The Great Janes

The Event: The Season 5 premiere party for Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva.

The Location: A party room at Soho House in Los Angeles, a place so exclusive and fancy that you're not even allowed to take photos of things in, like, the lobby -- never mind guests.

The Spread: My esteemed colleague Andi Teran and I parked it on a very plush couch next to a gigantic platter of cheese, cold meats, and little crispy cracker-y things. There were also sweets (brownies and three kinds of cookies) and champagne.

The Perks: Armani Cosmetics had sent makeup artists who were doing touch-ups off to the side of the room. Yeah, Armani. No big deal.

The Beautiful People: Lex Medlin, who plays Owen, attended (and we learned he'd been upped to series regular), as did series creator Josh Berman and his very proud parents.

The Show: First, Berman informed us that the Diva format had just been sold to Russia, which has already produced twenty-four episodes, including a shot-for-shot remake of the pilot; awesomely, we got to see a side-by-side comparison of the original and the Russian remake -- which, most notably, found a pretty great Russian version of the original's Brooke Elliott.

Then, we got a full screening of the season premiere. The behind-the-scenes backstory we were told was that Lifetime had cancelled the show after Season 4, but that fan outcry brought it back; the truth seems to be that it was partly fan support (which Berman was touchingly grateful for) and partly budget cuts. And it's a good thing Season 5 happened given that Season 4 ended on a cliffhanger: Jane (Elliott) -- who's actually Deb, a dead model who's been living, for the past several years, in the body of attorney Jane -- was on the verge of marrying Owen when Grayson (Jackson Hurst), who had been Deb's boyfriend and is now a colleague of Jane's, declared his love for Jane; Owen walked in on Jane and Grayson kissing and passed out.

SO, as Season 5 begins, Jane learns that the real Jane has gotten herself reincarnated. Two things about that: first, RealJane is pissed about what DebJane has done with her life; and second, RealJane might have returned in Owen's body. And even if RealJane isn't in Owen, ActualOwen is pissed. And rightly so.

The Takeaway: The legal procedural part of the show is not its strongest;  both courtroom plotlines involved knotty legal issues that had to be argued based on multiple different precedents, which felt kind of obscure. Much stronger are the elements of the show that are basically just soapy dramedy: Elliott really sold both her anguish at having hurt Owen, and the ambivalence of DebJane, who still has feelings for Grayson left over from their old life. At several points, I thought I knew for sure where the plot was going and then it zigagged in a direction I didn't predict, which is much more than I expect of a confection like this. This is definitely fluff, but it feels right for summer. Did the cookies help sell me? ...I can't say no.