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Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Anne Heche finds ‘Men in Trees’ tonight
“Men in Trees” stars Anne Heche as Marin, a jilted relationship expert who moves from chic New York to rural Alaska where there are, as the title implies, men everywhere.
It debuts tonight at 9 and then moves to its regular time slot Fridays at 8 p.m.
She decides to study their curious behavior as the basis for a new self-help book. It’s a fish-out-of-water story with obvious similarities to another sweet little series set in Alaska more than a decade ago.
Think of “Men in Trees” as “Northern Exposure” from a woman’s point of view. And that’s a good thing. I see nothing wrong with echoing something that was enjoyable — as long as the copycat has its own soul and personality. Which this one does.
Heche’s Marin has shades of Rob Morrow’s Dr. Joel Fleischman. She’s a city girl plopped down in the relative wilderness where people might not be sophisticated from a martini perspective but who have a lot more going on beneath the surface than they appear. She’s more innocent and less cynical and snobby than Fleischman.
In tonight’s opener, Marin is introduced as a wildly successful self-help author and romance coach who is the toast of Manhattan. She is engaged to a handsome man and living the city-life dream.
But on a trip to the tiny town of Elmo, Alaska, to deliver a lecture, she finds out that her man is cheating. Crushed, she decides she’s no longer qualified to give advice. After doing battle with a raccoon that insists on living in her hotel closet, Marin takes a deep breath, wobbles around on a bicycle and falls in love with Elmo.
If you’re a relationship coach in a romantic crisis, what better place to escape to than a town with 10 men for every woman? Of course the men are quirky, cute and bearlike. One of them is destined to become Marin’s new love, but we’re not sure which one — although she does wind up skin-to-skin with a super-handsome guy played by James Tupper. This night-long hug is ostensibly to stay warm after plummeting through the ice on a lake. No sex … just the possibility.
Heche is a phenomenally likeable and talented actor whose skills have been overshadowed by her personal problems. She came clean in her autobiography, “Call Me Crazy,” which chronicled her dalliances with alien abduction, multiple personalities and lesbianism.
Interviewed in Los Angeles last summer, Heche seemed happy and grounded — and anxious to put to rest the craziness that nearly de-railed her career. If “Men in Trees” succeeds, it will be because her talent has indeed trumped her troubles. Personally, I’m pulling for her — and for the show.
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