TT IS ON HIATUS

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Unfortunately, my work schedule has gotten kind of crazy, so I've been forced to take a break. But I hope to return to the world of Fringe, Supernatural and more very soon. Thanks for your patience.

Supernatural: After School Special

Whatever happened to the after school specials? I used to love those things. The made-for-TV movies usually aired on ABC (but NBC and CBS had their own versions too) every few months or so and warned kids all about the horrors that teens face. There must have been a dozen alone on the dangers of drinking. My personal fave: The Late Great Me! Story of a Teenage Alcoholic. Ah, those were the days. But now’s not the time to reminisce when we’ve got a football player getting his hand pureed in a food processor.

This week, Supernatural served up a very different sort of after school special. We got to see what the W. Brothers were like when they were young’uns. Much like the season 1 episode “Something Wicked,” we were provided a peek into Sam and Dean’s past. A possible demonic possession brings them to a small town in Indiana. It just so happens the brothers lived there 12 years ago, during their time on the run with their father.

Working undercover, Sam as a janitor and Dean as a P.E. coach, they look into a rash of attacks at the local high school where they were once students. Their undercover gigs are the perfect excuse for Dean’s priceless tube socks and red shorts combo.


In a curious turn of events, the geeks and the losers of Truman High have started to turn on the jocks and cheerleaders. The nerds are doling out some hardcore punishment on the bullies who hasseled them in the past. Could they be possessed by demons? And what’s the deal with the black oil oozing out of the nerds’ orifices? (Hmm, shades of old X-Files mythology.)

Said black oil is actually ectoplasm, which means it must be a ghost who’s taking possession of various student bodies on campus. Naturally, the spirit was someone the Winchesters knew during their days at Truman. Barry Cook, one of Sam’s old chums, slit his wrists on school grounds. Back in the day, Barry was a magnet for bullies. Now it seems he’s returned to seek his revenge. Or has he? Could it actually be another specter haunting the high school’s hallways?

The ghost possession story is one of the strongest we’ve seen on this show lately. But even better, it gives us greater insight into our heroes, Sam in particular. And the younger actors do the characters justice. Brock Kelly is great as a Teen Dream Dean and Colin Ford is even better, and a real sweetie, as Tween Sam.


They not only have the facial expressions and vocal inflections of their older counterparts down, they also add real depth to their parts. Kelly shows us young Dean’s dickish side when it comes to the ladies, while Ford expertly reveals young Sam’s reluctance to go into the “family business.” We’ve always known that Sam avoided his destiny as a demon hunter for as long as possible, but it’s intriguing to see how heavily this burden weighed on him even as an adolescent. And the adults weren't too shabby either. You could actually see Sam's conflict over his choices in life flicker across Jared Padalecki's face.

This episode was co-written by two more newbies, Daniel Loflin and Andrew Dabb and they seem like great additions to the staff. (They also penned “Yellow Fever” earlier this season.) Since the show’s return from the holiday hiatus, the episodes have just been okay in my opinion. But this one was excellent. It perfectly demonstrated that just about anyone can feel isolated and alone. And it’s also easy to step across the line from one of the bullied to a bully, or from a champion to a chump. High school truly is hell.

Terror Test Score: A-

Fringe: The No-Brainer

It’s been awhile since I took my last look at Fringe. So, I thought it was high time that I got freaky with the freshman Fox series again. And tonight was the perfect time to dive back in because what could be freakier than liquid brains?

Although the plot was a retread of Pulse and The Ring, it provided one of the better episodes in the series so far. When a video containing an unusual computer virus goes viral, it melts the gray matter of anyone who clicks on the file. Flashing images put the viewers in a trance, while a ghostly hand reaches out from the screen and grabs hold of their noggins. The clues ultimately lead back to an unemployed programmer with one heck of a grudge. (Hey, more Asian horror.)

The script was surprisingly strong. Jump-out-of-your-seat scares mixed with emotional moments and genuinely funny lines. (“I hope she doesn’t notice the $2,000 for the baboon seminal fluid I ordered…I hope I can recall why I ordered it.”) The pacing was also much tighter. Plus, there were enough liquid brains to fill up a Slurpee machine. Yum!

We also got more of a peek into Dr. Bishop’s past. A woman named Jessica Warren showed up in the courtyard at Harvard. She was the mother of the young assistant killed in the lab accident all those years ago, and wanted to have a talk with Walter. Although Peter tried to prevent them from meeting, he eventually relented. And when the two finally met, we got to see Walter’s softer side. I love the fact that we’re slowly uncovering more and more layers of the Bishop boys.


Best of all, we got a Dawson’s Creek reunion. Mary Beth Peil, who played Grams on the teen soap, portrayed Mrs. Warren and brought some real gravitas to her small role. This week’s other guest star did a great job, too. As the villain, Chris Bauer (True Blood and The Wire) was sad and scary all at once. Also, Anna Torv is showing steady improvement. The introduction of her sister Rachel (Ari Graynor) and niece Ella has provided more opportunities for Olivia to lighten up.

Last week’s episode also introduced Michael Gaston as Agent Sanford Harris. He’s reviewing the Fringe Division on behalf of Homeland Security. Although I applaud the fact that an adversary has been brought into the FBI (it’s kind of ridiculous how much Olivia’s team regularly gets away with), it strains credulity that the agent she helped prosecute for sexual harassment would now be overseeing her division. Why complicate things? Why couldn’t he just be a bureaucratic asshole? Plus, Gaston portrays Harris with the mustache-twirling pomposity of Snidley Whiplash. Dial it down a notch, dude.

But that’s a minor quibble in the face of big progress. Next week’s episode looks like it will keep up the good work. The preview promises bloody noses and bloated mutants. Freaky!

Terror Test Score: B+

Supernatural: Criss Angel Is a Douchebag

Magicians are lame. And I’m not just talking about Criss Angel, who gets the opposite of a shout-out this week. (Best episode title ever!) I’m also talking about David Blaine, David Copperfield and Doug Henning. Basically, if you’re a magician and your first name starts with a D, you probably suck. In fact, you’ve got to go all the way back to Harry Houdini to find an illusionist with any kind of cachet or cool. So, I was somewhat concerned to see how Supernatural would handle the magic ‘n mayhem promised in this episode.

At a magician’s convention in a small Iowa town, we meet the Incredible Jay (played by Barry Bostwick). He’s a washed-up escape artist who’s at the end of his rope and worried he has no more tricks up his sleeve. So he decides to perform death-defying illusions he hasn’t attempted in years. Some are so dangerous even Houdini wouldn’t go near them. But Jay’s got more gumption than a real gift. As a curtain covers the stage, we watch his silhouetted form struggle to shirk off his bonds before blades slice through his torso or a noose snaps his neck.

But each time, he manages to escape to certain death. It might look like a well-performed illusion, but the secret to his stunts is actually real magic. Somewhere, in another part of town, other magicians fall down dead from mysterious stab wounds or a hangman’s noose. Each man dies in Jay’s place with a cursed tarot card nearby, sealing their fates. So does that mean the aging illusionist is dabbling in dark magic, or could someone close to him be the culprit?

Written by relative newcomer Julie Siege, this episode isn’t bad, but it would have been better served by the light, deft touch of Ben Edlund. Other than liberal use of the word “douchebag” and a side trip to an S&M bar, the script doesn’t have enough humor and fun. Instead, we spend half the episode on a drab murder mystery and the other half watching a trio of aging magicians grouse about getting old. Was this Supernatural, or Murder, She Wrote?

Although Bostwick turns in a great performance (along with John Rubinstein and Richard Libertini as his fellow magicians), he takes up way too much time. It’s fine to shift attention away from the Winchesters every so often to mix things up. But when you take that approach, it’s got to be centered on really compelling characters. And the Incredible Jay didn’t quite cut it.


And ouch, watch out for those storytelling anvils falling from the sky. At the end of the ep, Jay has to turn on one of his “brothers” to stop him from doing something horribly, horribly wrong. Hey, who does that sound like?

There was one bright spot, though. The episode briefly focuses on Sam and not Dean for a change. Ruby shows up to goad him back into demon hunting to stop Lucifer from making a return engagement. And we get see poor Sam feel a little tortured about killing demons behind Dean’s back. More of that please. It’s high time the younger Winchester got a bigger spotlight. But oh how I wish Katie Cassidy still had the role of Ruby. Genevieve Cortese is wimpy when she should be wily and wicked. Too bad we can’t make her disappear.


Terror Test Score: B-

Supernatural: Family Remains

They’re back. Finally. It feels like a dog’s age since the last Supernatural episode aired. When we left off, angels and demons were battlin’ in a barn. There was a lot of mystical mumbo-jumbo. And Dean got busy in the backseat of the Impala with an ex-seraph. I couldn’t wait for the show to return to see exactly where this season arc’s was headed. But instead of a mythology ep filled with omens and angels (the previouslies suggested as much) we get a one-off that co-stars one very ghostly girl. Hey, I’ll take whatever I can get. I’m just glad the Winchesters are back on my TV.

Trying to chase away his memories of Hell, Dean’s looking to take on any job he can find. That brings the brothers to a house in Nebraska that’s basically Amityville on a farm. A man mysteriously died there not too long ago. Sam and Dean suspect he was slain by a spirit. They enter the empty house determined to dispatch any ghosts or ghouls on the premises. There’s just one problem. A moving truck pulls up soon after with a family about to settle into their new home. When they bought the house, the real estate agent failed to inform them it might be haunted. I guess that sort of thing happens when you always be closing. Naturally, the family provides one big headache that Sam and Dean just don't need. Kind of hard to go ghost huntin’ with civilians gettin’ in the way.

In the next hour, we get some pretty good scares. Particularly in one sequence that finds Dean treading in the tight spaces between the walls of the house to track his prey. There's other fun stuff, too. In a cool twist, the girl who haunts the not-so-humble abode isn’t a spirit at all, but a wild child who’s inbred and has barely seen the light of day. Plus, she's creepy as all get out. And hey look, it’s Supergirl (a.k.a. Helen Slater) as the Mom.


“Family Remains” also reveals the secrets of the former owners of the house, along with those of the new occupants. And we see how much Dean’s torment over his days as a torturer in Hell drives him to do good now that he’s back on Earth. As the episode ends with the usual brotherly heart-to-heart on the side of a road, we discover that Dean took to torturing like a duck to water. After years of feeling pain on the rack, it was a relief to doll out some punishment for a change. But somehow, this latest relevation doesn’t pack as much of a punch. It just feels like more of the same.


So basically, this is a filler ep, meant to slow things down so we can take a breath before we dive back into the deep waters. Trouble is, we’ve already had plenty of space to breathe during the long hiatus over the holidays. And next week won’t bring us any closer to the answers we seek. But there will be badass magicians, a bed of bloody spikes and Barry Bostwick, so I guess that will have to do.

And in the meantime, you can check out my review of Jensen's new movie My Bloody Valentine 3-D here. Can't wait to see Jared in the new Friday the 13th next month!

Terror Test Score: B

Congratulations!

To Anna Paquin, for her Golden Globe win last night. She, of course, won for her role as Sookie Stackhouse on True Blood. The show itself was also nominated but lost to the very worthy Mad Men. Check out her winning moment (how great to hear that theme music again!), plus a clip of the cast celebrating afterward, below. (Don't know how long it will last before it's yanked, so catch it while you can.)

13—Fear Is Real: Meet the Mastermind

There are levels of bad. There’s the Ghost Whisperer kind of bad. Then, there’s the Point Pleasant kind of bad. (Don’t remember that one? Good, you’re better off.) But with 13—Fear Is Real, we’ve reached a whole new level, and I think it might be rock bottom. After watching the premiere, I’ve come to the conclusion that the best thing about this show is its movie-style poster.

This new reality series aired last night on the CW. Meant to be a horror movie come to life, it’s a mix of prank show, like Scare Tactics, and competition, like Scream Queens. Thirteen contestants have been dumped in a desolate cabin in the middle of the Louisiana Bayou. They have to face their deepest fears for the chance at a semi-big prize: $66,666. Stranded in the woods, they carry hand-held cameras to record their every move. Basically, it’s Blair Witch meets Big Brother.


An unseen “Mastermind” provides instructions for the various challenges. His narration—complete with menacing monologues and dramatic distortion—is supposed to be reminiscent of Jigsaw but is really just a rip-off. And the challenges are both too corny and too contrived. (Although I must admit the buried-alive one did look kind of creepy.)

But those things could be forgiven if the show were at least entertaining. Sadly, it fails in many more ways, from the title sequence that looks like a bad Nine Inch Nails video circa ’92 at the show’s open to the cheesetastic “last will and testament” video at the end.


Then there are the contestants who were seemingly selected not for their scintillating personalities but on the basis of whether they had ever seen a reality show before. Were they really not expecting the so-called “twists” that anyone could have seen coming? And several seemed to think that bad stuff could actually happen to them. Never mind the fully-staffed production crew that couldn’t have been too far away.

Naturally, these thirteen frightened souls fall into familiar stereotypes. The beautiful blonde is a dimwit with big boobs. The punk guy who’s a ghost hunter (I had no idea that was a legitimate gig outside the Sci Fi Channel) has an impressively high mohawk almost as tall as he is. And the black dude starts rapping within the first five minutes.


The production is crap too, particularly the overuse of hand-held cameras by the contestants. It’s distracting, especially since regular camera operators are shooting them as well. Who’s responsible for this atrocity? Jay Bienstock one of the producers of Survivor, and sadly Sam Raimi and his production partner Rob Tapert.

As of right now, I don’t think this show will air long enough for us to find out who wins. But then again, I didn’t like the premiere of Scream Queens and grew to enjoy that show. Could the same thing happen here? Nah, I don’t think so. Let’s face it. The fear is far from real. Can’t say the same about the boredom, though. That is very real.

Terror Test Score: D-