Elle Woods has become an iconic character over the past 25 years because Reese Witherspoon made such an impression as the expectation-busting, relentlessly positive character in the Legally Blonde films. Now Prime Video has given us a prequel series named Elle, where we find out where Elle learned some of that pluckiness.
ELLE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: As we hear Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy,” lots of expensive cars pull up to a mansion for a birthday party. The year is 1995.
The Gist: The party is for Elle Woods (Lexi Minetree), and the house is covered in pink, her favorite color. The party is being thrown by her parents, Eva (June Diane Raphael) and Wyatt (Tom Everett Scott). Elle makes a speech thanking all of her friends, and she asks the DJ to play something like “Madonna two years ago, not Madonna now,” which somehow becomes an Annie Lennox song. Her buddy Madison (Jessica Belkin) enginners a meet cute between Elle and her crush, Hot Josh (Logan Shroyer).
Life is good for the Cosmo-reading, Days Of Our Lives-watching Elle in Beverly Hills. But the next day, Eva and Wyatt tell their daughter that they are moving to Seattle for “a while” so Wyatt, a plastic surgeon, can lay low after the nose of a high-profile patient collapses. Elle’s buddies tell her to bank the guilt her dad feels and use it when she needs it. To help the usually-optimistic Elle with the move, Eva gives her daughter a little Chihuahua that Elle calls Bruiser.
On her first day of school in Seattle, the bright-pink-clad Elle stands out in a sea of earth-toned flannel. Everyone looks at her like she’s the strangest person they’ve ever seen. An attempt to have a conversation with Liz (Gabrielle Policano), a Walkman-wearing classmate, makes Liz think that she’s being pranked. Elle attempts to sit at lunch with the popular seniors (who dress like every other clique), and she’s rebuffed by Kimberly (Chandler Kinney), who says she’d never set foot in Elle’s shallow hometown of Los Angeles.
Those first few days are rough for Elle, even after meeting a jock named Miles (Jacob Moskovitz) as she tried out for the cheerleading squad -—who cheer for themselves. She finds a saving grace in Donna (Amy Pietz), the school’s secretary, who reads Cosmo, covers kids’ lunches via petty cash, and lets Elle sit in the office for lunch. Elle eventually helps Dustin (Zac Looker), who has the locker next to her, with his auction to help the support staff; she uses Donna as the example of staff who help the students out. But that creates unintended consequences.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Laura Kittrell, Elle is a prequel to the Legally Blonde film series. Reese Witherspoon, who originated the role of Elle Woods, is an executive producer of the series via her Hello Sunshine production company.
Our Take: Elle is… fine. It gives the fans of Legally Blonde enough nods to the films to make them happy, and it’s supposed to show how the determined and relentlessly positive Elle Woods gained the confidence that led her to Harvard Law School, despite, well, being blonde. The idea is that the younger Elle already had to navigate an environment where her seemingly shallow personality was out of place. But a lot about the show feels like it could have been just as effective as a coming-of-age drama if the main character wasn’t a pink-clad piece of IP at its center.
In other words, just about any kind of misfit could have been the main character in this story. Yes, this misfit happens to be blonde, pretty and brightly-clothed. But in many ways, this story feels like it’s as much a satire of Seattle in the mid-’90s as much as it is about Elle subverting the preconceived notions about the blonde and perky among us. The needle drops during the first episode seem to point that out (more on that in a bit).
Speaking of subverting preconceived notions, that’s also an issue: Elle Woods is all about showing people that she’s not as shallow as she seems. There were two entire movies and a Broadway musical that show that. So to see an entire series of Elle’s pluckiness, just in a younger edition, doesn’t feel all that new to us.
Minetree is fine as the younger Elle. She has the sunny disposition that Witherspoon gave Elle a quarter-century ago, but can’t quite fully embody the character the way the Oscar winner did back then. There are more compelling performances in the series than Minetree’s, most notably Raphael as Elle’s mom Eva, who provides a warm presence that helps root Elle as she navigates such a strange (to her) environment.
Performance Worth Watching: One of the other things that we appreciated about June Diane Raphael as Eva is that, while she has funny moments, she’s effective as a straight person for Minetree. Given how Raphael is often the funniest person on whatever show she’s on, that’s an accomplishment.
Sex And Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Elle finds out from Kimberly that Donna got fired when everything Elle praised about her during the auction got back to Principal Anderson (Matt Oberg).
Sleeper Star: We’ve been fans of Amy Pietz since she was Lea Thompson’s “best friend” in Caroline In The City, so we’re happy to see her as Liz’s very generous mother (and, for now, former school secretary) Donna.
Most Pilot-y Line: The needle drops feel like they’re more from 1992 than 1995, and seem to be more about saying “this is Seattle in the ’90s!” than matching the mood of whatever scene we’re watching. There’s also a sight gag about Elle trying to “fit in” on the second day of school that we saw coming a mile away.
Our Call: SKIP IT. As you can see, the word “fine” keep popping into our heads while watching Elle. It’s a show that isn’t terrible, but doesn’t do much to further the character that Witherspoon made famous, and it also feels like a coming-of-age story we’ve seen far too many times in recent years.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.