The Monitor: TeenNick’s ‘Gigantic’

Focused on the children of Hollywood royalty, “Gigantic” is a fruitful, clever and inevitable premise for a series. That its creators know this is clear from the show’s casting, which stars Grace Gummer, a daughter of Meryl Streep, and Gia Mantegna, a daughter of Joe Mantegna — smarter casting even than the use of Kevin Dillon as hapless older brother Johnny Drama on “Entourage.”

And yet “Gigantic” (TeenNick, 9:30 p.m. Fridays) doesn’t know quite enough. It could be thrilling, this show, a vivacious and smart sendup of celebrity culture that thumbs its nose at the perennial self-satisfaction of a series such as “Entourage” by tackling the underbelly of fame’s spillover. After all, this is the world of Kitson, Cirque Lodge and dog acupuncture, all of which make appearances in the first half of the premiere episode.

But the center of the action is a conscientious objector. Anna Moore (Gummer) is the daughter of two megastars, Jennifer and John, who’s strangled by good intentions (she aspires to become a journalist) and, for most of the first episode, by a series of ornately knotted scarves that are meant to connote bohemianism. The family has just moved back to Los Angeles from a two-year stint in Australia. By the end of the first episode, Anna has at least shed the scarves, although the do-gooderism remains.

In this week’s episode, she submits an article to Teen Vogue on “the socioeconomic struggles that the Maori women face,” which is promptly rejected, but she’s then assigned a piece about her family. Never mind that her folks don’t do any press — that’s how famous they are. Anna has been in Australia so long that she fails to see the trap she’s falling into, even when the editor tells her, “I’m a big fan of your parents.”

Gummer, who appears to be auditioning for a particularly exuberant theater role here, can’t quite pull off the breezy indifference that would make Anna a worthy hero. Anna appears to believe that what would make her situation, and maybe this show, more palatable is order and normalcy.

But children of stars aren’t innocent victims: They’re participants in their own corruption, willingly or otherwise. Even Anna’s brother Walt ( Tony Oller), who wants to be appreciated for his inner artist and not his parents’ fame, undermines himself with default mistrust of others, as much a victim of secondhand fame as those who embrace it.

The more engaging characters on “Gigantic” understand their role in the ecosystem and play along willingly. Children are accessories: “the perfect Prada tote or Louis Vuitton pump” says Piper ( Jolene Purdy), Anna’s best friend. She’s one of a pair of children adopted by actor friends of Jennifer and John — she’s full-figured and Asian, and her brother Finn is black (Malcolm David Kelley, probably looking for the porthole back to “Lost”). They’re liaisons for Anna and Walt to Hollywood society, but really, they want to be enablers.

Better still is Anna’s frenemy Vanessa (Mantegna), a young actress who’s emancipated from her family and has learned the rules of adulthood by studying for her film roles.

Channeling Michelle Trachtenberg’s “Gossip Girl” character Georgina Sparks, Mantegna acts through her carefully sculpted eyebrows and through sentences that drip with barely hidden subtext. In other words, she’s perfect, a successful embodiment and parody of young fame.

The show’s most credible story line is the most absurd, in which Vanessa steals a movie about Dorothy Parker from Anna’s mother and has it recast as a high school drama. It’s meant to be a commentary on how older female actresses get marginalized in the film business, but actually it’s perfectly reasonable conniving behavior for a teenager raised on movie sets. “With all due respect,” she tells an incensed Anna, “this is between Jennifer and myself.” First, she’s completely right — this is business, not personal. And it’s a great idea; some pluck she has.

Vanessa is also the engine of what likely will be the show’s dramatic tension between Anna and Joey (Ryan Rottman), a blinding set of teeth attached to a spiky haircut and a deep secret that will certainly enrage Anna. He fathered a child with another girl while she was away, something he failed to mention in his pining letters.

Fact is, Anna has no compatriots in her desire to remain unsullied by Hollywood. Piper is desperate for attention, flirting with the family psychologist and flashing her chest at a scrum of paparazzi, who shoot pictures that end up on a tabloid cover. This week, ostensibly mortified but secretly thrilled, she and Anna tease photographers with a homemade sign poking fun of the situation, which the paparazzi shoot too, because, well, why not? Everyone is acting out a facade on “Gigantic,” characters who wish they knew better but can’t, on a show that wants to know better but doesn’t.

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