ABC Family's ‘Lying Game’ has tired concept, terrible writing

ABC Family added another liar to its lineup – two, in fact – just as attractive, perhaps, but liars all the same.

Along with “Pretty Little Liars,” this week saw the premiere of “The Lying Game,” which features Emma, a twin who grew up in the foster care system.

Emma’s in a bad situation. She’s got a skeevy foster brother who just walks into her room and is constantly trying to get her into bed, and a foster mother who accuses her of being a thief when her autographed tip from Bruce Willis goes missing from her book safe (which stands out as being out of place anyway by being the only hardcover book in the housing project).

So Emma’s life is horrible! Fortunately she’s got a laptop so she can chat with Sutton, her twin sister, who tracked Emma down three months ago as part of her ongoing search for their biological parents.

Except for the fact that her family is fabulously wealthy, she has all the clothes she could want, spent the summer in Paris (while she was theoretically searching for these parents of theirs), Sutton is ... upset. Her boyfriend is cheating on her! With her arch-enemy! Which is so upsetting that she’s got a secret boyfriend of her own!

Anyway, Emma’s foster mom calls the police because she believes Emma stole her money – and Skeevy Foster Brother is pressuring her to have sex with him right there in the living room and he’ll make the police go away. Emma smashes his face with a tennis racquet and hops a Greyhound to Phoenix.

This is perfect, because Sutton’s got another lead on those missing parents, and since it would be so upsetting to her adoptive parents for her to even be trying to track them down, she hands her phone, her car keys and her laptop to Emma, switches clothes with her in the washroom. Now Emma can be Sutton and Sutton can go investigate!

Emma is surrounded by a whole new world of rules and obligations and social dynamics and doesn’t know how to navigate them, but she manages to mostly fool her flaky friends and her pre-occupied family. She even manages to fool her cheating boyfriend.

She can’t fool Sutton’s secret boyfriend, however, who Sutton neglected to tell anyone about -- and who could blame her? I mean really ... his family is in civil service. His brother is a police officer, of all the scandal.

So Emma shines everyone on for a couple days, defeats Sutton’s arch-enemy in a game of tennis – what luck that she was in training! – and publicly humiliates her at her own party (only super heroes should be having arch-enemies, by the way). She goes to the cabin to meet up with Sutton and finds Sutton’s necklace – so she’d been there – but no Sutton. Also, Sutton’s room was broken into and her laptop stolen (probably by Sutton). So Emma – still on the run from assault charges against her skeevy foster brother – has got to keep being Sutton.

Flicking switches

Hollywood seems recently fascinated with what boils down to basic identity theft, even if I’m already sick of it.

There was a recent box office release for a very similar storyline called “Monte Carlo” where a vacationing American gets a swanky hotel room when she’s mistaken for a British heiress. The CW is premiering something called “Ringer,” where Sarah Michelle Gellar plays twins separated at birth. ABC Family is still running the “Switched at Birth” family drama and for some reason there was that Jason Bateman movie.

Me, I don’t understand what the fascination is with lying, scandals and betrayals. It’s like there’s this whole genre of almost interchangeable programming stuffed full of teenage girls, all of them freakishly beautiful, dressed and made up like supermodels being super catty to one another, stealing each other’s boyfriends and then having these huge epiphanies and reconciliations.

I blame Rob Thomas. No I don’t. I blame the CW.

In the mid-Naughties, Thomas created “Veronica Mars,” this brilliant show about a middle class girl living along the edges of super-privileged society. She helped out with her dad’s private investigations, she used her powers of deduction to help her friends solve problems, and she had a few ongoing cases to crack along the way.

My main objection to this show was the filler subplots, the glamorous parties everyone was always at, the endless amounts of money that the wealthy teens always seemed to have. Kristin Bell in the title role was always credibly contemptuous of profligate opulence where she encountered it, but looking back on it, this show did celebrate its share of excess.

Selling excess

Shows that sell dreams of luxury seem to do less well among adults when times are tight. Certainly there are some basic cable productions focused on high-end real estate, celebrity and all those “Real Housewives” shows out there, but nothing as in-your-face as Robin Leach’s “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

But shift the marketing to teens and there are no holds barred. As bad as ABC Family productions are – where in the case of “The Lying Game” and “Switched at Birth,” for instance, income of $100,000 a year is considered normal, average middle class and 16-year-olds all drive around in BMWs – on the CW, I’m not convinced they even have to go to school anymore.

No, I don’t watch “Gossip Girl,” “Nikita,” “90210” or “America’s Next Top Model” so I recognize this isn’t an informed critique, but what I get from the promos is that they all basically sit around all day texting each other and looking fabulous.

It stands out to me because in the Sundance encore of “My So-Called Life” from the 1990s, they just got to the story arc where one of Angela’s friends is homeless, and a middle-class family – a real middle class family, who dresses like it – can’t afford a new bicycle for their youngest daughter.

Now, I’m not saying that show doesn’t have its own problems with being overwrought and taking itself way too seriously. But if you’re asking me which situation I have an easier time relating to ... I’d have to go with “My So-Called Life.”

I also find it to be a lot more interesting.

“The Lying Game” premieres new episodes Mondays at 9/8c on ABC Family.