‘The Two Coreys’: One Cyberstalker’s View

Two summers ago, eighties teen idol Corey Feldman moved into our building. One thing led to another, and a few weeks later New York referred to us as Feldman’s “cyberstalker.” That summer, we had a pleasant, shallow, neighborly friendship with Corey and his young wife, Susie; we even got to hold his then-infant son, Zen, once. They were normal, even boring; the only problem anyone had with them was their insistence on smoking in the hallway and leaving their cigarettes in a planter. This personal connection makes us ideally qualified to write about the new A&E show, The Two Coreys. Or maybe we’re qualified because we’re the only one willing to watch it.

The premise of the show is The Odd Couple meets You, Me and Dupree: Irresponsible, troubled Haim moves in with fastidious, neat-freak Feldman and his wife. Watching, one can’t help but imagine the producers hovering in the background like burned-out Iagos, trying desperately to find new conflicts to insinuate on their cast. The best they’ve done so far is getting Haim to order a pepperoni pizza during a contrived “important dinner” with a representative from PETA. Onetime fans of the Coreys might be satisfied just to see how their idols look after all these years, but if they’re expecting an update on the stars’ personal lives, this show raises more questions than it answers. For example, where on earth is Zen, now 2 years old? He’s the real Lost Boy. And where is this mansion of which the Feldmans are so fiercely protective? You’d never know it from the show, which portrays it as the Feldmans’ love nest, but it’s a house in Vancouver, rented by the production company.

Feldman has emphasized the scripted nature of the show in interviews, presumably to ward off questions like this. But if it’s scripted, why is it so dull? We thought the magic of TV could make anyone interesting, even our ex-neighbor, but we guess we were dreaming a little dream. —Lindsay Robertson