Wildfire aired on ABC Family for four seasons for a total of 52 episodes. This blog entry is about season one, which I recently purchased and watched on DVD. This is a general overview of the first season, which ended with a cliffhanger.
The DVD artwork says the program is a cross between The O.C. and Dallas and as someone who watches soap operas and writes about them for fun I felt this would be appropriate topic to blog. First off, season one did not remind me of Dallas, but it did feel somewhat reminiscent of The O.C. The main character Kris Furillo played by Genevieve Padalecki (née Cortese) was in a prison camp for teenage girls. That reminds me of Ryan on The O.C., and as the series goes on Kris starts to become a member of the family who is looking after her.
Kris ends up at Raintree Ranch (aka the Ritter’s horse farm), due to her relationship with a horse named Wildfire while at the camp. Pablo (Greg Serano) who works for the farm and volunteers with teenagers noticed how well Kris interacted with horses and convinced Jean Ritter (Nana Visitor best known as Kira on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or for her roles on Ryan’s Hope and One Life to Live) to take Kris on as a stable hand, which she was on parole. Kris nearly threw her future away to save Wildfire after he misbehaved. She caused a ruckus and stole the horse. Obviously since this was another crime, she had to serve additional time, but returned to the ranch once she was released a few months later.
There was also a quadrangle on the program with Kris, Ken Davis Jr. (called Junior played by Ryan Sypek), Dani (Nicole Tubiola) and Jean’s son Matt (Michah Alberti who played Jamie for a time on All My Children). Junior and Matt are best friends, and Dani is Matt’s former girlfriend and Junior’s younger sister. The Davis family has a ranch that is very successful, while Raintree has seen better days. Dani and Kris didn’t like one another on first glance, but eventually started to get along enough to not throw evil looks every time they were in the same room together. Rounding out the regular cast were Jean’s younger son Todd (Andrew Hoeft) and her father Henry (Dennis Weaver). There were some other semi-regular characters like Dani and Junior’s dad Ken (James Read), Jean’s new boyfriend Charlie (Arye Gross), and Bobby the bookie (Jason London).
Jean didn’t want Kris involved with her son, so their relationship hit a dead end. Kris and Junior were attracted to each other, and as the first season went on became a couple. They hit the skids due to split loyalties. Matt became addicted to gambling like his father Pete (Joe Lando), who was no longer with his mother. We also met two people from Kris’s life before Raintree. Her mother who was an addict (played by Stacy Haiduk from The Young & the Restless) and her best friend Win who ended up being the reason she illegally stole a car, which sent her into juvenile detention. Dani had to deal with her identity as she wanted to know her mother, but found out the woman she believed was her mom, was not and Junior was her half-brother.
The season ended with Kris riding Wildfire in the Sandpiper Classic horse race against the Davis’ horse named Avatar. The road to Kris becoming a jockey was not clear, but she was talented. Tina Sharp (Amy Jo Johnson, who I haven’t seen in anything since Felicity) Pablo’s former girlfriend had an affair with Matt, defected to work for Ken Davis leaving the Ritter’s scrambling. Kris got her dream to race Wildfire though we have no idea who won.
While Wildfire wasn’t what was advertised on the box, I was entertained by it. I appreciated the scenery of New Mexico (which was doubling for California), and how it along with the horses looked. The characters that played family members seemed to act like family, which is a plus. The romantic stories while important weren’t the only thing going on which was also appreciated. I look forward to watching my season two disks and find out how the cliffhanger was resolved.
No comments:
Post a Comment