Duck Fox

Credit: Syfy

So I missed a lot. Since the 4th episode in the series Bitten has continued to deviate from its source material, a move which is yielding steadily more impressive returns. Much like The Vampire Diaries, Bitten chooses to expand on the parameters of its source material by delving deeper into the characters who already existed within this world. Where as Zachary Cain was a brutish maniac in the books, the writers gave Noah Danby a more involved character to play by creating a human love interest. In a lot of ways, Amber's (played by Eve Harlow) relationship with Cain is a cautionary tale for Logan, and a powerful reflection on just how wrong things could have gone for Elena and Clay. Of course, both Elena and Clay reflect on their discovery of Amber differently.

Clay is immediately determined to kill her, and while Elena understands the necessity of maintaining secrecy, she isn't so eager to kill an innocent woman. And Elena is the one who confronts Amber while Clay stays behind to do the dirty work of torturing Cain for information, hoping to find a cure for the poison Jeremy was exposed to during last episode's knife fight. Oh, and in case you missed it, Antonio also got cut up in the Mutt ambush last episode and died. So.... I really should have reviewed last week....

The rest of the Mutts eventually confront Elena at the diner, shooing Amber away, and Elena gets to have a nice chat with Karl where she finds out he's secretly Heisenberg, cause there was hella ricin on the blade that cut Jeremy. Luckily for wolves, a blood transfusion will allow them to survive the otherwise fatal poison. The moment where Elena hurriedly begun the transfusion, noting to Jeremy she wasn't sure of their compatibility but being rebuffed by Jeremy's simple "We're the same," was almost adorable.

The rest of the episode looks like wheel spinning, but I'm not considerably more confident in this series' ability to tie together loose threads into the main storyline. Logan remains absent for much of the episode, probably out shopping for his impending child with Rachel (yeah, I missed a lot). Perhaps the most impressive bit of adaptation improvement Bitten is doing, however, is actually making Phillip relevant and almost... interesting! He's getting more and more suspicious of Elena, but his suspicions are mostly on the backburner until he can figure out who uploaded the wolf video. To do this, he enlists the help of an old techie ex-girlfriend, Sylvie. Sylvie (Natalie Lisinska) is putting the moves on Phillip at just the right time to start making him question his commitment to Elena. Naturally, the episode continues to run with this theme and wraps everything up with Clay confronting Elena and sorta apologizing for not telling her what he was before biting her, but mostly leaving it up to her to determine if they were "the real thing."

In the end, it feels much more like the prisoner referred to in the episode's title wasn't Zachary Cain, but instead the relationship between Clay and Elena. They've both been locking their feelings for each other away behind Elena's relationship with Phillip and Clay's respect for Elena and fear of losing her in the war with the Mutts. Now that the series has claimed three major characters and created some relevancy for the peripheral humans, the rest of the season is shaping up to be fantastic.

Getting Our Ducks in a Row:

• But seriously, the sheer amount of female characters escalated to relevant positions is nothing to sniff at. I quite like Sylvie. 
• Clay also has a tense conversation with the sheriff. Of course, most of her conversations end up becoming tense. Tis the life of a small town sheriff. 
• I'm beginning to suspect that Diane is in on it with the Mutts. She's been in way too many episodes to justify otherwise.... Okay, I just want more Diane.

Grade: 8.0/10

There are a lot of ways to handle death on a television series. Both plotwise and character wise. You can use the death of a character, whether minor or major, as a stepping stone to more aggressively move a story arc forward, or you can slow down and explore what the deceased meant to the other characters on the show. It's also possible to do both, but unless a TV show has created an atmosphere of breakneck plot twists and heel-face/face-heel turns every few episodes, it's hard to prevent shortchanging character for plot or vice-versa. Bitten opts to take the best of both worlds, but it doesn't quite have what it takes to tug at your heartstrings while simultaneously keeping you at the edge of your seat.

"Grief" opens on the minimalist funeral for Pete. The only individuals in attendance are the residents of Stonehaven, and they're barely done toasting to Pete when they hear the howl of a werewolf. After a short chase scene where the group loses the Mutt in the woods, Elena takes a minute to discuss the difficulty of balancing her life with Logan. It's rather unfortunate that the show is still sprinkling in bits of Elena's human life. I mentioned in an earlier review that there's little need for Elena to struggle so much with her werewolf and human sides, because there are numerous excuses she could craft that are believable and probably pretty true. Telling Phillip that Pete passed might make him think she's having really bad luck lately, but he certainly wouldn't suspect anything is out of the ordinary.

Thankfully, Elena decides to go see Jeremy before Logan starts complaining about how hard it is "pretending" to be an incredibly successful psychiatrist with a beautiful girlfriend... Elena and Jeremy's conversation is much more revelatory, with Elena mentioning she's never grieved for anyone before, as she was only five and thus too young to really understand her feelings when her mother died. Their conversation reveals an interesting dynamic, with Jeremy enunciated he feels as though Elena were his own child and Elena being angry that Jeremy's not taking steps to avenge Pete. Elena runs off and alleviates the tension she's feeling with a run, being joined by Clay.

Jeremy, meanwhile, goes to talk to the sheriff whose expanded role is actually doing wonders for the show. Though her role still consists mainly of eying Jeremy suspiciously and asking seeming innocent questions about his connection to the murders at Stonehaven, she's definitely much more savvy than your average small town cop. She even takes a minute to reach out to her retired predecessor about the Danvers, and apparently Stonehaven has seen even more mysterious occurrences-- a few years ago a telephone lineman was called to the property, but he was never heard from again after driving up there. They found his car later, but no sign of what had happened to the lineman himself. I'm guessing he became wolf food.

After their run, Elena and Clay take a roll in the hay- literally. Okay, so technically it's leaves, but point is they have sex, Adam and Eve style. They return to Stonehaven and Nick and Logan realize what happened (having a nose that's that accurate has got to be more of a curse than a blessing...), but the two play coy. Later Elena makes it clear to Clay that their sleeping together was a mistake. But this being a kinda-sorta love story, their compatibility gets mentioned by gossipy girls in diner when they go back on the hunt for the Mutt.

And on the hunt they go. After checking out a diner where one patron has a particular dislike of Clay (don't worry, Elena nips his violence in the bud by casually catching his fist mid punch), Elena and Clay pick up the trail of the Mutts at a hotel and check it out, only to find the new Mutt, Thomas Leblanc, is an escaped convict, same as the old one. They also see familiar Mutts named Kane and Karl Marsten enter with the newbie. They hide in the adjoining room, Elena using body spray to cover their scent, and then escape out the window before any of the Mutts catch on.

After regrouping at Stonehaven, Elena and Clay fill everyone in, and Jeremy realizes Kane and Marsten are likely planning to take out all of Danvers clan. This scene is intercut with Daniel Santos, an old pack member and great great grandson of an Alpha, visiting Logan. Daniel asks for Logan to convince Jeremy and Clay to let him join Stonehaven to deal with the Mutts. Of course, Logan is skeptical as Clay killed Daniel's brother some time ago.

The episode closes with the Stonehaven gang heading back to Mutt motel. Clay leads the charge, but before he can open the door Elena pulls him out of the way. Good thing, too, because a shotgun was rigged to shoot upon opening the door. With that trap out of the way, they head in safely and see an empty room. At least empty of people. It seems to be pretty full of rage, though, judging by a note scribbled onto the walls by one of the Mutts, saying they will be coming after Elena for their notebook. They also call her a bitch, which I find weird because I have to doubt Elena would be offended by that.

In terms of character development, the first half the episode definitely made up the bulk of actual forward progress. Elena's grieving process is fairly straightforward, but we do get to see a bit of how she and most of the other members of the pack come together to deal with such a loss. That said, Elena's backsliding by sleeping with Clay felt a little too tacky. I get that she's having trouble dealing with Peter's death, and what could make you feel better than a roll in the hay with Clay? But her casual sexcapades right after talking down to Jeremy about how he wasn't doing anything to avenge Pete struck an odd tone. Especially when she basically insists it won't happen again. But I've never had much patience for the "will they, won't they" thing.

What's great about this particular post-death episode is how easily it slides into moving the plot along. After the first half of the episode, with the small exception of Phillip and his little sister talking about Elena (BTW, what was up with Natalie Brown's speech? It sounded like she was hiding an accent, but she's apparently Canadian so I don't know why she sounded so weird) and how perfect she is for him, every single scene seemed to further the plot along.

While "Grief" didn't really blend the plot and character aspects together as well as a more seasoned show might have, it did escalate things in Stonehaven, and the fact that Pete's dead means the storyline has real stakes. If the show manages to just get rid of Phillip, it'll really be something to look forward to in the coming weeks.

Getting Our Ducks in a Row:

• Daniel Santos and Karl Marsten are shaping up to be truly great antagonists. Marsten in particular is really creating that "love to hate" kind of a vibe. 
• I keep saying get rid of Phillip- and meaning it- but I will miss Natalie Brown's Diane:
• "I'm a woman. We just know things."
• Also, if they get rid of all the human world stuff then Logan's girlfriend would be gone too, and we'd be left with just Elena and the sheriff for female cast members. This whole "women aren't born wolves" thing kinda sucks for the show.

Grade: 8.0/10 

Image Credit: IMDB

Whew, sorry for missing last week’s episode—Winter weather is a real bitch. And yes, I will be working “bitch” into all these reviews, so if you’re offended by that word, bite me… Get it? Cause they’re werewolves?!....

I thought it was funny….

Back to your regularly scheduled lycanthropy!

Last week saw the “Mutt” attacking two more young women. The show continues to be a little ghoulish with the wolf killings. The problem is that the atmosphere of danger and mystery being built isn’t well defined enough to make the gruesome killings feel appropriate for this series. There’s still too much of a mishmash of seemingly unrelated plot lines, mostly the girlfriend of Logan and boyfriend of Elena. Speaking of Elena: the second episode saw our protagonist spar/flirt (Splirt? Flar?) with both Clay and Nick. Then Nick and Clay also have to spar while shirtless, for some reason. Let no one ever say this show doesn’t understand it’s audience. The rest of the episode sprinkled in bits of Clay’s past—turns out his now deceased father was also a Mutt hunter by profession, but got killed while on the hunt.

Last night’s episode was much more exciting on the whole. There was a night club wolf out, a tense showdown between Nick, Peter, Logan and a businessman Mutt named Karl Marsten who wants his own territory, and Clay killed a guy. Yeah. That escalated quickly.

I have to say, I didn’t think the series would manage to reach its full potential this early. The first episode was overwrought and reliant on clichés about balancing a dual life. But by this episode the show has neatly refocused on the hunt for the Mutt, and is much better for it. Elena Michaels isn’t the kind of character that is good at pretending to be who she’s not, and the show makes this clear up front by her inability to keep her story straight. So when she is given a task she actually knows how to do-- instead of forcing herself into a dress so she can make small talk with her boyfriend’s mother—she is immediately more interesting and likable. The tension between her and Clay is just icing on the cake.

The sequence to which “Trespass” attaches all its dramatic weight is undoubtedly the showdown between Elena and the Mutt at the bar. What I enjoyed so much about this was how neither Elena nor Clay were fully comfortable with letting one another take control; Elena is obviously less experienced hunting Mutts than Clay, but she’s anxious to finish things and fully aware of Clay’s disconnect with the “human world”. As badass as Clay is, he’s not exactly the kind of person who blends in. Not just because he’s built like a linebacker and has a weird obsession with going shirtless, but because he has no use for humans. So Elena’s refusal to infiltrate the club with him is a logical source of tension. But to Clay’s credit, he is fully capable of appearing human (he is, apparently, a college professor), he just doesn’t like to fake it as much as Elena seems to. Clay’s been hinting since the beginning that he doesn’t buy into Elena’s own fakery either, so I have to wonder if he wasn’t intentionally bowing to Elena’s argument in order to let her feel the rush of hunting the Mutt on her own. Of course, when Elena ends up making the Mutt wolf out, not realizing he’s too new to know how to control his transformation, and the club is soon being terrorized by a rabid werewolf.
I said in the initial review that the CGI for the wolves is a bit cheesy, but it works surprisingly well in the scenes from the night club. The wolf moves with a lightness that makes it obviously fake, but it borders on looking like a creature that is simply beyond the kind of animal you would see in the real world. If nothing else, the gore is excellently handled. One poor guy is having his guts eaten when Elena catches up to the wolf and scares it off, we see just enough of a hint of his lower intestine to get the point without actually wanting to puke.

The rest of the scene plays out as one would expect—Elena forces the wolf out into the parking lot, where the sheriff has arrived amidst the madness of clubgoers fleeing. Clay doesn’t get the chance to do much before the sheriff puts a couple of rounds from her sidearm into our Mutt. The Mutt then charges her, but is hit by a passing vehicle which I have to assume is being driven by a drunk driver since it didn’t even pretend to slow down. But the most pivotal scene of this sequence is still to come. Remember that random clubber who lost a piece of his intestine to the Mutt? Well since he was bitten, he’s starting to transform.

Clay and Elena rush in to figure out how to fix their little problem. Elena suggest putting him in something called “The Cage,” which will presumably allow him to transform without risking the lives of those around him. Clay doesn’t seem to agree after seeing the poor guy’s needles. He chokes the guy out as casually as a normal person would kill a cockroach.

There are two reasons this scene is so powerful. The first is obvious: the turmoil that Elena seems to feel over killing has already been underlined by a flashback in the previous episode. But seeing her conflict is more palpable here, because she’s probably very capable of stopping Clay. Or at least doing more than pleading with Clay not to kill the man. Her not throwing down and putting her own life on the line to make Clay see reason suggests she’s not so sure she’s not wrong. Part of her also likely wants to save the poor guy the presumably incredible pain of the initial transformation. But the other reason is more subtle, as most things seem to be with Clayton Danvers. The little we know of Clay suggests he’s the “good soldier” type, doing everything he’s commanded to do by Jeremy. The idea that he’s okay with murder, so long as Jeremy commands it, is pretty much par for the course. But taking the bitten guy’s life here is a move he makes without any instruction from Jeremy. Beyond that, he does it even though he’s well aware Elena would disapprove of it. Too often in supernatural thrillers there’s such a focus on the romance between certain characters that one or both characters absolutely refuse to take actions that make them less appealing to their love interest. The fact that Clay begrudgingly carries out what he sees as his duty and risks alienating Elena over it makes him feel more real as a character. I can’t understate how awesome it is that he’s not just pining over Elena (or vice versa). 

With the hunt for the Mutt seemingly over, Elena decides to return home, and she intimates to Jeremy that her decision is due to how dark the environment is at Stonehaven. The rest of the episode appears to be bringing Elena back to the painful duality that made the pilot so dissatisfactory. There’s a dinner with Phillip, Logan and his girlfriend, and lots of quickly improvised lies about their “family.” And then, a sucker punch: Logan gets a call from Clay and reveals that Peter was gruesomely murdered not too far from Stonehaven. Elena naturally agrees to return, and now the entire group is presumably ready to avenge the death of their friend.

All of which leaves the series in an interesting position. I have no doubt that if the books are followed the series could become really amazing, but the fact that Logan has an inquisitive girlfriend and Phillip’s background has expanded make me feel like the humans are going to take on an unwelcome importance in the main plot. I suppose we’ll see how things develop.

Getting Ducks in a Row:

• I’m so glad the creepy/rapey Mutt is gone. He had a pretty awesome death scene, too.
• We should start a shirtless quota to keep track of how many times Clay removes his shirt, probably.
• I feel kind of bad; I had to go through all the imdb pages for actors in this series in order to find Peter’s name. Poor, forgettable Peter.

Grade: 8.5/10

Image Credit: Syfy

Creating a genre series in this modern, post Twilight, Vampire Diaries and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer world is not nearly as much of a risky proposition as it used to be. When you can exploit the tweens and the oversexed Laurell K. Hamilton audience, there's no need to put any thought into a production, just slap together a decent cast, tell them they'll be playing a broody vampire or plucky tomboy, and come up with a witty title. Bonus points if you adapt a novel! I'm being a little overly critical, but it's true that the formula for genre shows is getting almost as ubiquitous as the one employed for lawyer/doctor/cop shows. There are a few that manage to rise above the mediocrity by doing their own thing-- I'm looking at you, Teen Wolf and Vampire Diaries-- but the vast majority fall into the abyss of supernatural television failures. Judging from the pilot, SyFy's new Canadian import Bitten is poised to follow in the footsteps of less memorable genre fare.

It's kind of sad, too, as the premise is incredibly sound. I'm actually familiar with the original books by Kelley Armstrong. In her The Women of Otherworld series of novels, only a few of which revolve around the female werewolf who helms the series, Elena Michaels is the lone female werewolf amongst a pack of purebred (those who were born as werewolves, though they only learn to shift after puberty) men who are hunting a murderous "mutt" that belongs to no pack. The book creates a tension filled atmosphere of mystery while weaving Elena's feelings of being an outsider in both the human world and the "otherworld" into the political machinations of the werewolf packs themselves. There's also the obligatory love story between her and Clay, though thankfully Kelley doesn't attempt to force a love triangle.

The show picks up several of the same threads. The first episode opens with Elena (Laura Vandervoort) sneaking out of bed with her human lover, seeking the sweet release of transformation into a wolf. The goofy CGI somehow avoids marring the actual transformation sequence, but the stilted dialogue of the interlaced scene is a major detractor. Said scene has the aforementioned homicidal mutt literally call a woman hitting on him a slut and then wish her a safe journey. I get that he's supposed to be creepy and off putting, but it really didn't work with that dialogue. We then pick up on Elena visiting her pack brother Logan, played by Michael Xavier, and giving us the necessary exposition to understand her relationship with her boyfriend is strained by her late night wolf outs. Logan himself is balancing a fulfilling life in the human world with his girlfriend Rachel (Genelle Williams). We also get a glance of Clayton Danvers (the amazingly named Greyston Holt), doing his best "Thor as a college professor" impression. Soon all their days are ruined as Jeremy, the mysterious pack leader, requests their presence.

The episode outlines the general trajectory of the series, outlining the fact that the mutt threatens all their ways of life if he keeps murdering humans, and playing up the chemistry between Elena and all the very handsome men. Unfortunately, the episode stumbles when it attempts to build tension between Elena and Phillip (Paul Greene). The series doesn't give the context needed for us to believe Elena would shelter Phillip from her "siblings." Not when she is perfectly willing to admit a relation to Logan after being pushed only slightly. If she's willing to admit that familial relation, certainly telling him about the human world lives of her estranged pack before now wouldn't be too hard. Meanwhile the opposite problem exists for Phillip, whose family appears, but consist mainly of tired tropes (the mother who disapproves of her son's girlfriend). Not much depth is added from any of these characters' interactions with Elena.

Another issue is the scope of the mystery. To be fair, this felt like a problem with the original book, but considering the werewolf population is incredibly sparse--only a few hundred in the whole of the US in Armstrong's books-- I have to doubt that one serial killing werewolf would be a threat to any other wolf's way of life. The aforementioned book was also published in 2001, before the advent of cell phones and all the other technology that should make finding a werewolf considerably easier, so I could also forgive the fact that Jeremy had to round up everyone to hunt a single mutt even if it were believable that he would want to. I mean, it might be believable as there may be some perception of this being Jeremy's "duty" as pack leader, but it's all very vague thus far. The apparent killer is also as stereotypical as he is menacing.

But all that being said, there are some bright spots here. All of the actors are putting their best foot forward, and Laura Vandervoort's awkward hesitance in her human world scenes juxtaposed against her freely expressed confidence in the transformation scenes creates the same depth for Elena as narration did in the books. The overcast Toronto sky and haunting soundtrack also create an appropriately creepy mood.

Genre shows have certainly come a long way, but series like Bitten hang on the precipice of greatness. Instead of attempting to craft intriguing characters and guide them through dilemmas both supernatural and human, the series lazily adapts an established property and slaps together tropes that are well trodden. It's not a complete mess or waste of time, though, and maybe it's just time to accept that the supernatural drama has become another cornerstone of television that is doomed to be repeated ad nauseum alongside your regularly scheduled civil service dramas. I think I'll follow this weekly, just to see if it improves, but for now:

7.0/10

Enjoy It Like a Fox If:

• Laura Vandervoort was the only reason you watched Smallville
• You're into wolves
• You're into men with great abs that turn into wolves
• You're glad they didn't go with the original title, Bitchin'

Duck It If:

• Genre ain't yo thang
• You need more compelling mysteries
• You want a more complex depiction of a relationship strained by secrets.
• You can't stand that the title wasn't Bitchin'