A Swing. . . And a Miss!

Summer, for the avid television viewer, can be a desert of boredom and frustration, a seemingly endless parade of reruns and new disappointments. Fall can never come fast enough. But there are those shows that appear on the horizon like a shimmery oasis, a lush promise of 30 to 60 minutes of entertainment. Swingtown beckoned my inner voyeur, promising not just scintillation, but humor and wit as well.

But alas, it was no oasis, only a mirage. Swingtown mostly just creeped me out. The main swingers on the block, Tom Decker (Grant Show) and his wife Trina Decker (Lana Parrilla) seem more like sexual predators than a couple looking for some fun. The show opens with a threesome involving the Deckers and a klutzy young stewardess but before she’s even left the house, Mrs. Decker is already spying on the new neighbors and planning to put the moves on them.

The characters all felt flat to me: the calculating, over-sexed swingers, their innocent neighbors just waiting to be “educated,” the prude, the cokehead with a controlling husband and of course, all their children. Adolescent boys sneaking peeks at stolen copies of Penthouse, the dreamy high school girl waiting to be deflowered, all of them in the throes of sexual awakening . . . snore.

I have to say, I was bored. We’ve seen these themes and these characters before, and the bell-bottoms, huge sunglasses, and kitschy 70s décor weren’t enough to make it work. The show failed to explore the inevitable awkwardness and hilarity of its premise, leaving viewers with a gimmicky show lacking the kind of humanity that keeps us glued to the screen. Not to harsh your buzz.