'Pepper Dennis'
What do you get when you take the plot of Anchorman, shoot it from the point of view of Christina Applegate, set it in Chicago, and take out everything funny? Pepper Dennis.
Pepper Dennis (Rebecca Romijn) is a career minded reporter gunning for the local anchor position. In a move I've seen too many times already, our intrepid heroine hooks up with a random guy at a bar who turns out to be... her new co-worker and he gets the anchor position. What seemed clever and funny in Grey's Anatomy was rendered bland here. Scooby Doo had fresher plot twists. Not a single compelling thing occurred over the next 50 minutes.
I think they were trying to be funny, but I never laughed, even when they had her clumsily trip or bump into things (at least 4 times during the pilot). I guess I just have a hard time believing that someone who has her life so together could lose it all in about a day and a half.
In that same day and a half she supposedly goes from not wanting a guy in her life, to thinking some guy she slept with might be "the one." And then to being mad at him for taking her anchor spot (but still kind of wanting to sleep with him). And then to being annoyed with him for flirting with her at work. And then to being irate at him for exposing her real name on the air (hint: it's not Pepper). And then to thinking he might not be as egocentric as she though, oh wait she changed her mind. And then thinking he might not be so bad because he did one nice thing for her. And then being depressed because she missed her chance with him. Uh huh, yeah, sure. Strong motivated women are always irrational like that.
Although I love Romijn's megawatt smile I really didn't believe many of the emotions she was supposed to be having. She was saying things that could sound happy or upset or angry, but I didn't believe her.
The cast of two dimensional characters surrounding Pepper didn't really help me believe either. I didn't think her love interest Charlie (played by Josh Hopkins) was very cute or charming. They kept trying to play him off as really caring about Pepper but at the same time I was really turned off by how many times he suggested they sleep together (you know, like right now, in the copy room), but she seemed to like him.
I actually liked Pepper's sister Kathy (played by Brooke Burns), who looks pretty similar to Romijn, better than Pepper. The sister was clueless and naive and really looked up to her sister. It was odd, because they were trying to make the character self involved, but she was actually less so than Pepper.
To cap it all off the production was rather schmaltzy. Everything looked a little to clean and sunny to be Chicago. It was more like they had one block of the Gold coast on a really nice day and shot all the footage there. Oh and the melodramatic music during the "emotional" scenes: how many songs can you lay over character dialogue? Too many, in my opinion.
I think my favorite part of the pilot was Pepper's fabulous apartment. The front door was made of copper and pivoted from an axis in the middle. The floors were hardwood. Both the view and the media setup were fantastic. I wished someone cooler lived there.