June 17, 2008

RIP Men in Trees

I am still so angry at ABC for its treatment of Men in Trees. The show never got a chance to find an audience because it was moved so many times and was given some stupidly long hiatuses. They didn't even let the show end during the regular TV season so many people, even fans, probably just thought it was gone.

I always loved the show. It was so quirky and adorable and starred Anne Heche as a relationship writer/coach who wound up in Elmo, Alaska after her engagement blew up. The characters on that show were as original as any I have ever seen on TV from the woman (Suleka Mathew) who became a prostitute to support her son, to book editor and die-hard New Yorker Jane (Seana Kofoed) who fell in love with "plow guy." The best, most unexpected moment on TV this season was at Jane's wedding to Sam (the plow guy) when her parents turned out to be midgets. Brilliant TV.

But the heart of the show was always the commentaries by Marin played by Anne Heche that asked great questions about life and love. In tribute to the show and in tribute to Jenny Bicks the show's creator (who also wrote for Sex and the City and the screenplay for one of my favorite teen dramas What a Girl Wants) here is Marin's final commentary from last week's episode which focused on relationships and money.

We are the daughters of the feminist movement taught from an early age that nothing can stop us, that we can rise as high and achieve as much as any man. And in some ways that's true that we have taken great strides stepping over traditional gender roles and going after and getting exactly what we want. But part of being powerful is knowing when to take the back seat and look at life from another perspective. Cause the thing is in a relationship there is no CEO -- it's a delicate dance, a push and pull, a back and forth, an up and down. But we endure because at the end of the day we don't want to go it alone and when we find someone, a partner, we compromise loving everything we can and putting blinders onto everything else because love isn't perfect, but it's the really great imperfect love that keeps us evolving, happy and in the end isn't that what life's all about?
Thanks for too short a run. I'll miss this show a lot.