TV's New Cupid Remake a miss for Rob Thomas
Cannavale can't compete with the original god of love.
Apr 9, 2009
While many new shows face a bumpy route to their first airdate, this Cupid has had a far stranger beginning than most. Ten years ago, newbie television creator Rob Thomas put together a romantic hourlong that was based on a simple question: what if Cupid, the Greek god of love, was alive and mortal and serving time on Earth?
The resulting show was about a man (Entourage's Jeremy Piven), who claimed he was Cupid himself, and needed to unite 100 couples in true love so that he could return to his lost home Mount Olympus. In the pilot, Cupid (who also goes by the name Trevor Hale) is promptly arrested and sent to a mental hospital, where he meets Dr. Claire Allen (Paula Marshall from Gary Unmarried), a psychiatrist assigned to keeping the maybe-god out of trouble. The rest of the series followed the two of them as they bickered, argued, and flirted through Cupid's various attempts at matchmaking.
Original Cupid was Better Than Just the Story
The plot may sound far-fetched, and it's true that much of the show revolved around the question of whether or not Hale was actually the god of love, or simply a very charming crazy person. But to Thomas's credit, the answer never mattered - Hale didn't have to prove that he was Cupid, Piven just had to make us want to believe he could be. With his sublime blend of energy, sexiness, and charm, Piven seemed to have so much fun, and so much chemistry with Marshall, that the viewers didn't care about the "is he or isn't he." They just wanted to see the show.
Unfortunately, Cupid suffered from a common fate among well-written, quirkily original shows: it became a cult favorite, but never found the audience needed to stay on the air for more than a handful of episodes. It was also, however, one of those rare shows that the true believers never stopped thinking about, and after Thomas achieved some success with Veronica Mars, ABC made a strange and rare decision: they would reboot Cupid, with an all-new cast. Thomas would still serve as creator and showrunner, but this time the network would get it right, giving the show plenty of marketing and a shiny new Tuesday time slot.
New Cupid Includes Unnecessary Changes
It was a bold move for ABC, especially given that the network was responsible for canceling the original Cupid in the first place. But compared to its predecessor, the new show just doesn't seem to measure up. The pilot features entire sections of dialogue lifted straight from the original, yet makes a point to make a number of small changes - the main characters' last names, the timeline for Cupid's arrival on Earth, the plotline for Cupid's first "match" -for no discernable reason.
And while Studio 60 favorite Sarah Paulson, as the new Dr. Claire, hits all the required notes, Bobby Cannavale (Third Watch) just can't live up to Piven's Cupid. Cannavale brings the right sense of energy and charm, but is missing Piven's sex appeal, his "look what I said and am getting away with!" enjoyment of the whole enterprise. In the original series, Piven served as the maypole, around which everything else could dance. Without that center, the new show just comes off as shapeless.
The problem with the new Cupid, in the end, is the same problem that's faced the series for the last decade: there was just nothing wrong with the old one. Even if these problems just turn out to be the normal growing pains of many new series, this Cupid is going to look watered-down and stumbling compared to the original. And that, as the Greeks would say, is just tragic.
