Newest ABC Family shows strictly for the big kids

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Today's cover story deals with a couple of new shows on ABC Family Channel.

Warning: Despite the name, they are not for the entire family. The evolution of cable television has led to a landscape full of misleading labels.

Examples? TLC (the network formerly known as The Learning Channel) has such "educational" shows as Sex Sent Me to the ER, Alaskan Women Looking for Love and Buying Naked.

And what do we "learn" from Here Comes Honey Boo Boo?

A&E began life as the Arts & Entertainment Network. What constitutes the arts and/or entertainment is always highly subjective, but A&E programs include Storage Wars, Duck Dynasty, Longmire, Bates Motel, Hoarders and Gene Simmons' Family Jewels.

Which brings us to ABC Family -- a channel that long ago dropped any pretense of appealing to the entire family. Here's the history.

The "Family" part of the name is a holdover from the early days (1977) when the channel was owned by televangelist Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network and went by CBN Satellite Service.

That morphed in 1988 to The CBN Family Channel, and simply The Family Channel in 1990. It was sold to Fox in 1998 and became The Fox Family Channel, which was sold to Disney in 2001 and renamed ABC Family.

Disney wanted to re-purpose it into a hip, cool channel aimed at college kids, but the fine print in the contract stipulated that the word "Family" must remain in the channel name in perpetuity.

Robertson's The 700 Club also has a contractual niche on the schedule and airs several times a week, along with such "hip and cool" shows as Baby Daddy, Chasing Life, Pretty Little Liars and The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

The newer series are aimed at the advertiser-coveted demographic of young women ages 15 to 30, and filled with, as one critic put it, "empowered female characters, sexy bad boys and great-looking shoes."

The Disney/ABC Television Group uses the tagline "ABC Family: A new kind of family," and explains, "ABC Family features programming reflecting today's families, entertaining and connecting with adults through relatable programming about today's relationships -- told with a mix of diversity, passion, humor and heart."

Which brings us to the two new ABC Family series that premiere Wednesday.

Young & Hungry debuts at 7 p.m. It stars former child star Emily Osment and is executive produced by Ashley Tisdale (Sharpay Evans in the High School Musical film series).

Younger viewers will know Osment from her roles in a couple of Spy Kids movies and as Miley's best friend Lilly in Hanna Montana.

At 22, Osment is all grown up and that's evident in the pilot, when her character gets drunk and winds up in bed with her new boss. Never fear, this is basic cable and we never actually see anything all that risque. We join the couple in bed the groggy and guilt-ridden morning after.

Osment plays Gabi Diamond, "a feisty young food blogger," who manages to get herself hired as the personal chef to Josh Kaminski (Jonathan Sadowski), a wealthy young tech entrepreneur.

Broke and desperate, Gabi still has to prove her cooking skills to Josh's gay personal assistant, Elliot (Rex Lee), who prefers to hire (and shamelessly flirts with) a hunky famous chef for the job (guest star, Top Chef Season 6 winner Michael Voltaggio).

When Josh enlists Gabi to prepare a romantic meal for him and his girlfriend so he can propose, the plans go awry. One thing leads to another and, as ABC Family (wink-nudge) puts it, "Gabi finds herself in a very awkward position."

But this is a comedy and Gabi turns the difficult situation around.

Along for comedic zingers (and ethnic diversity and demographic appeal) are Aimee Carrero as Gabi's best friend Sofia, and Kym Whitley as Josh's sassy housekeeper Yolanda.

Mystery Girls follows at 7:30 and stars Tori Spelling and Jennie Garth, who entertained us for a decade as Donna Martin and Kelly Taylor on Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990-2000).

There's even a bit of 90210-esque nostalgia for the good ol' days in the premise of this detective comedy.

Garth, 42, plays Charlie Contour, a busy suburban housewife and mother. And Spelling, 41, portrays Holly Hamilton, who pines for the glory days of the 1990s when she was a TV starlet starring with Charlie in Mystery Girls, "the highest-rated program of the '90s."

Their lives are disrupted when Nick Diaz (Miguel Pinzon) witnesses a crime and, being a Mystery Girls fanatic, will only talk to the formerly famous duo. That means the former co-stars must reunite and put their TV crime-solving skills to the test.

Holly has saved her money and plans to resurrect her old life and use her acting skills and crime "experience" to open a real detective agency in Beverly Hills.

Charlie has no intention of joining in Holly's crazy scheme until she realizes the new venture may help up her cool factor with her daughter.

I'll leave you with a sample "family" joke from the show.

Holly complains, "It's been two weeks and no one calls here except people looking for phone sex."

Nick (answering the office phone): "Hello, Mystery Girl ... Yes, I like a spanking!"

Style on 06/22/2014