Episode 1395: Why Aren't More People Watching The L.A. Complex?

So Season 2 of The L.A. Complex has premiered. As summer programming goes, it's on par with what's being served up by the cable networks, but it was absolutely hammered in the ratings last season, and looks set to suffer the same fate this time around. It's weird because the show airs on The CW (it's actually a Canadian show, on MuchMusic), and would seem a perfect fit for the network's brand. It's like the sunniness of 90210 crossed with the histrionic melodrama of Gossip Girl. It's also more slyly self-aware, which I really like, e.g. the scene in the Season 2 premiere when the most successful character on the show runs into a bunch of Scientologists while he's walking the streets of Los Angeles. The only way to improve that scene would be if the character in question were dogged by rumours that he was gay. (There is a gay storyline on the show, but it's nothing to do with him.) Critics have been quite positive about the show, which is ironic considering that it apparently had the lowest-rated debut ever. Equally perplexing then is The CW's decision to air the second season. Tie-ups between American and Canadian networks are nothing new (see Lost Girl, Saving Hope, etc.), but even by The CW's lower standards, after the non-existence of the first season's ratings, there's no way they should have greenlit this one. Maybe they got it on the (very) cheap?