This Tuesday: The L.A. Complex Returns For Season 2

Vicki Briganti – CW50 Writer / Producer / Editor

The L.A. Complex season one first-run finale finished in May. Hooray! Great news: the second season of The L.A. Complex starts on Tuesday night at 9pm on CW50. After I invested six hours of my time, I was afraid I would never find out what happened to this motley cast of characters.

Are you caught up on the drama? This show is like a soap opera on steroids. As you recall from my original review LA Complex Premiere: Rent, Melrose and Entourage Have Love Child, we're following six major characters as they pursue their dreams in Hollywood. Let me bring you up to speed.

Abby – Abby's at the airport, ready to board the next flight to Toronto, ditching show business and heading home. She just bombed another audition. She gets a call from the director. She got the part. He wants her to come back immediately. Finally, her big break is here and hopefully some money so she can move out of her maybe-or-maybe-not boyfriend Nick's apartment.

Nick – Nick is letting Abby live with him because she has nowhere to live and has no money. They become romantically involved, but she wants to be "casual" so Nick sleeps with a girl he meets at an improv workshop. But Nick steals the girl's stand-up routine and now she hates him. Then Nick tells Abby he slept with the improv girl and now Abby might hate him, too.

Alicia – Alicia is a hot mess. She shook her groove thing in the audition, but she didn't get the Usher tour. She was dancing in a strip club. She made a sex video that opened the door to the porn industry. There she meets an influential guy who books back-up dancers. She sells her soul when she becomes sexually involved with him. Suddenly, she gets a call. They now want her on the Usher tour.

Connor -- This guy is an even hotter mess than Alicia. He's the star of a TV show but can't remember his lines. He slept with Abby and Raquel (not at the same time). He asks them both at separate times to move in with him because he's lost and lonely. He's taking Zoloft. He's scalding his arms with hot water. He gets into a bar fight and his pretty face is covered in stitches. He was hoping he'd be fired from the TV show, but now they're writing his injuries into the script. Last we see him, he's standing in the kitchen, burning down his house.

Raquel – Raquel attends AA meetings. She isn't an alcoholic. She went to the meetings to network. She meets a rich, older dentist and starts dating him. He wants to take things slow, so she sleeps with Connor, her younger friend with benefits. Then the dentist makes her dinner, tells her he loves her, and sleeps with her. She convinces him to invest $100,000 in a movie she hopes will jump-start her sagging acting career. She rips up the check out of guilt and breaks up with him. Last we see her, she's holding a positive pregnancy test stick.

Tariq – This might be the most intense storyline of all. Tariq's an assistant in the music industry. He works for some intimidating, cutthroat producers. A famous rapper, Kaldrick King, falls in love with him. But Kaldrick is in the closet and refuses to come out, even though Tariq loves him back. Having been in prison, Kaldrick has a nasty temper, beating people up whenever he feels threatened. Tariq's bosses catch Kaldrick kissing Tariq so Kaldrick brutally punches Tariq, the love of his life, and leaves him severely wounded on the floor.

Seriously, wow. This show pushes the envelope so far, I actually feel bad for these characters. Will Abby and Nick make-up and keep living in his apartment? Will Tariq forgive Dynasty and take him back or will Dynasty just beat him up again? I'm worried about his safety. Will Connor die in the fire? Who is the father of Raquel's baby?

I must know what's going to happen to them. Join me for The L.A. Complex on Tuesday nights at 9pm on CW50 and see what you're missing.

>> More Motor City Musing With Vicki Briganti