Spinning off on spin-offs

Spin-offs of successful shows look like relatively dependable bets, from a network planning standpoint:  they appeal to similar audiences as the original, and tell new stories in a familiar universe.  One might reasonably presume this  provides a built-in audience for at least moderate success.   It makes sense:  to the extent that television is supposed to be comforting, there's a lot to be said for the comfort of a familiar story setting.  It's good to feel like you know the rules of the fictional world, especially when the real one so often seems unpredictable.

Still, spin-offs seldom surpass their parents.  There have, of course, been quite a few notable spin-off successes.  But setting aside franchises like JAG/NCIS, Law & Order, Dr. Who, CSI, Stargate, and Star Trek, there aren’t too many really memorable ones.  Angel (from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer), Private Practice (from Grey’s Anatomy), Boston Legal (from The Practice)…the truth is that for every Xena: Warrior Princess (from Hercules) and Frasier (from Cheers), there are a dozen Joeys and AfterM.A.S.H.es.   The moral, I suppose, is that as dependable as spin-offs seem, they have to walk a thin line.  They can’t last for long if they don’t provide something beyond a copy of their originals--and yet they become untethered and uninteresting if they diverge too far from the formulas and moods that made their predecessors work.  

So how do this season’s spin-offs fare?

                                                                                                                                                                         

The Originals (CW, new.  Supernatural drama.)

Watched: Pilot

Premise: Thousand-year-old “original” vampires return to New Orleans to deal with a power struggle among the city’s supernatural population.

Promise:  The show is a spin-off from the Vampire Diaries, which may explain the way it feels like being dropped into the middle of a world whose rules can only be explained through exposition.  But it doesn’t explain why that exposition is so stilted and clunky.  The show is, like its progenitor, soapy and overtly flirtatious.  Its characters are, like their kin, selfish, manipulative, and for the most part, unsympathetic.  And overall, from what I can tell, it doesn’t do much to distinguish itself from its parent show—it tells the same sort of story, just in a different part of the country.  That recipe has, of course, worked for CSI and NCIS, but both of them already have such powerful procedural story engines that they can tell a nearly infinite number of similar stories.  Perhaps the same is true The Vampire Diaries—the world will never run out of stilted, soapy, power-struggle drama.  But if that’s not your thing (and it’s not mine), this show won’t be either.    

Verdict:  Worth trying if you like the Vampire Diaries or other similarly soapy dramas.  Otherwise, I’d give it a miss.

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (ABC, new.  Fantasy/adventure/romance/magical realism.)

Watched: Pilot

Premise:  Alice breaks out of a mental institution and returns to Wonderland as an adult to find and reunite with her imprisoned true love.

Promise: The show is a spin-off from Once Upon a Time, and shares much the same fairy-tale-inspired sense of moral absolutism and adventure.  Also like its forbear, it features a strong, if somewhat irrational, female lead—this one inspired by true love, as opposed to maternal instinct—who persists against all odds to vindicate her goals.  It exists in the same universe as its parent show, but doesn’t have a lot of story overlap, which means it has to provide its own story engine.  Which it does, to a point.  “True Love Conquers All” isn’t a particularly new story, but it’s a classic for a reason.  It’s also a story and setting that, at any time, can veer toward the silly, the sappy, or the dark.  This iteration (to my mind) veers too often toward silly or sappy, and not often enough toward dark, but on the other hand, its tone-straddling stance means it has something to offer multiple audiences.  It’ll be interesting to see where it settles out tonally, if it does.

Verdict:  I find it a bit hard to see how the show will sustain a full season’s worth of story—there are only so many obstacles one can place in the way of true love before the whole endeavor starts wearing thin—but there’s enough likeable independent material that I’ll stick with it, at least for a while.

On the DVR:  Lucky 7 (canceled), Masters of Sex, Betrayal, Hello Ladies, Super Fun Night, Sean Saves the World, Witches of East End.