The Ex List S1E...

Yep. It's been canceled, effective immediately. I'm going to assume that Bella and Augie would have ended up together eventually.

The Ex List S1E4: Do You Love Me, Do You Surfer…Boy?

“’The one’ isn’t going to be called ‘The Animal.’”

Although I still enjoy The Ex List, it’s getting a bit monotonous. And, from everything I’ve read, it’s going to be canceled any minute. So, I might stop blogging about it. In this ep, Bella runs into an ex. Shocking. She dumped him because all he cared about was surfing. Now, he’s become a famous surfer, and though she has fun with him she can’t believe he’s still a wild child. But, in a twist, it turns out that it’s all a marketing ploy. And for the first time, Bella doesn’t break up with him at the end. He’s not Mr. Right Now, but he is Maybe Mr. Right Someday. Plus, he’s super cute.

The Ex List S1E3: Protect and Serve

“My sister is a big sausage fan. ”

Bella gets robbed, and the cop who arrives on the scene is her ex-boyfriend Ronny. We flash back to Bella’s sophomore year of high school, when Ronny was just a young tuff. Her father, who is in the military, sends Bella away for the summer to keep them apart. Ronny doesn’t seem to care much. In the present, Bella is turned on by Ronny’s casually dismissive manner and sexy uniform. Ronny tells Bella’s landlord that the apartment isn’t up to fire code, so they can’t raise the rent. She is thrilled. I find it quite strange that all of Bella’s old boyfriends still live in town.

Throughout the episode, Augie is mildly jealous. I think under the surface he’s seething. He slyly tells Bella’s dad Jimmy to pretend to love Ronny so that he will therefore be less appealing to Bella. Jimmy does so, but it doesn’t have the intended consequence. Instead, Bella is offended that her father is treating her like she’s 15 years old. Everything goes great between Bella and Ronny until the day that Bella sees a neighboring store owner with a black eye. He had been irritating her as of late, and when she asks what happened he mutters, “Ask your boyfriend.” And the shit hits the fan when Bella realizes that this is what all those “favors” Ronny has mentioned are. She unceremoniously dumps him.

On the side, Vivian finally has a storyline that makes her somewhat likable. You see, Vivian is a high school history teacher, and some of her students hang out at “her” beach on the weekends. The boys stare, drooling, at their hot teacher lounging in a bikini. She ignores them. But then the principal receives a note claiming that Vivian is engaging in inappropriate behavior with these boys. In the end, it turns that a somewhat plain girl who likes one of the boys wrote the note. And the next time Vivian sees them at the beach, she wears a modest cover-up and lets the girl enjoy her time basking in a swimsuit and flirting with the boy.

The Ex List S1E2: Climb Every Mountain Biker

“My mad skills are too much for the spaghetti strap to handle.”

Ah ha! We learn in the opening that Bella lives alone, while Cyrus, Augie, and Vivian live together, next door. This is only slightly better than all of them living together. During the gang’s traditional “stuffing our faces at an outdoor café while a marathon is going on” (I could hang with these folks), Bella runs into ex-flame Jake, a couch-potato-turned-athlete. In the flashback, we see that once Jake landed a 23-year-old punk rock Bella, he never wanted to leave the house. Or, as he says, “The only reason people go out in the first place is to find someone to have sex with while they watch TV.” He has already got that, so why go out?

Bella’s flower shop is called Bloom. How original. Daphne and her fiancé make a pact to not have sex before the wedding, so she moves in with Bella. Meanwhile, after googling a hot ex-girlfriend and being horrified at how she’s turned out, Cyrus creates the drinking game “Google Ex Smackdown.” Augie gets waaasted, while everyone else is barely buzzed.

Jake takes Bella on a series of athletic dates – ultimate frisbee on the beach, mountain biking, rock-climbing gym, kayaking. She finally convinces him to take her to a bar, but even then they end up playing Trivia Olympics. All this time, Bella is still watching Tommy Anzide’s cat and having regular run-ins with Elliott. And one night, the cat escapes through the bathroom window. While wandering the neighborhood looking for him, Bella discovers Elliott half-naked at a blonde stranger’s house. How big is this town, anyway?

Bella forces Jake to talk to her, explaining that their dating life thus far has been “like camp without the kissing and alcohol.” They finally sleep together, but afterward it gets super awkward when he starts talking about his ex. Like, immediately afterward. It’s really uncomfortable. And then we’re off. Suddenly all Jake talks about is his ex. Bella can’t stand it, and eventually dumps him. In the end, she is talking to Daphne about the situation and says that the right guy is the right guy. And Elliott knocks on the door.



Now. Although I thought from the pilot that Elliott was to be Bella’s soul mate, somewhere in the back of my mind I also thought that was just way too obvious. After this episode, I’m wondering what the chances are that Bella’s soulmate could be … Augie. Their interactions in this episode, combined with Vivian’s description of her relationship with Augie, just really struck me. I know that would cause all sorts of issues seeing as Vivian and Augie are two of Bella’s best friends but … I don’t know. I guess we don’t know if they have dated, but I can totally see it happening. What do you think? Am I crazy?

The Ex List S1E1: Pilot

“I wanna get tattoos together and drink each other’s blood.”

I thought this show sounded cute from the start, but after trying to explain its premise to several people I felt like an idiot. And I almost didn’t watch it last night, but I’m glad that I did. It wasn’t the best pilot I’ve ever seen, and it’s not the kind of show I will purposely stay home on Friday nights to watch. But, I have to tell you that The Ex List is really funny.

A 9 pm timeslot on Friday evenings will surely murder this show, which is a shame. It centers on Bella, who takes her sister’s bachelorette party to a psychic for kicks…only the psychic tells Bella that if she doesn’t get married within a year, she will be a spinster forever. (She also makes several other uncanny predictions that eventually cause Bella to believe her). The catch is, Bella has already dated and dumped her soul mate.

Enter Elliot, who has amazing abs and seems likely to be Bella’s true soul mate. They are recently separated because he doesn’t believe in marriage and she’s tired of waiting around for him. This is the only reason given for their breakup, so obvs they’re perfect together. Bella is also surrounded by a wacky group of friends. The only thing that keeps me from identifying with these people more (besides Bella’s exceptionally skimpy outfits) is that this group of four 30-somethings all appear to live together. Which is pretty damn strange (although kind of like Friends, now that I think of it).



We have Augie and Vivian, a couple. Augie has been Bella’s best friend for 15 years. In the pilot, Vivian goes in for public hair maintenance and ends up completely bare. Augie won’t have sex with her because she looks like a 10-year-old, so she gets a merkin, which is a vaginal toupee. All of this is kind of odd, especially for a pilot, but it worked out to be pretty amusing. Perhaps the best part was Augie trying to explain the appeal of pubic hair: “It’s like, hey look over here! There’s something really cool over here. But it’s SO cool, we can’t show it to you.” Other characters include unemployed sarcastic roommate Cyrus, and Bella’s super-peppy sister Daphne. I couldn’t figure out why I recognized Vivian, and it was driving me nuts. Her resume includes a whole slew of shows that I have watched, so I still can’t figure it out. Can anyone help?

The first boyfriend Bella reconnects with is sensitive musician Johnny, who we see in a hilarious flashback telling her he wants to get tattoos and drink each other’s blood. But The Ex List subverts expectations (at least mine) by casting Eric Balfour as Johnny. It’s just so different from anything else I’ve ever seen him do, and that made it all the funnier. Anyway, in the present Johnny has turned into a super-hot eyelinered-and-tattooed rock star whose #1 hit, “Bitch,” is all about how Bella broke his heart. Naturally, Bella is instantly attracted to him. As Cyrus puts it, “He doesn’t like you anymore and it happened at the same time that he became more appealing to you. How weird.”

Bella & Johnny reignite their relationship, but Johnny turns needy pretty quickly. She tries turning the tables on him to make him dump her, but he puts up with all of her crap and she realizes maybe he is the one. Joke’s on her, though. It turns out that Johnny has orchestrated the entire thing to get revenge…which turns out to be the name of his next big hit. And he humiliates Bella by dedicating it to her in a crowded club.

In the end, Bella answers an ad for a lost cat and the owner turns out to be another ex. And the previews for next week look promising, with Bella reconnecting with an extremely active ex about whom she says, “He never stops moving. It’s like dating the bus from Speed.” Hilarious!