Have Red Band Society's Charms Grown Any More Contagious?

Show: Red Band Society.

Premiered: September 2014.

Why Was It Made? It's the year of the American remakes of the Romance-language dramas and the year of the dying teenagers and this thing is right in the middle of that Venn diagram.

Why Didn't I Watch? Teenagers are, by definition, the worst. Teenagers who think their illnesses imbue their every thought, move, and pronouncement with tragic import are the worstest, and after the pilot, I didn't care which of them lived or, if they died, of what.

Why Give It A Shot? We got a screener/it's a holiday and none of the shows I actually like are on.

What Aspects Of The Latest Episode Would Seem To Invite Further Viewing? Sometime between the pilot and the present, the show has added a new recurring guest star: Mandy Moore! She plays Erin Grace, a new doctor at Ocean Park with a tantalizing backstory: she used to date Dr. McAndrew, until he dumped her ass, and she was so devastated that she went to work in Africa for a year to get over him. Like all alumni of Clone High, no matter how brief their tenure (hi, Michael J. Fox!), Moore gets a lifetime pass from me, but she's also really likable in the role; she gets a juicy tell-off speech in this week's episode that, even though I haven't seen the seven episodes before this one, it seems pretty clear Dr. McAndrew deserves (particularly after he screws and then screws over Nurse Fluffy Bunny).

What Aspects Of The Latest Episode Discourage Further Viewing? Literally everything else. Maybe to camouflage the fact that Ciara Bravo (who plays Emma, the anorexic girl) can't act at all, this episode brings in guest star Bella Thorne to be even shittier as an Amanda Bynes/Lindsay Lohan-y train wreck pop star who gets admitted for exhaustion and then proceeds to be supervised so little that she gets Jordi to cadge painkillers for her in exchange for a meeting with her manager that she then reneges on because she thinks he's SO AMAZING (he's not) that he could pose a threat to her.

And while Kara, though a mostly unmodulated cooze in the pilot, also showed the most potential to be interesting, since then the show has paired her with a liver-failed Ricky from The Secret Life Of The American Teenager. At the time I watched that, six years ago, he looked every minute of his age; officially he's now twenty-seven, but I'm guessing those sweet ABC Family residuals have made for some late nights because now he looks like he and I could have gone to high school together. As Brenda or Kelly could tell you, of course, it wouldn't matter how elderly this Hunter, né Ricky, looked if he was dynamic or interesting. Because he is neither, the many scenes of him and Kara trying to hook up just looked like she was getting molested by a handsy uncle.

Ugh, and the Charlie voice-over continues to annoy. In this episode they give him a "three's company" joke that isn't funny to begin with, and doesn't improve when he adds that he doesn't even know what it means. THEN SKIP IT, BLACKOUT.

Finally: Octavia Spencer? Still egregiously squandered. Like, you know how much Haleh would appear in a given early-run episode of ER? Octavia Spencer probably wishes she got that much play, and she is by far the very best actor on the show not to mention the most interesting. It's really unfair what they're doing to her with this show.

Final Verdict: I was right the first time: Red BANNED Society. And anyway, even if I were inclined to try to invest in it, it's too late.