'Hidden Palms': Mommies and daddies dearest

Here's a special two-for-the-price-of-one edition of Hidden Palms Show Tracker, as the CW is burning this baby off like they have money to, well, burn. Wednesday night featured two episodes of the show and the recurring theme throughout was- no, not the quandary of who whitens the actors' teeth to such startling luminescence - but how the parents of Hidden Palms actually manage to act more immature than their children.

First off, we have Cliff's mom, Tess, and her beau, Travis. Sharon Lawrence plays Tess with such verve that you have to wonder if she could hold a show on her own with this character - over the course of the two hours she attempts to shoot Travis after failing to strangle him with a belt (Travis was asking for it - I mean, he drives a Corvette and his drink of choice is a double bourbon, neat) and then she dumps a cocktail in the face of Greta's lecherous dad, Skip Matthews (played by Kyle Secor, who also played sketchy papa Jake Kane in Veronica Mars. I love my screwed up CW family.) Speaking of Skip, his return to Hidden Palms dampens Greta and Johnny's on-again ardor, but does provide a critical boost to the show's main mystery: Who killed Dead Eddie? Skip reveals that he went into daddy defense attorney mode and made sure that Eddie's death was promptly ruled a suicide by the police, meaning that Greta wasn't questioned about here whereabouts that Halloween night. And Liza, clumsily snooping in Cliff's house, discovers Greta's Halloween costume - an angel; do you see the irony? Do you? Do you? - spattered with blood and hidden underneath a floorboard in a closet. So we have one parent committing violence and another covering it up - and all of it was quite dishy. How much of a better show would Hidden Palms be if it focused more on the antics of the adults instead of the insipid love affairs of the tykes?

(Photo courtesy The CW)