Ten Statements About....THE FADES EPISODE TWO (2011)

Forget all the gore-smeared monsters in this show...this
gal's the scariest thing in here...

"Your sister was naked?"
"Well, the important thing was that she was dead."

1) I give this show credit for coming up with a fairly unique way of doing the 'previously' pre-credit recap. By making it a sort of video diary from Mac, we not only get a more flavorful recap, we get a definite sense of the show's voice right off the bat, so we can decide if it's for us or not.

Of course, considering Mac continues to be a second rate Xander dropping random pop culture references, I wonder if new viewers might choose the 'not for us' option.

2) Was it wrong of me to wish that the sight of a dead Anna meant we wouldn't have to deal with Lily Loveless' tone-deaf acting this episode?

(Sadly, I did not get my wish, and the world is poorer for it.)

3) Given the girl on the toilet last episode and the rather protracted incest riff in this one, I have to really wonder if writer Jack Thorne perceives this as the kind of humor that'll appeal to an American audience, or if he's just really, really, really peculiar.

4) The sequence in the orphanage may very well be the first thing this series gave me that doesn't smack of Whedon. Yeah, it's all a set-up to get us to another Giles-like character, but there are touches--the ghost Natalie and her bi-polar attitude toward Paul, the way Niel communicates with his now-dead mentor by writing in his hand, each letter remaining as a burning after image for a second--that seem to indicate the series does want to become something other than British Television's nineteenth Buffy rip-off.

Yeah, there may be ghosts/monsters hanging around Paul,
but asking him to talk to a girl?  THAT'S scary....

5) You know what I like about Sophie Wu's Jay? Yeah, she's obviously meant to be the romantic interest for Paul, and Wu doesn't bring anything interesting to that role...but the style sense of the character, with her penchant for what appears to be psuedo-60's modwear implies there's a story there, a reason why she is going to end up standing with outsider Paul as opposed to the more conventional Anna other than the script needs her to...plus it makes her stand out in the sea of chav-wear that is the show's school-set sequences.

6) Okay, first the pissing, then the incest, now necrophilia? I'm willing to call it--the humor on this show is waaaay too icky, and must go.

7) Admittedly, another thing that sort of works is how there are sequences that feature some of the now-dead cast members walking along with their loved one, playing silent witness to what's going on in the real world. One scene in particular, with the dead Sarah following her husband home and witnessing his bedding of another woman, is made all the more atmospheric by the way Natalie Dormer's expression never changes; it's as if the director is inviting us to read our own impressions into Sarah's face.

8) Okay, Johnny Harris' Neil is growing on me. I find it fascinating how Harris is creating a sort of tension between his rough look and his attitude. You get the impression that Neil wants to be a gentle, kinder teacher but doesn't have to tool set to ease this kid into the job he has to do. It's another sign of the show wanting to move away from its Whedon-esque remit into something more original.



Apparently, these ghosts get their
special effects from the same place
Time Lords do.



9) Every time I think the series has found the right track, emphasizing the subtle as opposed to the overt (the scare scene involving the mangled soccer ball was particularly impressive), I get dragged back into the belief that there's not many good ideas in the show's head. After emphasizing the show is about ghosts for an hour and change, it brings in this new angle that makes the Fades into not-quite-zombies, and it's back to following trends.

10) I don't care about the ghoulish, red-eyed, pakour-ish ghosties that are the bulk of the creatures in the series--Natalie is proving to be the scariest thing within. Jenn Murray's body language gives her a sort of personality that's one half impish and one half fucking insane. I want to see more of this actress.

Overall...there is some improvement in the show, as it struggles to gain an identity separate from the show the BBC wants it to emulate. Whether it ultimately succeeds lies with whether it can step out of the shadow of Joss Whedon and into a more nuanced and subtle style of storytelling.

Ten Statements About....THE FADES EPISODE ONE (2011)

"Yep...riding bikes indoors...'cause we're DAREDEVILS!"

"Do you think I'm mad?"

"Well if you're mad, we'll find a way to cope with it. But it's equally possible that what we're seeing is what other people can't, and you're, you know, special."

1) Well, this is a much different version of estate living than we got in the Davies-era Doctor Who, that's for sure. This is a much more broken down environment for our hero to play in. But then, given that this show makes it clear that it's a horror show--from its earthy color pallet to the skittering figures in the background to the shot of series lead Paul (Iain De Caetecker) doing his best Anthony Perkins upon seeing the ghostie of the week--the show's background is appropriate.

2) I know Mac, assayed by Daniel Kaluuya, is meant to be the Xander to Paul's Buffy--you know, the wisecracking comic relief guy who can get truly annoying--but the guy won me over fairly early on. The the way he sells his rationalization of the gunfire he heard as 'they can't be real gunshots. We're in England' won me over in a flash.

3) Eyeball licking monsters...ewwwwwww.

4) Somehow I can't imagine an American horror or suspense show that makes such a big deal about the hero peeing his pants. A comedy, sure...but a deadly serious show about ghosts infringing on the real world...

(But then, given the girl on the toilet in a later scene, I'm beginning to think the producers of this show have an obsession with urine.)

THIS is the true horror of The Fades....

5) Wow...so I see overacting teenagers confusing brattiness with psychotic behavior isn't confined to the United States.  Thanks a lot, Lily Loveless...

6) Am I the only one who wonders if Tom Ellis was hired solely for his remarkable resemblance to Dylan McDermott?

7) I have to say...of all the characters, I think I like Daniela Nardini's Helen the best. She's got an edge of ruthlessness and practicality right from the start...and there's there's definitely a sense that her hard bitten nature is not derived from her losing faith--that it may actually be there because of her faith. Pity I suspect she won't be around for Episodes two through seven.

8) You know, the script by Jack Thorne plants in our heads the idea that having organic matter pass through the fades burns them...but the surprise in learning that it isn't a metaphor, and that a fade will burst into embers and ash once you walk through it, is one of the better supernatural moments of the story.

Boy, the Ghost Busters sure fell on hard times....

9) Okay, the constant pop culture references are beginning to get on my nerves. They're forced, and only serves to remind me that this is yet another attempt by the BBC to get a second lil' Whedonverse-esque merchandising machine up and spitting out cash.

10) You know, now that I've got a better look at it, maaaaaybe I'd be more freaked by eyeball licking monster dude if he didn't look like Andy Dick after a few too many nights of partying.

Overall...this is better than some of the earlier attempts British television had made to recreate Buffy (I'm looking at you, Hex and Demons)...but I don't know if there's enough there to raise it up above being nothing more than a pale imitation of Joss Whedon's baby.

Of course, I have to also wonder why a nation with such a rich heritage of horror fiction keeps looking to a series over a decade old for inspiration for their own television genre shows.

Flat And Red And Shiny Inside: Welcome To Bizzaro-Sunnydale!

(Note: This is one of ten essays I did for my old LiveJournal prior to my adopting the 10 Statements format. Since most of them are pretty funny, and many of them have some interesting insights still, I'm going to be posting them here. If you want to say it's for 'historical significance,' that's cool.)

Once more, my Netflix queue works in mysterious ways. As I'm working my way through the complete Buffy The Vampire Slayer series, I receive the second of three discs covering the first season of...Hex. Why I didn't get the first disc first I will never know.

What is Hex? Hex is a British series co-produced by Sony which represents the peculiar obsession British television has with finding every possible way to rip off Buffy, something they've been doing since Russell T. Davies patterned the revival of Doctor Who after the Whedon-verse.

(According to Paul O'Brien of If Destroyed, Still True, this isn't the most baldfaced rip-off of Buffy the Brits have produced. That honor goes to ITV's Demons which, among other things, features a mentor figure named...Rupert.)

I would seriously, seriously like to listen in to the pitch meeting for this series. "Well, you know, everyone loves that Vampire Slayer show, right? Well, what if we do something like that and set it in a boarding school 'cause, you know, that would make it exotic to the Yanks, right? We can make the girl a...a WITCH, that's it! Not only a witch, but the latest in a long line of witches, you know, like the Slayers only with magical powers. Besides, they've got a witch on that show, and everyone loves that series with the three hot girls who are witches, what do they call it? That's right...Cursed. And her best friend...well, she can't be a witch anymore, so--I know! We'll have the mysterious boyfriend type kill her so she can be a...a ghost, and the great thing is we can still make her a lesbian like the best friend on that show, and give her a crush on the heroine, and a girlfriend who's also a ghost! And that boyfriend type, we should show how edgy we are by making him the chase villain...and he can be...I know! Everyone liked Angel, right? So we can make him a....a fallen angel! That's different from a vampire, right? And since we're going to be making it for you, we can put in more violence, and have our heroine swear and all, 'cause that'd make our show more edgy, you know?"

Jeez-us.

Watching Hex is like watching what Buffy would be like if it was being produced by Dan DiDio. We're talking a series that lasted two seasons that piles on the sex, violence and curse words (I actually had to rewind one segment of the show to confirm I heard Cassie, the main character, utter the word 'fuck') since the producers felt it would make Hex more adult, not realizing that the characterization and plotline of the show is...

No, we're not trying to be Buffy..why you ask?

Well, there is not much in the way of characterization and plotlines. Our Buffy analogue, Cassie (played by vacuous blonde Christina Cole), spend far more time having things done to her than doing things. In the three stories on this disc, she is possessed by some sort of bitch-creature so she can have sex with the boyfriend/chase villian Azazael (played by the thoroughly bland Michael Fassbinder) so she can become pregnant with his child so she can have said child aborted so it can be claimed by Azazael and raised as his son Malachi.... Given that the series ascribes telepathic and telekinetic abilities to Cassie, she does absolutely nothing with them, preferring apparently to be terrorized and traumatized by what happens around her. She does so little, in fact, that the third of the episodes on the disc drags in a Faith analogue in Ella (Laura Pyper, who looks uncomfortably like Shannon Doherty...who was in Cursed, come to think of it) to do all the bad-assery stuff.

The thing that is at turns the funniest and the most risible thing about Hex is watching the segments that obviously were inspired by similar scenes in Buffy. The episodes are rife with scenes of Cassie and her best-friend-turned-ghost Thelma (the rather...healthily endowed Jemima Rooper) walking the grounds of the school talking and joking. Unfortunately, those scenes show that while the series was meant to be Sky One's answer to Buffy, they didn't understand the question in the least. And the break-up scene between Cassie and normal boyfriend Troy (Joseph Morgan, who looks uncomfortably like William Katt), it's obvious its meant to resonate with a similar scene between Buffy and Riley in Scene Five--only we know so little about both characters that it doesn't work at all. Even the opening credit sequence is a much, much too uncomfortable for my tastes emulation of the one for Charmed, with Garbage's "#1 Crush" swapped in for Love Spit Love's version of "How Soon Is Now?"

I'm of two minds here about continuing. The episodes are so uniformly dreadful that I'm tempted to remove the other two discs from my queue. And yet, there's a certain train wreck fascination to the series, as you wonder if they can get anything more wrong than they already have. It's like Hex is the mildly retarded cousin of its inspiration, and she's trying her best to fit it; you just can't help but forgive her ineptness.