Writer and host of “Keep It,” Ira Madison III, recently tweeted “Bring back the golden age of TV: 2004-2010 on the ABC network.” After watching Freeform’s newest drama series The Watchful Eye, it seems as if the executives in charge wanted the same thing.
The Watchful Eye follows Elena as she interviews to become a live-in nanny for a wealthy family at The Greybourne, a prestigious New York City apartment building. The Ward family is looking for a nanny to help with young Jasper after his mother mysteriously fell to her death six months prior.
We quickly find out that Elena isn’t who she says she is to the Wards, as she’s working with her boyfriend to help steal a hidden ruby within the legendary NYC building. As one might expect, this leads to snooping, secrets, and scandal as the haves and want-to-be-haves silently fight for power, answers, and money.
From the start of the episode, I couldn’t help but compare the show. With every plot point or character choice, I instantly was reminded of similar concepts that have been successful.
Look at Only Murders in the Building. The Walt Disney Company is currently producing two separate series about New York City apartment buildings that are home to death and centuries old mysteries. That’s a bit…weird, no? Let’s be clear, The Watchful Eye is not a comedy at all, but the concepts are too similar to not be always considering them in tandem. Freeform asked Hulu to copy their homework, but promised to change it a little so the teacher wouldn’t notice.
It also brought to mind the ill-fated ABC drama 666 Park Ave, a NYC apartment drama with a supernatural backdrop, or the super juicy Emily VanCamp-starring vehicle Revenge. It is clear where The Watchful Eye’s references lie, yet the problem is none of them truly land.
Within minutes, the pilot throws at least a dozen key characters and four “essential” plot lines into a blender and hopes the soapy smoothie goes down easily. The excess isn’t presented in a fun, highly saturated, Babylon-esque fashion. It reads like the first cable drama specifically catering to a TikTok mindset. When every scene is in 45-second increments, maybe viewers won’t be bored?
It was an odd choice especially since Freeform’s Cruel Summer, an anthology series that broke ratings records for the network, never felt like it was trying to prove something. It took its time, sat with characters, and let viewers get accustomed to the world being built. While future episodes start to calm down, the buckets of exposition the pilot spilled out have left me feeling perpetually behind.
There are a lot of eggs in this series’ basket: questionable suicide, insane family members, classism, a wonderfully snarky Kelly Bishop, spying, hidden passage ways, dead bodies…the list goes on and on. Yet, with all of this soapy goodness, it often feels like two tiers below their goal. Think of it as the bargain bin Rapaunzel movie that is released in big box stores to compete with the theatrical release of Tangled. You know what they’re going for, but it’s not exactly what you wanted.
It’s a shame because I too want episodic soaps to come back, especially ones from the aforementioned ABC time period. That winking whimsy and understanding of how to consistently entice is dearly missed in this current streaming era. I hope Ira’s request does come to fruition soon, I’m just not positive The Watchful Eye will be the answer.