ABC is welcoming some new programming to its weekly lineup this week. Among those new series is the Eva Longoria-produced provocative drama Grand Hotel, which made its debut last night.
Grand Hotel tells a complex story of a family-owned hotel on Miami Beach and all of the drama between the various people who call it home, including the staff, the owners and some mysterious newcomers, all of whom seem to be hiding their true motivations.
Grand Hotel is probably the most perplexing and possibly the most difficult series I’ve had to review. I say that because within this first hour-long episode I probably flipped back and forth at least three or four times on whether or not I actually enjoyed it.
At times, this series plays like a soap opera. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If that’s your thing, then by all means enjoy your soap operas. But it’s certainly not my thing. The acting feels very soap opera-esque through most of the episode and it nearly took me out of it.
However, I can’t count how many times the very next scene would bring me back. The show is loaded with interesting characters who are constantly developing their own stories and adding more layers to the overall arc. Characters you like in the beginning of the episode may be the characters you dislike in the end and vice versa.
Then again, another thing that took me out of the show was the overwhelming number of impossibly beautiful people. I know, you may be asking “how can that be a negative?” Sure, it’s great at times, but trust me. Every time the scene changes, there’s another impossibly beautiful person. In what world does this show take place?
Another thing I like about Grand Hotel, is the lack of a true main character. Again, this might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but it allows the viewer to really decide which character(s) they like and trust and create their own viewer experience.
Without spoiling anything, I will say the end of the episode reeled me back in. The story steps away from the soap tropes and quickly becomes something much bigger, if only for a few seconds. And it does so in a way that makes me want to watch again next week.
Overall, Grand Hotel is far from my favorite new show (which I’m still searching for at the moment), but it’s a watchable one. Again, if you like soap operas, you will probably struggle to find something you dislike about this new series. If they’re not your thing, this may not be the show for you.
Grand Hotel airs on Mondays at 10 PM on ABC.