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During the upfronts there were reports that The CW was disappointed with the pilots it had ordered, but they felt very strongly that a new network needs new programming. In watching mid-season pickup Hidden Palms, it's hard to dispute either of those things. It comes across as a disjointed mix of The O.C. and Desperate Housewives, and was likely picked up in part because of a misguided notion that Kevin Williamson is still a draw. The show wasn't horrible, but it also isn't something you would expect to make it past pilot.

The show starts with the main character Johnny, who The O.C. alum Taylor Handley makes one of the bright spots of the show, studying hard in his room when he is interrupted by his drunken father. His father proceeds to berate academia in favor of creativity, including a quote from Pablo Neruda's Tonight I Can Write. He then leaves Johnny to his studies, at Johnny's request, but only makes it as far as the hallway before offering one more piece of advise followed by his suicide.

A year later we are in Palm Springs on the day Johnny, his mother, and his step-father are moving in. Things in Palm Springs start out with their neighbors across the street having a minor argument about property lines in a storyline that is thankfully wrapped up by the end of the episode. I get the feeling that someone thought they were writing the pilot for Fox, as the resolution involves a threesome. We are later introduced to the daughter of the instigator of this argument, backed by Coldplay's overused Beautiful World. She nearly blows up the family garage doing a chemistry experiment, but really she just wants to be sexy so the new boy will notice her.

When Johnny reappears he looks much different than before. He is also carrying around a camera, which he has apparently decided on as the creative outlet his father thought he needed. We later learn that in addition to photography, he's spent part of the intervening year in rehab. His mother wants everything to be nice and normal, which he points out to her is unrealistic - most likely made even more so by her wanting him to bail on his AA and NA meetings that he's been suggested to attend daily, in favor of just pretending he was never an alcoholic and addict.

Setting up his bed, Johnny thinks he sees a woman being killed in the house across the street. Instead it's a prank by Cliff, played by another former The O.C. cast member, as a means of introduction. He used to be friends with Eddie, the guy who lived in Johnny's room, and is hoping to be the same to Johnny. As soon as he leaves, Johnny catches a glimpse of a girl disappearing through a gate to a golf course. Naturally he follows her, which pays off as she runs through the sprinklers and then kisses him, all the while remaining enigmatic to who she is.

The next day Johnny sees her lounging at the country club pool, so he starts taking pictures. While he does that, his mom meets with the woman so concerned with her property lines, who is with a former Cordette. It turns out she is the president of the homeowners association, and the woman she is with is the mayor's current wife. The mayor's wife hints that undesirables run the risk of being run off by her lunch companion. Back to Johnny, who is met at the pool by the mayor's daughter. She's working there at her father's behest, and happy to have Johnny around as his arrival means she is no longer the new kid. She leaves shortly after Cliff sits down to join Johnny, and lets him know the girl he was taking pictures of is named Greta. She comes over and takes a look at the camera. Seeing the pictures of herself, she praises his talent, but deletes the pictures. She then leaves, taking his camera with her.

On his way home from his first AA meeting, where we learn he has been sober for three months, Johnny sees Greta sitting outside a cafe reading. Their interaction here was probably my favorite part of the show, despite it not being the most original conversation. Greta pretends to want him to leave, and then asks him a series of get-to-know-you questions. It's obvious from her first introduction that she likes to have the upper hand, something Johnny mentions here for the less perceptive members of the audience. She finds that she might not have that with Johnny, and appears to like that even more.

While helping Cliff with some yard work the following morning, Johnny earns that Eddie's family moved away when Eddie died in an accident, something he doesn't want to talk about. He also tells Johnny he and Greta don't get along. He doesn't like the way she treated Eddie, and felt she messed with his head. Afterwards Greta finally returns Johnny's camera to him, and gets him to join her for an impromptu swim in his backyard pool.

At a party that night at the country club, Johnny is warned to stay away from Cliff by someone he met at his AA meeting - someone who just happens to work at the country club regularly. We later learn that there is good reason for this when Cliff and Greta have a cryptic conversation. It seems Eddie's death may not have been an accident after all, and whatever happened involved both Cliff, who has a violent side, and Greta. There is also a past relationship between the two that neither wants to acknowledge to others, one that isn't as much in the past as Greta would like.

The show comes to a close with a montage of the goings on while Johnny gets ready for bed, set to Damien Rice's The Blower's Daughter. This brings me to probably my biggest complaint, and that is the soundtrack. For the most part, the songs used are good songs. The problem lies in the feeling that they were trying to get as many good songs as possible into the episode, and to accomplish that they started and stopped some songs abruptly and with little reason. It also leads to a few songs that have been used so often that they seem a bit cliche. That is something that can be remedied, though, and it hopefully will. The montage, and thus the episode, ends fittingly with Johnny settling in bed with Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.