have nothing against scantily-clad women, but I’d appreciate something a bit more compelling than cleavage in my television viewing.

While a small part of me would like to watch Cheryl White’s character make life a living hell for the neighborhood each week and her inevitable end-of-episode come-uppance, it really isn’t worth sitting through all the contrived teenage angst. Seriously…if you live in a place as beautiful as this, and have this much money, whining about how tough you have it just makes me want to slap you silly.

At the core, this is a run-of-the-mill CW program; it’s success will have more to do with the amount of skin shown than any real interest in characters or plots.