Life Unexpected

Season 1 - 60% - When a family relationship drama appears somewhere, narrated at a calm pace, I cannot miss it. That's why I was ecstatic after the first episodes of Life Unexpected, thinking I had found a new classic, but later on, my enthusiasm significantly decreased and towards the end of the season it almost turned into apathy. And it's a huge shame, because I genuinely like all the main characters without exception. However, just as much as I can root for them, I shake my head at their strange behavior in every other episode, which doesn't fit with their previous actions at all and sometimes works as an unnecessary plot twist. So even though Shiri Appleby looks incredible even ten years after Roswell, I still don't know exactly what to think. Hopefully, the second season will come up with some clever twist or idea that will lift the plot from its sleepy mediocrity. Season 2 - 80% - It was worth the wait. It took a little while, but then the creators decided - and started writing LUX as a milder version of One Tree Hill (and for those who didn't get it from basketball, they even wrote a crossover). From that moment on, it's hard not to watch the fourth episode after just watching three, and I consider the characters to be really cool despite their ongoing flaws in behavior. Clearly, the biggest asset are the relationships. Gone are the subtle bonds that I mostly don't care about, and finally, situations come where I have to passionately root for one or the other couple. The writers even had the courage to extensively develop the relationship between Lux and Eric, a small unnoticed taboo that most teenage series don't forget to touch upon, but rarely does it become anything other than a dead-end. It is precisely this pleasantly nerve-racking line of forbidden love that will stay in my head from the series forever. At least until the absolute end... Spoilerish P.S. to the series finale: The team that wrote the last episode apparently decided that there was no point in ending as a pleasant family series (even though that's how I perceived the whole thing throughout two seasons) and literally took a risky stunt with the favor of the audience. I usually support such courage, but here I can only shake my head in disbelief. From the final five minutes, I get the feeling that the whole storyline was planned for three years and when the television network CW put a stop to it during the second year, they simply added an ending to the last episode of the second season, originally intended for the end of the third. This insanely unfortunate decision is to blame for the fact that even though the second season led the series towards a fourth star, I have to back away from it at the very last moment. Rushed endings should not be written according to the fan's wishes from the initial episodes. Otherwise, I simply cannot explain the final pairs that are finally assembled. (2011.12.06)