"life as we know it" Premieres Thurs., Oct. 7 at 9/8 Central on ABC

[Pavan]

Considering so far all of ABC's new dramas have gotten a huge audience and critical praise, "life as we know it" could be another hit for ABC, despite airing in the toughest time period on television right now. "life as we know it" won't put "Lost" or "Desperate Housewives" numbers, but it should do decent. Not sure, if I'll like this as much as the other two new dramas, but this series has been compared to "Freaks & Geeks" and "My So Called Life."


Pilot Synopsis:

PREMIERE



THE PERSONAL LIVES OF THREE HIGH SCHOOL BOYS BEGIN TO UNFOLD,
ON THE PREMIERE OF "life as we know it," THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, ON ABC



From the producers of the critically-acclaimed series "Freaks and Geeks," Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah, and the former co-chairman of the ABC Entertainment Television Group, Stuart Bloomberg, comes a one-hour drama series based on British author Melvin Burgess' breakthrough novel, Doing It. "life as we know it" defines the spirit of life through the eyes of Dino Whitman, Jonathan Fields and Ben Connor, three hormone-charged teenage boys on the brink of becoming young men. This coming-of-age story is not just about sex - which does dominate their every thought - girlfriends and sports, but about how the pressures of growing up affect their attitudes toward the things and people they love, and how these experiences with their families, friends, coaches and teachers shape them into men, when "life as we know it" premieres, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7 (9:00-10:00 p.m., ET), on the ABC television network.

In the premiere episode, "Pilot," Dino (Sean Faris) is a rising hockey star with athletic good looks and charisma that make him the envy of his classmates. Fascinated by his beautiful girlfriend, Jackie (Missy Peregrym), he can barely control his teenage sexual impulses. His confidence is wildly shaken when he makes a devastating discovery about the relationship of his parents, Annie (Lisa Darr) and Michael Whitman (D.B. Sweeney). Meanwhile, Jackie quietly struggles with her own sexual boundaries with Dino and relies heavily on her friends, Sue (Jessica Lucas) and Deborah (Kelly Osbourne), to maintain her willpower.

Bright, sarcastic and utterly consumed by thoughts of girls, Ben (Jon Foster) is under constant pressure from his parents to achieve unattainable perfection. Mesmerized by his English teacher, Ms. Monica Young (Marguerite Moreau), Ben becomes simultaneously thrilled and panicked when she actually responds positively to his flirtation.

Jonathan (Chris Lowell), the least confident but most creative and grounded of the three friends, finds secret comfort in his relationship with the eccentric, full-bodied Deborah (Kelly Osbourne), because she shares his world view. Despite his insecurity and worries about ridicule from his friends, Jonathan decides to trust his feelings for Deborah and forges ahead with taking their relationship to the next level.

"life as we know it" stars Sean Faris ("Sleepover") as Dino Whitman, Jon Foster ("The Door in the Floor") as Ben Conner, Chris Lowell as Jonathan Fielder, Missy Peregrym ("Catwoman") as Jackie Bradford, Kelly Osbourne ("The Osbournes") as Deborah Tynan, D.B. Sweeney ("No Man's Land") as Michael Whitman, Lisa Darr ("Popular") as Annie Whitman, Marguerite Moreau ("Runaway Jury") as Ms. Monica Young and Jessica Lucas ("Seven Days") as Sue Miller.

"Pilot" was written by Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah and directed by Michael Engler.


"life as we know it" is created by Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah (both of "Freaks and Geeks" and "Just Shoot Me"), who are executive producers together with Stuart Bloomberg. The one-hour drama is from Sachs-Judah Productions and (ca)bloom! in association with Touchstone Television.




NOTE:
ABC's cable outlet, ABC Family Channel will have two encore presentations of the pilot episode on Saturday, October 9 and Sunday, October 10 at 11 p.m. ET/PT on both nights.

[barwars]

It sounds good, but Kelly Osbourne may have just killed it for me.

[vashti1999]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
This so-called 'Life' is a teenage retread by David Bianculli

One and a half stars out of four

Life as we know it. Tonight at 9, ABC

Networks have such short institutional memories these days, some of them can't remember how to make TV shows like they used to - even when they're aiming to make exact copies of previous successes.

Take, for example, ABC's new "Life as We Know It," a limp echo of the same network's coming-of-age dramatic triumph "My So-Called Life."

"Life as We Know It" creators Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah wrote for both "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared."

So it makes sense that the one character in this series who rings true is a defiant outsider: punkish and plumpish Deborah, played with vulnerability by rock-star offspring Kelly Osbourne.

The rest of the show, though, feels like a cross between a Hollywood writing assignment ("Write a version of 'The O.C.' in 80 pages or less, and don't forget to use a carnival as a backdrop like that show did") and a preachy "ABC Afterschool Special: The Next Generation."

Actually, "Life as We Know It" - the network spells the title with no capital letters, a gimmick that I ignore, and that has grown old fast - is based on the novel "Doing It," by Melvin Burgess.

Burgess shares the blame, at least in the framework, which follows three oversexed high school buddies as they pursue various classmates and teachers, and, in one case, witness the extramarital antics of a parent.

Dino (Sean Faris) is the Tom Cruise-y type, who's smooth with his young lady friends, but focused on one virginal girlfriend in particular: Jackie (Missy Peregrym), who resists his aggressive advances. Jonathan (Chris Lowell) really likes Osbourne's Deborah, but keeps his distance because of what his friends might think.

And Ben (Jon Foster), a bright young man who claims to think about sex "every five seconds," is, in the vernacular of an '80s rock video, hot for teacher.

The teacher, Ms. Young, is played by Marguerite Moreau, so it's a perfectly understandable obsession.

Understandable - but, like so much in this hour-long drama, not even remotely believable. Before the hour is up, Ben and his teacher share more than one teasingly erotic moment; Dino gets the assent for a big night with his girlfriend, only to be distracted by troubling news on the home front, and Jonathan and Deborah decide to commit, with lines of dialogue so trite, they're closer to parody than reality.

"Maybe I'm not as thin as Jackie," Deborah tells Jonathan, "but I have feelings, too."

And Jonathan, confiding his inner thoughts to the TV audience in the same look-in-the-camera soliloquy style as his two buddies, shouts proudly, "So what if she's big? I like big!"

Even with such syrupy dialogue, Osbourne escapes getting all sticky and icky - because she actually emotes here, while most of her co-stars content themselves with going through the WB-style poster boy and poster girl motions - and emotions. And the one subplot that feels real, in which a parental affair is discovered (D.B. Sweeney, who plays Dino's dad, is not the perpetrator), is betrayed by a false-note ending that concludes the episode.

It also concludes any interest I have in seeing a second installment of "Life as We Know It" - the presence of Osbourne and Moreau notwithstanding.

[barwars]

Although the show isn't half over, I don't like it already.
Not my cup of tea.... definately ABC's worst new drama.

[spunkygirl]

The new tvguide gave this a scathing review, tvguide hated it

[barwars]

Originally posted by Angela Micelli
The new tvguide gave this a scathing review, tvguide hated it

I watched the complete episode and agree with tvguide.... I hated it.

[Dean Winchester]

could ABC possibly have been any later in cashing in on the Osbournes phenomenon?

[vashti1999]

I recorded it, so I'll be watching either today or tomorrow. This was the new show i was looking forward to most just because people mentioned My So Called Life and Freaks and Geeks when talking about it. But now, I'm hearing nothing but bad things about it.

[Pavan]

Originally posted by Angela Micelli
The new tvguide gave this a scathing review, tvguide hated it

Huh? TV Guide's Fall Preview (a few weeks back) I think gave this show a "TV Guide Favorite" review. Lost and Desperate Housewives also had that.

Well, I was watching the baseball game, but I did watch the show on commercials. It looked interesting. I'm sure teenage boys and girls would love watching this. Viewers for teenagers would be the best for this show (so that exculdes me, lol). I don't think I'll tune-in every week, Lost and Desperate Housewives are the only new dramas that will make me tune in every week.

[barwars]

Originally posted by pavanbadal
Well, I was watching the baseball game, but I did watch the show on commercials. It looked interesting. I'm sure teenage boys and girls would love watching this. Viewers for teenagers would be the best for this show (so that exculdes me, lol). I don't think I'll tune-in every week, Lost and Desperate Housewives are the only new dramas that will make me tune in every week.

Because for the most part, the majority of teenagers watch trash.

[vashti1999]

Originally posted by pavanbadal
Huh? TV Guide's Fall Preview (a few weeks back) I think gave this show a "TV Guide Favorite" review. Lost and Desperate Housewives also had that.

No, I don't remember exactly what it said, but it definitely wasn't a favorable mention in the Fall Preview TVGuide. I don't think LAWKI had the TVGuide Favorite stamp of approval.

Originally posted by barwars
Because for the most part, the majority of teenagers watch trash.

Me too. I love shows aimed at teenagers, so unless it sucks worse than anything ever sucked before, I'll probably continue to watch.

[barwars]

Originally posted by vashti1999
Me too. I love shows aimed at teenagers, so unless it sucks worse than anything ever sucked before, I'll probably continue to watch.

hahaha
there's trash.... and then there's trash.

[spunkygirl]

Originally posted by pavanbadal
Huh? TV Guide's Fall Preview (a few weeks back) I think gave this show a "TV Guide Favorite" review. Lost and Desperate Housewives also had that.

Well, I was watching the baseball game, but I did watch the show on commercials. It looked interesting. I'm sure teenage boys and girls would love watching this. Viewers for teenagers would be the best for this show (so that exculdes me, lol). I don't think I'll tune-in every week, Lost and Desperate Housewives are the only new dramas that will make me tune in every week.

It was in the roush review on page 24.

DOWN BOYS!
In Life, high school is one big sex-education class

If ABC is serious in insisting that LIFE AS WE KNOW IT has more than carnal knowledge on it's mind, then why do I keep seeing posters with the coy phrase ENTERING VIRGIN TERRITORY to sell the show's relentless obsession with sex?

This is Dawson's Love Canal, or Mind of the Obsessive Horndog, as sweaty and anxious in it's depiction of male adolescent cravings as it is trite and predictable in it's gooey soap opera.

Some will think it offensive. Those who actually watch-probably not alot, given the competition is CSI and THE APPRENTICE-may just find it tiresome.

It's as if ABC, still smarting after bailing too soon on MY SO CALLED LIFE 10 years ago, is masquerading as WB. Not the smart, sophisticated WB or GILMORE GIRLS and FELICITY, but the smarmy, superficially slick WB of ONE TREE HILL.

By the second episode, when sexually insecure Jonathan fears he has "penis cancer" your remote control trigger finger may hit MUTE each time one of the boys delivers a tortured soliloquy ino the camera as the world stops around him.

True, teens are notoriously self-absorbed, but LIFE would be more enjoyable if these kids actually had a life.

**************

It may not be tvguide but that was scathing IMO

[vashti1999]

In TVGuide's Fall Preview Issue, LAWKI wasn't picked as one of their favorites. The last two paragraphs:

WE SAY: The opening minutes are so obnoxious we almost tuned out. But Life grows on you, even though some twists are cribbed from the Dawson's Creek playbook.

THE OUTLOOK: An uphill climb, but ABC still regrets axing My So-Called Life, which aired on Thursdays (gulp) 10 years ago.

[Chelsea]

The Ratings...Oh man...This is bad, I've seen more than a few cable shows do better than this

households: 3.2/5, #12 night
adults 18-49: 1.8, #T10 night
5th In Timeslot (CSI, The Apprentice, MLB Baseball, WWE Smackdown, then life)

ABC should consider a timeslot move, preferably away from CSI. While I don't think the series can approach Lost/Desperate Housewives Numbers, or even those of Boston Legal, I think it could get into the 6/7 range in a better, Non-CSI/Apprentice slot. But, a 3.2/5 is just ridiculous.