On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, orphan teenager Lux (Brittany Robertson) searches out her birth parents Portland bar owner Nate Bazile (Kristoffer Polaha) and popular radio personality Cate Cassidy (Shiri Appleby) in order to get their signatures for her emancipation petition. The judge in charge of the case denies her petition, instead releasing her back into the care of her newfound parents, both of whom seem excited to get to know the daughter one didn’t even know existed and the other thought she would never see again after her birth.

CRITIQUE

I’d heard “Life Unexpected” was pretty good – it made a few top ten lists after its 2010 premier and became the heated recipient of a “save this show” campaign after its met with lukewarm ratings – and had always meant to give it a look, but for whatever reason I just never got around to it. For one thing, there’s only so much space on a person’s DVR (darn you TCM, you and your classic movies taking up all my digital space). For another, with all the movies I watch and review both in theatres and on Blu-ray I just don’t have the time. I’ve got to really want to watch it and have no expectation to receiving the show latter for review if I’m going to make the time to view it (i.e. “The Amazing Race”), no amount of buzz likely to get me to tune in no matter how many people are urging me to.

I’ll tell you this, if a miracle happens and “Life Unexpected” ends up on the CW fall schedule for a third season I’m going to make time to watch it, even if I’ll probably request the DVDs for review later on. This is one of the sharpest, best written and most adult programs the network has ever offered. Mostly eschewing the glossy theatrics of “Gossip Girl” and trying desperately to stay away from the over the top silly melodrama of “One Tree Hill,” this refreshingly intelligent series offers up real people facing an incredible situation and doing it in a way that feels honest and real. This show knocked my proverbial socks off, and even with a couple of missteps during the second season I think it’s one of the finest programs I’ve had the good fortune to get a look at since the start of this second decade of the twenty-first century.

What I liked most about this show is how refreshingly frank it is. These people are not perfect, but the majority of their mistakes are not as freakishly outlandish as those found be teens and adults on other CW soap operas. They have trouble with their bosses, don’t relate to their parents and have affairs with former significant others. Their issues revolve around whether or not to have children and how to deal with past mistakes like acting like the fellow high schooler you got pregnant didn’t even exist.

Okay, so things do get a little too close to “One Tree Hill” ‘nanny Carrie’ territory when Lux starts flirting with the idea of having a clandestine affair with sexy young English teacher Eric Daniels (Shaun Sipos), and while I’m always happy when one-time vengeance demon Anya Emma Caulfield shows up in a good role having her hardnosed corporate dynamo romance Nate and then introduce an out of control teenage son and a former affair with his judgmental father Jack (Robin Thomas) screams of overkill. But both these issues (along with a couple others) arise during the second season when the show was most blatantly trying to win over viewers, so some of the up and down extremes can are at least somewhat understandable.

At the end of the day, though, it is the core relationship between Lux, Nate and Cate that makes this show click like it does. I believed in this trio, liked the way their respective character’s evolved. Their bonds felt natural and true and I’d love to see them explored even more in-depth over subsequent seasons. Watching them become a dysfunctional family unit with their own ups, downs and in-betweens was a continual joy, and if I had to admit how many tissues I went through while watching all 26 episodes of this series the revolution would probably have someone knocking on my door to revoke my critic’s license.

The final episode of “Life Unexpected” is a fantastic one, everything coming to a conclusion that had me sobbing and smiling in equal measure. At the same time, the extreme time jump of the last ten minutes is a tiny bit jarring, and if the show doesn’t get cancelled (although I’m 99-percent positive it will be) I can’t say I’m as enthusiastic as seeing where it would potentially be going next as I would have had they ended it during Lux’s sophomore year as they should have.

Be that as it may, this is great show and one that deserved a far larger audience then it actually received. Here’s hoping it finds it now that both seasons one and two are now available in a single collection on DVD.

THE VIDEO

All 26 episodes of “Life Unexpected” are presented on six DVDs in their original 1.78:1 aspect ratio.

THE AUDIO

“Life Unexpected” comes with an English 5.1 Dolby Digital audio track with optional English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

Not a lot of extras. There is the quite good making-of featurette Life in Portland, The Making of Life Unexpected which mostly focuses on series creator Liz Tigelaar and the mutual discovery by the key members of the production staff that Portland, OR was the perfect place for the show to be set, as well as casting featurette Lux, Cate, Ryan & Math: The Casting of Life Unexpected which isn’t as interesting or as informative as I kind of kept hoping it would ultimately be. Rounding things out is the ubiquitous Gag Reel, and I have to say that even after seven seasons of horrible ones on the “One Tree Hill” DVDs this might be the very worst of its kind I’ve probably ever encountered.

FINAL THOUGHTS

“Life Unexpected” is a shockingly good CW melodrama that deserves a third season. Granted, after the way the second season comes to an end I have no idea what direction Liz Tigelaar and company would choose to take things, so maybe 26 episodes is more than enough for this particular series after all. Be that as it may, this is an awesome television show that caught me totally off guard and took me completely by surprised. I can’t recommend giving it a look more vociferously.