Ringer: I'm the Good Twin (1.22)

It had become more and more apparent over the last couple of weeks that Bridget and Siobhan were never going to meet in time for the finale. You can understand the logic. I assume the writers had thought we'd be so wrapped up in the Bodaway/Catherine stories that we wouldn't care all that much if our dueling protagonists ever had that elusive reunion. But, along with everything else on this show, things obviously didn't work out the way they had intended. This was a strange finale -- sort of drab and uninteresting, despite several half-resolutions to a couple of long-running stories. It also had one of the most flat endings I've ever seen. Even if a second season was guaranteed, that sure wasn't much of a cliffhanger.

Bridget's surrogate family was the one and only storyline that worked on an emotional level this year, something that was romantic and hopeful while craftily undermined by the lies that made up the foundation of the Martin household. To that effect, the revelations about Bridget's identity were the only truly affecting story on offer here: Andrew was devastated and threw her out of the apartment, and Juliet told her that she was worse than her mom. You know, the mom that developed fake rape schemes and tried to murder them all last week. Andrew's reaction was understandable, Bridget's lies hurting him on a deeply personal level, but it was sad to see Juliet abandon her like her father. I liked the budding relationship between Bridget and Juliet, and you would have thought the similarly flawed Juliet would forgive her for an elaborate charade.

The Bodaway Macawi story appropriately suffered from the same problems that killed this story right back at the start of the year. There was never any personality there, no real charisma -- just an absurdly-named caricature of a strip club gangster. It came as no surprise that this episode turned him into a speechless Michael Myers clone with a big knife. At least Catherine, in all her contrived glory, had a sparkle of personality that made last week's nutty siege hour so much fun. This subplot had always been weirdly uninteresting, no matter how much stock Bodaway apparently held in the Ringer universe.

Finally, there was that ending. Bridget found out that her sister is alive but, true to form, only after the truth was literally handed to her by somebody else. Oblivious to the end, that girl. But, man, can we address how flat her reaction was? She just read as really pissed, not somebody who's just discovered that she was involved in a lengthy fake-out contrived by her twin sister, the pawn in an elaborate game where she was victimized and tossed around like a puppet. No abject devastation, no shocked betrayal, no Emily Thorne-style declaration of "revenge!!" -- just a little mad. Ugh.

And then the credits rolled.

Ringer has never been a strong show. There were definitely moments when things perked up, but the far majority of the season was elusive vagueness disguised as mystery. Stories were dragged out so much that the already bland characters appeared stupider and stupider, and the show became so wrapped up in unexciting business dealings and Ponzi schemes that the original premise of the series seemed like a distant memory. Bridget was always a passive protagonist being chauffeured around to various red herrings, attached to her cell-phone like a fat kid to a candy bar. The writers always seemed to struggle with Siobhan, too, scared to make her a larger presence on the series while failing to give her much dimension on her own. The rest of the cast seemed to drift through personalities depending on the storyline.

It was a show that was all plot and little character. We barely knew any of these people, the writers allowing little time to contextualize the relationships or the foundations of so much resentment and anguish. They were always ciphers, leaving you wondering where they would go from here even if the show were to be inexplicably renewed. Siobhan's existence is public knowledge, Bodaway is dead, Machado's demons have been put to rest, Andrew and Juliet are angry, and Henry remains just as invisible as he's always been. Cliffhangers and shocking twists can entertain for five minutes, but can't sustain a long-running series. You need characters that inspire some sort of emotion, not dull chess-pieces with little discernible personality. And that's what Ringer was. Mostly bland, only passable when things perked up.

In the end, Ringer will be nothing but a footnote in Sarah Michelle Gellar's career, this wonderful, admired actress hopefully finding a vehicle that better utilizes her talents instead of surpressing them. I'm sure, in five years, that all we'll remember of Ringer will be that boat scene in the pilot. Wonky, distracting, shamelessly contrived -- maybe we should have considered it a sign? C

Credits
Guest stars Zoey Deutch (Juliet Martin); Madchen Amick (Greer Sheridan); Sean Patrick Thomas (Solomon Vessida); Gregory Harrison (Tim Arbogast); Billy Miller (John Delario); Darren Pettie (Jimmy Kemper); Nikki Deloach (Shaylene Briggs); Brian Hallisay (Agent Pettibone); Vanessa Bell Calloway (Agent Berens); Zahn McClarnon (Bodaway Macawi)
Writers Eric Charmelo, Nicole Snyder Director Eriq La Salle