Ringer 1.07 'Oh Gawd, There's Two of Them?'

‘Ringer’ is far more entertaining if you just sit back and let the twists and turns pull you in, since it’s starting to become apparent that the characters aren’t the main priority of the writers; they seem far more concerned with the shock factor.

‘Oh Gawd, There’s Two of Them?’ follows the events of the previous episode with Bridget now a prime suspect in Gemma’s disappearance. Worried that they may be questioned, Bridget, still posing as Siobhan, comes clean about the existence of Siobhan’s sister to Andrew and Henry.

Keeping people invested in a series by constantly shocking them is only half the battle, the characters we’re tuning in to see every week should appear to somewhat consistent and supportable. ‘Ringer’s main issue is just that; every episode seems to present a completely new side to Bridget that in some ways changes her into a completely different person.

My favourite thing about this series is seeing how all the different aspects of Bridget’s charade as Siobhan that she’s barely holding together slowly start to break away and force her to cover up each lie as it starts to leak out. This week she finally had to admit to her existence (God, that looks strange in words), the outcome of which was revealed through a slightly sloppy opening montage. The main problem with Bridget now is that last week made it seem like she was done with her old life for good, but this week she’s now out to clear her name. It seems making her motivations believable is starting to become forgotten with the writers. The nail biting turn of events is partially disguising this problem -how the hell will she fool a sonogram machine?!-but this needs to be rectified if the writers ever want the series to be taken seriously.

One thing ‘Ringer’ can be proud of is how well it’s handling the budding romance between Bridget and Andrew. They could easily have had her continue to treat him like dirt, just to keep him at a distance, but I love watching her fall for him bit by bit; could they be the shows defining couple? Her tearful scenes having to explain Bridget’s motivations are pretty intense and we’re seeing just how comfortable she’s becoming with him; I’m almost dreading the moment her realises it’s all been a lie.

I’m not going to admit that I was delighted with the many different ‘shocks’ this episode had. I use inverted commas, since it wasn’t wholly surprising to find out about Charlie’s involvement in Gemma’s disappearance, I knew something was up. What it pointed out to me, though, was the fact that our Siobhan fix seems to have been relegated back to its regular end-of-episode slot. Enough already, I need some answers!

I'm still really enjoying 'Ringer' and it's far from the worst show on air, but if there isn't anything done to fix the underlying issues with it's approach to story-telling it'll be quickly shipped off to the TV wasteland.

7.5/10