Fall TV Preview: Ringer

Sarah Michelle Geller and Ioan Gruffudd Getting come old within the pre-VCR/DVD/Digital recording device era, I've got a soft place for that kind of glossy B-movie melodramas that was previously a standard feature of local channels. Movies like Dead Ringer, a '60s potboiler starring Bette Davis like a lady who gets control her identical twin's identity. Any resemblance towards the CW's Ringer might not be intentional, however it predisposes me in the future along for that convoluted ride. (Evaluations towards the twin-changing shenanigans at ABC Family's The Laying Game will also be inevitable, but this can be a a lot more clearly defined mystery thriller, and it is targeted in a a little more mature and complicated audience. It had been produced for CBS, surprisingly.) Want more fall TV news? Sign up for TV Guide Magazine now! The large news in Ringer may be the return of Sarah Michelle Gellar, immortalized as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to everything about the weblet. Within this enjoyable dual role, she reaches run the lady-in-peril gamut from scrappy waif to glamorous ice full, playing estranged twins who reunite red carpet years apart. It's obvious from the beginning that we are meant to root for Bridget, a recuperating addict and former exotic dancer who flees Wyoming using the FBI (and agent Nestor Carbonell) on her behalf tail, because the imperiled only witness to some murder. Her sister, Siobhan, married well and lives in metropolitan Manhattan luxury, though her tightly wound persona signals there's trouble in paradise. We obtain a pleasant wry Buffy vibe within the moment when Bridget inspections out Siobhan's digs and remarks, "It appears much like the house - except not whatsoever." But soon, this house of mirrors (a recurring symbolic motif of duality) turns into a topsy-turvy funhouse of risky secrets when Siobhan all of a sudden vanishes - mid-boat ride, a scene notable because of its Hitchcockian artificiality - and Bridget, presuming she's dead, steps into her sister's pumps. The masquerade is partially possible because Siobhan never told anybody she'd a sister: not her aloof husband (Ioan Gruffudd), not her exacerbated stepdaughter, not her insistent and hiding admirer (Kristoffer Polaha). The first fun of Ringer originates from watching Bridget walk on designer eggshells, trying to puzzle out this mystery of her new identity. "Siobhan, what have you do?" Bridget laments (right into a mirror, obviously) after unraveling another secret about why her sister's existence seems to become this type of miserable mess. Also potentially harmful. The very first episode opens and shuts about the cliffhanger of Bridget-as-Siobhan being stalked by an unseen menace, but which sister may be the actual target? As lengthy as Ringer keeps us asking them questions such as this, and Gellar keeps us involved in the luxurious and twisted sister act, we are more than pleased to become subjected to the romantic-suspense wringer. Ringer airs Tuesdays, 9/8c, about the CW Sign up for TV Guide Magazine now!