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The 9 Lives of Chloe King is a new summer show that airs Tuesdays at 9 on ABC Family. It stars Skyler Samuels (The Gates), who also has a Teen Vogue interview, Grey Damon (Friday Night Lights), and Alyssa Diaz (How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer). It’s about a girl with the powers of a cat, if that wasn’t clear from the title and poster. The show has great points–finally, a supernatural show centered around a girl who has supernatural powers rather than the guy she’s infatuated with! And bad points–basically, she’s got to have a level of self-control similar to Rogue from X-Men.
Promo below.
Altogether, I set up a score based on a nine point scale of the show’s awesomeness/not-so-great ratio.
Awesome: Chloe Has An Actual Support System
One thing with superhero/supernatural shows like Smallville, Teen Wolf, Merlin, etc., is that all the main characters seem to have a good support system. And Chloe gets her mother, who is played by Amy Pietz the woman who was cheating on her husband with Michael from The Office, and, while she doesn’t seem to get worried enough about how late her daughter is going out (seriously, that homeless guy who tried to molest her was scary as hell—more on him later), she seems pretty mellow, even when Chloe asks her about her birth parents.
Not-So-Great: The Reveal of Kin
However, when it turns out that Chloe’s part of an ancient race called the Mai, super-cat-people who were worshipped in Ancient Egypt, as Jasmine and Alek explain…in the most awkward and random way possible. As they suddenly appear to after Chloe dies, Alek mentions, “Oh you’re from Ukraine, right?” So she was adopted from an orphanage in Ukraine—so what? Also, why bring it up during a fight sequence? Anyway, were her birth parents part of this race? How do Alek and Jasmine know this? What does it have to do with her being from Ukraine? Also, none of them actually look Ukrainian—no one has the combination of dark hair and very fair skin among them, so maybe it doesn’t have to do with being from Ukraine? Not that all Ukrainians look like that—but none of them look like each other. Well, maybe Chloe looks like Alek, which is kind of creepy considering he tried to kiss her earlier. Basically, it’s an awkward and disorganized reunion scene.
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A lot of these had really good points, but I do want to say that you make a lot of assumptions — ie, Alek NOT knowing Chloe was Mai when he tried to kiss his, Chloe and Brian never being able to go anywhere with their relationship, etc. There’s a lot to explain about the Mai and a lot will not be revealed at once.
As someone who read the book series, I generally know how things are going to happen (granted ABC Family doesn’t change it too much) and a lot of this is going to be explained.
For example, the Ukraine is important because it’s one of the biggest Mai settlements in modern day.