"American Heiress" is the latest primetime soap or telenovela to premiere on MyNetworkTV. This soap tells the story of the rich Wakefield family. The sole parental figure is business tycoon Lionel Wakefield (played by John Aprea.) The mother left the family many years before and left Lionel to raise his now adult children. Damian (Race Owen) chose to join Lionel at the family export business but also serves as the narrator and controller of all evil that befall this family. He desperately wants to please his father by working hard but when his work goes unnoticed, Damien hatches a plan to kill his father and his sister.

The remaining siblings include the spoiled most loved daughter Elizabeth (Alicia Leigh Willis), the second son who chose to be a racecar driver rather than join the family business Matthew (Robert Buckley), and the second daughter, Loren (AnnaLynne McCord), who would rather spite the family by sleeping with her father’s business partners than go on vacation with her family. Damian hatches a plot with co-worker and confidant Solomon (Joe Manganiello) to rig the private plane carrying Lionel and Elizabeth to crash while they are flying off to their family vacation.

The plans go awry when a CIA Agent who lost her partner while investigating Lionel’s company smuggling weapons into South America, confronts Lionel about his business practices. Lionel confronts Damian as being behind the arrangement and their argument causes Lionel to have a massive heart attack. The plane still crashes in the jungles of Guatemala but Elizabeth and the main pilot, J.D. Bruce (Carter MacIntyre) survives. The spoiled princess and the proud blue-collar worker must learn to survive in this jungle until they are rescued. Damian secretly calls off the search.

This show has the makings of a more dark style than your average soap opera. I think casting Race Owen as the villain mastermind was a great choice as he not only looks dark and foreboding whereas his siblings look more prim and proper but the voice he uses to narrate even sounds like an evildoer.