TV Review: Samurai Girl

Coming of age stories, no matter the medium, always seem to be terribly popular.  The transition from childhood to adulthood is something we all go through.  It's a hard enough time in all our lives, but, in order to make a tale worthy of screen or book, there always needs to be more added to it, the ante needs to be raised.  Families must be dysfunctional, friends over-the-top, and the teenager's problems superhuman and virtually insurmountable. 

Enter ABC Family's miniseries adaptation of Carrie Asai's Samurai Girl novels.  Airing this Friday thru Sunday from 8:00 to 10:00, the miniseries follows Heaven Kogo (Jamie Chung) as she learns deep, dark secrets about her family. 

It all starts off simply enough, with Heaven being forced to marry a man whom she does not love in order to secure her family's business.  When assassins break up the wedding and murder her brother, her quest to find out why leads her to new truths about herself and her family.

If it doesn't sound all that original, that's because it isn't.  At the very least, the first two-hour episode of the miniseries progress exactly as one would expect, with nary a misstep.  There are training sequences, new friends with abilities that just happen to perfectly mesh with Heaven's needs, and a few "twists and turns."

Much of that is forgivable.  Every generation rediscovers the problems of transitioning from child to teenager to adult and every generation wants to see current coming-of-age stories, ones that reflect the specific issues they face.  However, the show is not without problems.  Most specifically, it fails to create any interesting characters.  Everyone that Heaven meets, from the man who becomes her trainer, to a couple of teens who inexplicably become her friends, are barely more than one-dimensional.  It is possible that during the final two parts of the miniseries the characters are more fully delved into, but the fact that they can't be established in an interesting manner over the course of two hours is disconcerting to say the least. 

Article Author: Josh Lasser

Josh Lasser, formerly known as "TV and Film Guy," and complete with a Masters Degree in Critical Studies in said areas, gives his opinions on TV, Film, and Entertainment in general. All of which he does in a shameless attempt to try to get paid to do the exact same thing. …

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