‘Apt. 23’ needs room to grow
ABC’S SECOND “bitch” show of the spring season is no dog.
“Don’t Trust the B— in Apartment 23” has a reasonably fresh premise and an immediately memorable performance by Krysten Ritter as Chloe, the title character.
In the show’s opening scene, Chloe enters her apartment and instantly hustles a guy into having sex on top of a birthday cake. Hi, Chloe. Nice to meet you. “The B” also has James Van Der Beek from “Dawson’s Creek” playing himself, a running gag deftly handled.
Van Der Beek plays Chloe’s best friend, though her real partner, or sparring partner, is June (Dreama Walker).
June has just arrived in New York from Indiana to start work at a top brokerage with a company-paid apartment. Her life plan is right on schedule, and while her devoted fiancé, Stephen, may be back at Western Indiana University, she knows it will all work out.
She arrives at her new job just in time to watch the place being dismantled. Seems the boss has been caught in a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme, one of TV’S favorite plot gags this season.
With no job or apartment and very little money, June needs a roommate. Enter Chloe, who sees in June “another smalltown trusting doormat.” Chloe’s game plan is to take June’s rent money, then drive her out of town.
June’s first week is no better than her first day. She hangs in. Or, as Chloe puts it, “Look who picked up a racket and decided to join the game.”
So what we’ve got here is another odd-couple New York roommate deal, joining, say, “2 Broke Girls.”
The broke girls, however, were both people we liked at once. Chloe, not so much.
Chloe has a nasty edge, and while we know eventually we will see past her protective wall to her more sympathetic inner girl, the problem is that from the moment she tries to fleece June the Doormat, the edge becomes part of her character.
But to make us like the character enough so we care about watching her every week, the writers also need to start showing glimpses of a Chloe who does more than say clever unpleasant things and think up slang terms for genitalia.
Similarly, it’s great to see Van Der Beek do a Shakespearean soliloquy and then have a girl in the front row ask how it felt to kiss Katie Holmes.
The jokes just works best in moderation.
There’s material and promise here. The show’s quirky supporting characters already don’t seem to be just caricatures who set up sex jokes.
“The B” needs to keep the “B” in Chloe, while softening her enough so she becomes a credible gal buddy to June. If we’re going to keep watching beyond the show’s initial shock and awe, we — like Chloe — must secretly admit we care.