05 July 2011

I'm Seeing Double! Stories on Twins Invading Television

I've been looking for information on the show, The Ringer, which is supposedly starting this fall. The series is Sarah Michelle Gellar's first...since doing the cult-show, Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Yep, it's SMG's comeback. And if critics are right, it's going to be a strong comeback.


The story is simple and quite familiar, it's actually a trope.

You have two girls...okay --- twins. One is rich and living the good life, and the other is always in trouble. The girls live in separate states and they don't tell people who know them that they're half of a twin. But we have to watch the show in September to find out why that is or what kind of relationship they have.

Anyway, as any thriller would have it, the sister with the better life disappears. This leaves the other sister to assume her twin's identity, hoping she can start her life over.

And then, of course, the  story gets more complicated. The surviving sister, who is now an impostor, finds out her twin's picture-perfect fairy tale life isn't quite what it is.

I'll stop right here and say that it probably is worth a peek when it airs. The show has been chosen by the Critics Awards for Television as one of "8 Most Exciting New Series" to watch. Which is surprising because, this drama-thriller almost didn't make it to Fall Season.  The Ringer was originally planned for airing on CBS. But the network passed on it, and its sister-network (and no they're hardly twins), The CW, took it in.

Does The Ringer sound interesting to you? We have two months or more to find out what actually happens. But,  if you're curious to watch something similar, there's another show about twins that will be starting this August, a whole month before The Ringer's debut. I found out about it, as I was doing my research on TR.

This series is called The Lying Game. And it's also about twin sisters, with one of them dying and the other one assuming her identity.


Unlike The Ringer, however, The Lying Game happens in High School. And the treatment is entirely different, despite the similarities in the synopsis.

Here are the entries about these two shows on Wikipedia ---
Twin sisters Bridget and Siobhan (Gellar) have been at odds and find that their lives are both unraveling at the same rate. Bridget is on the run from the mob and in order to survive she takes over Siobhan's life after she mysteriously disappears. She soon discovers her estranged sister's life isn't as mundane as she had once thought
--- THE RINGER
Emma Paxton has grown up in foster care her entire life, when one night an estranged foster brother shows her a video of a girl that looks strikingly like her being strangled, she investigates and finds out her and a female named Sutton Mercer are identical twins who were separated at birth. So Emma sends a Facebook message to her twin with a response "OMG! Please come to the tuscon canyon. Oh and don`t tell anyone, it could be dangerous! Sutton(aka ur twin) xoxo". But when she escapes her foster mother Claurice, she gets a note saying that Sutton is dead and if she doesn`t pretend to be her, she`s next. As the book follows along Emma`s "Lying game" even Sutton might find out some things she didn`t know about herself...
--- THE LYING GAME

Both series have been based on books, by the way.

The Ringer premieres on The CW, Sept. 13
The Lying Game premieres on ABC Family, Aug. 15.

Which "twin"series will survive the season, I wonder?

And if one of these shows die, will the other show assume its identity? :P