Season 6 will be the curtain call for Lifetime’s ditzy little cult favorite, Drop Dead Diva.
The final season of the Freaky Friday-esque legal drama/comedy premieres at 8 p.m. today. It promises “all will be revealed.”
Just to catch you up on the wacky premise, Drop Dead Diva follows the adventures of vapid would-be model Deb, who died in a car crash and appeared at the Pearly Gates.
There, she argued her case to Fred (yes, Fred) the guardian angel gatekeeper that she should be allowed to continue her shallow life back on Earth.
Deb manages to hit the “return” button on the celestial computer, but her soul is accidentally relegated to the body of recently deceased (she’d been shot) Jane Bingum.
The opposite of Deb, Jane is an intelligent, thoughtful and plus-size lawyer. Hardly the model type.
Jane has a loyal assistant, Teri (Margaret Cho), and a best friend, Stacy Barrett, played by April Bowlby. Stacy is the only one (not counting the guardian angels) who knows that Jane is actually Deb reincarnated.
At the law firm, Jane had always lived in the shadow of her Type-A colleagues. Deb, on the other hand, had always relied on her good looks to get by. The series divides its time between Deb/ Jane’s legal cases and her crazy personal life.
It’s Jane’s personal life that makes the series fascinating. By a twist of fate and a dollop of divine intervention, Deb “must come to terms with inhabiting Jane’s full-figured frame and learn to reconcile her beauty queen ways with her brilliant, new mind.”
The series comes from the fertile mind of Josh Berman (Bones, CSI), and stars Brooke Elliott as Jane.
Living her new life, Jane has tried several times to tell Deb’s fiance Grayson (Jackson Hurst) that she’s actually Deb in order to win him back. It’s been five seasons of cat and mouse with these two.
Tonight’s show will be a two-hour event and is rated TV-14 for mature subject matter.
Guest stars are Colin Egglesfield, Virginia Williams and Corbin Bleu. Future guests include Rick Springfield and Jay DeMarcus.
There will be 13 episodes in the final season. This is good news for fans, since the series was canceled briefly last year shortly after a major plot twist that had Jane and Grayson smooching. Lifetime reconsidered and brought it back for a fifth season.
In the Season 5 finale, Grayson was all set to kiss Jane again when the real Jane (inhabiting the body of Brittney, played by Natalie Hall of All My Children) showed up and yelled that Jane should inform Grayson who Jane really is.
Confused? Me, too. All will be sorted out beginning tonight.
Psych finale. Those who’ve read this column the past 20 years know one of my most peevish pet peeves is when networks unceremoniously dump a long-running series and leave fans hanging.
It’s rude, patronizing and callous.
Fortunately for fans of Drop Dead Diva, Lifetime decided to allow the series the wind down on its own. There will be closure.
That wasn’t the case with many, many other series, and especially with A&E’s The Glades. That was a textbook example of a network dissing the fans.
At the end of Season 4, our hero, Jim Longworth, was gunned down by an unknown shooter just prior to getting married to his sweetie, Callie Cargill.
There he is bleeding on the floor - episode ends on a cliffhanger. Then A&E pulls the plug on the entire series. What? Inexcusable.
Well, here’s the good news for Psych fans. Yes, the series ends at 8 p.m. Wednesday, but it ends with one of the best closure episodes I’ve ever seen. More on this in Tuesday’s column.
On a roll. History Channel is at it again. First History had the miniseries success of The Bible and Hatfields & McCoys. Add to that the current lavish presentation of Vikings and History is rapidly becoming a destination channel for quality drama.
What’s next? History is bringing back Bill Paxton, who starred in Hatfields & McCoys alongside Kevin Costner, to play Sam Houston in Texas Rising. The eight hour miniseries will tell the tale of the Texas revolution against Mexico and the rise of the Texas Rangers.
The series, also starring Brendan Fraser and Ray Liotta, is planned for next year.
Program reminders. A&E’s Storage Wars returned for a fifth season last week. Two new episodes air back to back beginning at 8 p.m. Tuesday. Miss a couple? Don’t fret, A&E repeats each episode many times during the week.
Storage Wars episodes are followed at 9 p.m. by a halfhour episode of a new limited series, Barry’d Treasure, featuring quirky Storage Wars veteran Barry Weiss.
Each week, Weiss and his “motley crew of sidekicks” head out to unearth some of the country’s rarest and most fascinating collectibles. Hilarity frequently ensues.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email: [email protected]
Style, Pages 50 on 03/23/2014