TELEVISION REVIEW
They're dumped and dumperer on 'The Ex List'

BY GLENN GARVIN
ggarvin@MiamiHerald.com
The Ex List, 9-10 p.m. Friday, WFOR-CBS 4
Abandon hope and every drop of testosterone, all ye who enter here. CBS' new comedy-drama The Ex List is a descent to the most profound levels of Chick Flick Hell, where the damned and those with Y chromosomes cry out in agony through all eternity.
Aimed at an underserved television demographic -- Women Aged 18 To 34, Home Without A Date On Friday Night And Cursing The Entire Male Gender As A Result -- The Ex List goes about its male-bashing business with a ruthless glee.
Men are too clingy. Men don't want to commit. Men whine. Men roar. Men want to drink your blood. (You think I'm kidding about that one, don't you? Oh, you poor bastard.) Men don't grow. Men change. Men say they'll write a song about you, and then it turns out to be called Bitch Left Me On My Birthday. This is a Lifetime movie times The View, raised to the power of Oprah, except there's no chance you'll get a free car for watching.
Adapted from the Israeli series Mythological X, The Ex List stars Elizabeth Reaser (Grey's Anatomy) as Bella Bloom, a young florist (get it? get it?) who visits a fortune teller on a lark but stops laughing at the warning she receives: She's already been involved, and broken up, with her soul mate -- and if she doesn't marry him within the year, she'll die single and forlorn.
The episode that follows pretty much sets the template for The Ex List: Bella runs into an old boyfriend that she dumped. (In this case, because he's not enough of a pig: ''He's the most open, loving guy,'' Bella complains. ''All he wants to do is give and share.'') They get back together. It doesn't work out. (Bella: ''I think he's changed!'' Friend: ''Yeah, he's changed into someone who doesn't like you anymore.'') On to the next candidate.
You might think The Ex List's concept would limit its lifespan -- how many ex-boyfriends does a 20-something woman have? -- but Bella seems to have gotten around; I'm guessing we'll have two or three episodes devoted to guys she met while they were giving her penicillin shots down at the clinic.
The casual promiscuity of the lead character is just one of The Ex List's frantic affectations of hipness. The dialogue is studded with so many it's all goods and we're cools and awesomes and shut! up!s that it sounds like a before-and-after commercial for a home lobotomy kit. Though that may be a blessing in disguise; when the conversation turns to what passes for substance on The Ex List, there's waaaay too much discussion of the care and grooming of delicate ladyparts. Vagisil is not a way of life, dude.
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