Krysten Ritter, the ‘B— in Apt. 23,’ Is One of TV’s First 21st Century Chicks
With the major exception of The Good Wife (CBS), there’s really not much that piques my interest on network television these days. Indeed, it increasingly seems as if everything and everyone with any originality or daring has migrated to cable. But, that being said, there is one new network show that, I must confess, has me a little excited: Don’t Trust the B— in Apt. 23 (ABC, trailer), which debuts tonight at 9:30, right after Modern Family.
Why? In part because of the unusual title; in part because it has been endlessly promoted on ABC, ABC’s affiliated channels (ESPN, etc.), and in movie theater promos; and in part because it is attempting the tongue-in-cheek feat of having James Van Der Beek, the forgotten Dawson’s Creek (WB) alum (as in not Katie Holmes, Michelle Williams, or Joshua Jackson), portray — you guessed it — James Van Der Beek.
But the show’s biggest draw for me, far and away, is the fact that it stars Krysten Ritter, the 30-year-old actress who I first noticed during season two of Breaking Bad (AMC), on which she portrayed Jane, the moody, drug-addicted, and — spoiler alert — ill-fated girlfriend of Jesse (Aaron Paul). In Apt. 23, as the show is destined to be called in PG-13 America, Ritter plays a city girl who repeatedly cons and crosses her naive new roommate (Dreama Walker, who played Becca, Alan Cumming’s young nemesis, on The Good Wife). Ritter has described her character as “Holly Golightly and the devil combined.”
