Thanks to Hulu's incessant advertising, I was suckered into watching the premiere season of 'Ringer' this year. It looked interesting enough, and the CW didn't have enough shows about the one percent, so naturally I had to see what the show was all about.
If you are fortunate enough to have never seen an episode of this show, allow me to explain. Ringer stars Sarah Michelle Gellar as a pair of twins — the technology isn't advanced enough to show both of them in the same shot, though — who have been estranged for more than five years.
The first sister, Siobhan Martin, lives a cushy life as a stay at home mom on the Upper East Side with a husband and stepdaughter whom she doesn't love. First world problems! The other sister, Bridget Kelly, is a stripper struggling to make ends meet in Wyoming. In the first episode, the two take a vacation on Martin's boat, where she fakes her own suicide and vanishes without a trace.
At the time of the vacation, Kelly is scheduled to testify for the murder of a fellow stripper but is afraid if she does she'll be murdered as well. So she takes Martin's ID and wallet and returns to New York, managing to convince Martin's family and friends that she is her sister. Through the entire season, she does not figure out that Martin is still alive.
As implausible as this plot may sound, it only gets worse from here. Kelly's AA sponsor follows her to New York and manages to get a job at Martin's husband's law firm. The head of the firm's European operations division is conveniently murdered when Kelly and Martin separately discover that the firm has been hosting an elaborate Ponzi scheme before their very eyes. Martin's best friend, who figured out that Kelly was posing as her sister, is conveniently murdered early in the season as well.
This isn't the first time the CW has used death to escape a complicated plot — on the current season of Gossip Girl, Blair Waldorf handily lost her pregnancy in a car crash when the writers needed to get her fiancee out of the picture. But in the last few episodes, the CW has taken the Gossip Girl similarities even farther, with a mother manipulating her daughter in order to gain access to her trust fund.
And that's still not the worst part. But let's back up and explore the background of this trust fund story.
Since about halfway through the season, Juliet Martin, the real Siobhan's stepdaughter, has become more and more of a prominent character. Perhaps the CW wants to appeal to a high school demographic, since Juliet is 16. The audience quickly learns that Juliet is a party girl who's been kicked out of almost every private school in New York.
When Juliet arrives at the local public school, she's instantly smitten with one of her teachers, an attractive young male named Mr. Carpenter. After she flirts with him during a detention session, an episode ends with her crying to a friend that Carpenter forced her to have sex with him.
A few episodes later, pseudo-Siobhan finds out that Juliet's been raped and punches Carpenter at a faculty dinner that luckily happens to be at the Martins' home. Shortly thereafter, Juliet's actual mother arrives at the Martin home, where they create a legal case against Carpenter.
After the episode in which the trial takes place, we see a conversation between Juliet and her mother and it becomes apparent that the mother teamed up with Carpenter to convince Juliet to "cry assault" so that her father will be forced to give Carpenter a settlement, which will be divided between him and the mother and another student whom they've convinced to lie about assault as well. This way, the mother will have a few million to live off while she waits for Juliet to come of age so that she can access her trust fund.
The CW prides itself on controversy, but a faux rape is tasteless even for this channel.
If Ringer's target audience is young women in high school and college, chances are good that many viewers will know someone who has been affected by sexual violence. And chances are also good that if that person had the courage to speak up about their experience, at least some of the people in their lives did not immediately believe them.
Sexual violence is an issue that should be taken seriously, because it can affect victims for the rest of their lives. The CW sets an awful example by showing an instance in which a young woman fakes an incident of rape. Many victims of sexual assault are accused of lying to get money or other rewards.
By showing a case in which someone is actually lying, Ringer subtly tells its viewers that it's reasonable to be skeptical when someone says they've been sexually assaulted. This is an awful message to send to anyone, especially young women whose friends may confide in them about instances in their lives.
Ringer has transformed from a semi-interesting thriller into an even worse than normal teen drama, and a show that promotes cynicism towards rape victims does not deserve to be on air.
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