Previewing Hindsight

I always enjoy whenever Laura Ramsey ever pops up on screen. No not because she is a good actress and though she is attracted she is not cut off your left leg just to spend time with her attractive. No, I always smile whenever I come across her is that I am reminded of one of the great lost cinematic gems of the millennium: The Real Cancun. For those that have forgotten, after creating the reality television show craze, the producers of The Real World decided to make a feature length film based on the same concept on the big screen. Of course a reality movie is just a documentary and The Real Cancun made about what other documentaries made: about a buck and a half despite ten times the budget.

Sadly for the cast of The Real Cancun, they did not get an invite to The Challenge or even make a living on the bar circuit like other reality also-rans do, they all just went back to the real real world. Laura Ramsey was the one exception showing up in the occasion in the types of movies that usually populate the second and third tier premium channel for a couple months and even got to bang Don Draper, but then again, what actress in Hollywood not hooked up with Don Draper?

So when VH1 started running ads hyping a new show Hindsight starring Laura set in the nineties (which even the National Geographic Channel considered the last great decade) I was all in from the first notes of The Sign. I may even dig out thee VCR to tape the episodes. Yeah VH1 may seem like a weird fit for a nineties retro show considering in the last decade it has morphed into the all WAGs channel (for those not up with British tabloid slag, it stands for “wives and girlfriend” who are basically the talentless socialite of England) bit this is also the channel that gave us I Love the 90’s. There is an entertaining montage in the first episode with Laura rediscovering all the great nineties fashions which Michael Ian Black and company all waxed poetic on. Oh way did hot chicks in overalls go out of fashion?

Sure recent period shows that most everyone who is watching lived through can be tricky. When done right, like Everybody Hates Chris they can be the best shows on television, but when the writers get too cut, like the cell phone scene on That 80’s Show or when one of the guys on Reunion predicted the other guy in Wham! would be more successful than George Michael, the show will be one and done.

But Hindsight is not you typical period television show, it is technically a time traveling show which starts off in present day on the eve of Ramsey’s second wedding day before she wakes up on her wedding day except this is her first back to 1995. There is not wish to go back or a magical amulet, just what may or may not be some mystical black Buddhist.

It is a good thing the show went back to the nineties because the present day stuff is extremely boring with Ramsey whining in voice over the whole time about being a failure (again, she is not the greatest actress in the world and having her narrate the show may not have been the best idea, Kristen Bell she is not). Really you could skip the first fifteen minutes and not miss anything.

Now back in the nineties, Ramsey has to decide to go through with marrying the passionate long-haired British dude that she know will fail within a decade or just go straight to her boring but safe fallback choice who she ends up marrying in present day anyway. Or maybe there is a third yet to be determined option, maybe the possibly mystical black Buddhist.

Okay, Hindsight is not a great show, but what it lacks in good acting it makes up for in a great soundtrack. Do not pretend you did not smile when you heard Ace of Base in the series trailer for the first time in maybe a decade and a half (well, the non a capella version). Seriously, when was the last time you heard U2’s Numb? Throw in Biggie during a sex scene, The Cranberries during an introspective scene, and the Spin Doctors at a party and the show starts becoming watchable. If there is not a Spotify playlist by the premiere the VH1 marketing department has massively failed. I know it is just the second week in January, but I am ready to declare Hindsight the Guiltiest Guilty Pleasure of 2015.

Hindsight airs Wednesdays at 10:00 on VH1.