FINDING CARTER: Tuesday 10PM on MTV
FINDING CARTER was one of last year’s genuine surprises. Showing up on MTV, of all places, it rose past its contrived premise–teen Carter (Kathryn Prescott) finds out that Lori (Milena Govich), the mother she’s grown up with, is actually the woman who kidnapped her as a child, and is returned to mother Elizabeth (Cynthia Watrous), father David (Alexis Denisof), twin sister Taylor (Anna Jacoby-Heron) and brother Grant (Zac Pullam) who are strangers to her–to be an absorbing tale about identity and the meaning of family. It had complicated characters and excellent acting, and although the ratings weren’t particularly strong, the show won enough acclaim and fans in the network’s target demos to survive.
Picking up where last season’s finale had left off (notwithstanding the fact that Grant seemed to have grown several inches in the hours that had supposedly passed), tonight’s Season 2 premiere, written by Executive Producer Emily Whitesell and directed by Jennifer Lynch, was mostly occupied with resolving cliffhangers. Before the first commercial break, the episode had reunited Taylor with sensitive mensch Max (Alex Saxon), Carter’s friend from her time with Lori who’d come to be with Carter after Carter was moved back home, then become Taylor’s first love before breaking up with her at the end of last season. And although last season had ended with Lori drugging and re-kidnapping Carter, by the episode’s end, Lori was behind bars after a tense confrontation between the show’s women, and Carter was once again back with her family. We were supplied with a key piece of Finding Carter mythology, as Lori revealed that she was the egg donor who had made both Carter and Taylor’s births possible, which explained her continuing obsession with Carter, but since the series needs new fuel for storylines, she also dropped the broad suggestion that there’s more to be discovered, laying undisclosed blame on Carter’s untrustworthy writer father, who is no doubt guilty of something.
All of this heavy plotting didn’t allow much room for Finding Carter to do what it actually does best, which is allowing its characters to breathe and be their difficult selves. It was only in the episode’s last few minutes, in some scenes between Taylor and her sister and with Max, that the show’s delicate touch was evident.
Finding Carter had its weaknesses in Season 1, especially when it tried to be a more conventional teen melodrama and leaned on Carter’s relationships with her friends Bird (Vanessa Morgan), Gabe (Jesse Henderson), Ofe (Jesse Carere) and Kyle (Eddie Matos)–all of whom were only briefly present in the premiere–and her rather predictible bad boy boyfriend Crash (Caleb Ruminer). It remains to be seen whether this season will handle those characters better, and whether the show intends to move in new directions with the threat from Lori presumably under at least temporary control.
The show is gifted with some remarkable acting from Prescott, Watrous and Jacoby-Heron, and when it sticks to the core of those three, it rarely goes wrong. While tonight’s premiere was inconclusive about Finding Carter‘s Season 2 intentions, the series has plenty of potential on which to build.
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