The Two Subversive Turns in Ringer

The only television show that started this past fall that I continue to watch is Ringer, a thriller starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. The show has many flaws, but I like the touching way it subverts its own subversive noir sensibilities.

Ringer is about Bridget, a recovering drug addict and ex-stripper who witnessed a mafia hit. Afraid for her life, she ditches police protection and reaches out to her twin sister Siobhan. Siobhan appears to live a charmed existence, but then she disappears, apparently committing suicide. Bridget takes her sister’s place only to find out that Siobhan's life wasn’t so great after all. She was barely on speaking terms with her husband, her daughter is in a rebellious phase that includes late nights of booze and drugs, she was sleeping with her best friend’s husband, and someone was trying to kill her.

The show’s creators, Eric Charmelo and Nicole Snyder have envisioned a noir drama with all the intrigue:  mysterious deaths, extramarital liaisons, secret identities, double-dealings, police inquiries and abductions. It reminds me of the sort of thing Orson Welles would have loved, like The Third Man or Mr. Arkadin. What I have always liked about noir is the way it subverts the view that society is innocent and orderly in favor of the sordid acts and dark desires that are always there beneath the surface.

Ringer does more than that, however, by subverting its own subversion. No sooner does Bridget step into her sister’s life than she begins to set it right, ending Siobhan's affair and becoming a loving wife and mother. Meanwhile, the only one who knows she is really Bridget is her old sponsor from Narcotics Anonymous. Monogamous love. Familial harmony. Responsible parenting. Self-improvement. At times the script is like a moral manual to the dominant modern American values.

But this is where Ringer is at its best. The characters grow, which gives the show the potential to go somewhere when most television shows are populated with static characters who are doomed to be the same week after week, just in different situations.

Ringer’s execution is uneven, but its vision of light and dark so tumultuous that it's hard to tell where it comes down, on the spic-n-span world we are supposed to believe in or the world eating it from underneath--the superego or the id--is intriguing.