Venganza Media Gazette

Blade: The Series – Season 1, Episode 7: Sacrifice

Original Air Date: August 9, 2006
Director: David Straiton

Warning: the following review contains spoilers for this and the previous episodes of Blade: The Series.  You can watch this episode free at thewb.com.

Teenage Eric Brooks eating a bag lunch.

Before I review this episode I wanted to share a revelation I had while driving to work this morning:  this is a series truly made for comic book fans, not just because it stars a comic book character but because it is written and paced like a comic book series.  Series runners Geoff Johns and David S. Goyer both have previously written for comic books so this type of storytelling must come very naturally to them.  But taking every episode of Blade as a single issue, I see all the elements that were common in every issue of a serialized comic book:  a fight or two, a few teases about a larger story or conspiracy, and a villain from a couple issues back returns to continue their role in the saga.  So the pacing and storytelling that frustrates me as a regular viewer of serialized television comes directly from Blade’s comic book origins, and I wonder if it clicked with the comic set.

I’m not sure this type of comic book pacing holds true for comics written today, with the intent of arcs being compiled and sold as trade paperbacks.  Not every issue stands alone in today’s comics, nor do they always contain a big fight.  However, in the 70’s and 80’s these conventions were expected.

Truly the two mediums should be somewhat similar in storytelling, but I think comic book audiences may be conditioned to be more forgiving than television viewers, and often pacing that works in the printed medium doesn’t work in a visual one.

But as I put to bed the pacing problems I had with previous episodes of Blade I actually now have the pleasure of reviewing my single favorite episode of the series so far — Sacrifice, a great tale about family, and in it we have two parallel stories.

Blade's father, stepmother, and Flanigan try to keep Blade's hunger satiated lest they be his next meal.

Our primary story is Blade’s (Kirk “Sticky Fingaz” Jones), as it should be but often hasn’t been.  Steppin’ Razor (Bokeem Woodbine), the vampire from Blade’s past introduced to in Episode 4, is back and there is still some “Bad Blood” between the two.  Now, rather than attack Blade directly, Steppin’ Razor is murdering seemingly random people, including a cop and an elderly nurse. Flashbacks tell us these victims all have some kind of connection to Eric Brooks (Blade’s childhood identity).

It seems the past several episodes have really wanted to include Blade’s origin story with its chronicle of the House of Chthon.  Episode 4 had the Bad Bloods talking about Blade’s induction in the gang while Episode 6 showed Blade having visions of his mother while pregnant with him.  But the problem with both those episodes was the ham-handed way they tried to tell us about Blade’s past in a way that truly had little impact on the rest of the story.  It was information Blade fans may drink up, but any casual TV viewer would be turned off by the lack of story and excitement.

But in this episode, they successfully link Blade’s present with his past, and rather than having people talk about Blade’s childhood as they did in Episode 4, here they show us through flashbacks.  Admittedly this was a common storytelling device in the first three seasons of Lost, but Blade utilizes the storytelling technique very well here.

Grounding a daywalker is a bit more difficult than an ordinary child.

We see Blade as a child (Jon Kent Ethridge) on the verge of adolescence, cared for by his father Robert Brooks (Colin Lawrence).  Robert knew of Eric’s vampiric nature, so when not supervised he would chain the boy up in a locked room and give him blood transfusions to stave off Eric’s hunger.

Robert’s aided in the cover-up of his son’s monstrous side by Viola (Robinne Fanfair), a nurse at a local hospital.  Viola steals bags of human blood from the hospital to transfuse into Eric after it is discovered cow blood made Blade ill.  Also helping is Officer Flannigan (Elias Toufexis), a local cop who helped keep Eric under control.

But as Eric reaches adolescence his hunger cannot be maintained.  He tears open a bag of blood with his teeth and drinks it, and vamps out when angry.  Desperate, Eric calls in help in the form of a vampire hunter Abraham Whistler (Adrian Mcmorran).

However, Whistler’s primary motivation isn’t to help Eric but to either kill him or turn him into a weapon that can aid Whistler’s war against vampires.  Hearing this through a door, Eric smashes his hand with a cinder block to escape his chains and runs away to his friend Mr. Taka’s convenience store.  However, the store is being robbed.  Eric defends Mr. Taka by killing and feeding on both robbers–Blade’s first kills.

His feeding is interrupted by Robert and Whistler, and one of the robbers fires off a shot, hitting Robert in the stomach.  Thinking his father dead, Eric runs away to not be seen again.

While being a flashback in this episode, this is a truly great, emotional story.  Here we get answers to questions that have to be asked, such as how does anyone raise a half-vampire without ending up in the news?  How did the thirst stay under control before Whistler came up with the serum?  But not only are those questions answered but we also have some wonderful emotions as we watch a parent covering up the crimes of a child, and a child trying to come of age and come to terms with what he is.

Young Eric Roberts had a good ethic on hunting - he eats what he kills.

In addition, we get Whistler, and he has a grand entrance.  Sure, this is not played by Kris Kristofferson, it’s a much younger man, but he is given an incredible entrance and the fanboy in me buzzed with delight at seeing Whistler again.  While this does create some continuity problems with the first Blade film, where Whistler said he found Blade as a teenager on the street eating homeless people, it is worth it to explain why Whistler would know what Blade was and where to look for him.

And we also see Blade is the one who broke Whistler’s leg, attacking Whistler while escaping from Mr. Taka’s store.  Again, this is a very Star Wars-y “certain point of view” interpretation of when Whistler says his leg was injured by vampires, it adds a bit of redemption to Blade’s side of his partnership with Whistler.

If all of that wasn’t enough, the production values of these flashbacks are first rate.  The production team went through the trouble to get period-accurate costumes, hairstyles, and even background score music for these scenes.  And it feels real, never coming across as a parody like That 70’s Show.  So kudos all around for a wonderful flashback setting and story.

But even better, that story feeds into the present day.  What I don’t think I realized until this episode was that Blade was originally from Detroit; his coming to Detroit wasn’t just to hunt the House of Chthon, it was a homecoming after the events in Blade: Trinity.  Perhaps I should have gotten this more clearly when the Bad Bloods came in, but it was never driven home until now.

In case you thought Whistler hardened with age, even in the 70's he was ready to train Blade...or kill him.

But with Steppin’ Razor having survived his last fight with Blade, he is now making it personal, finding Eric Brooks’ friends and helpers and killing them one by one.  Flannigan and Mr. Taka are killed, but Blade and Shen arrive just in time to revive Viola, who Steppin’ Razor tried to drown at the nursing home where she worked.  Viola then points Blade to Razor’s next victim–Blade’s father.  With medical aid by Viola, Robert Brooks survived the shooting, and with Blade having returned to Detroit so did Robert, wanting to reconnect with his son.

Blade rushes to the abandonned apartment building where he grew up, and has a rematch with Steppin’ Razor.
And, once again, the series gets it right.  Steppin’ Razor wants to kill Blade and his father.  This is a fight with stakes (in both senses of the word!), and that’s something this show has been lacking in so many episodes where Blade slaughtered faceless vampires.

And the fight is well constructed, with Blade and Steppin’ Razor evenly matched, and when Steppin’ Razor dies with Blade’s sword to his chest it’s a triple surprise — first because Blade was not fighting with his sword, second because it’s Robert Brooks taking Blade’s sword and interrupting the fight, and third because to get at Steppin’ Razor he stabbed Blade clean through!

Someone should tell Robert Brooks that the best tactic to reconnect with your estranged son is not to literally stab him in the back, even if it is to save his life.

And if all that wasn’t enough, Blade’s father is played by Richard Roundtree!  The 70’s love continues as the original, and best, Shaft shows up as Blade’s older father.  This casting is so perfect in that Roundtree’s Shaft was the original bad ass, and now he is the father to a bad ass vampire killer.  It keeps with the 70’s vibe of the episode, and just makes perfect sense.  The only regret I had was that it was spoiled in the opening credits so I knew that bad mutha (shut yo mouth!) would show up in the episode; had they resisted the urge to put him in the credits it would have been even better still.

All of this makes for honestly a better Blade story than we got in three movies.  And in it, Sticky Fingaz does very well.  When reunited with his father, Sticky rides the perfect line, showing a character trying to keep emotions under control while completely denying his father, saying “My father was the vampire that bit my mother, you’re just the guy who got stuck holding the bag.”  It was dramatic, but it was also believable that Blade would want to hurt his father with words, even though we know Blade isn’t being totally honest after spending so much time trying to save his father.

Emotional resonance like this is something this series has not been able to accomplish in its first six episodes, and I’m so happy to have some now.  If the back six are all like this, the journey will have been well worth it.

To bite or not to bite, that is the question.

In the episode’s B storyline, Krista Starr (Jill Wagner) is dealing with her mother’s death from Leukemia.  While I wasn’t a big fan of this subplot when introduced last episode, here it worked very well, showing Krista’s dealing with the death of a parent in direct contrast to Blade’s discovery of a parent still alive.  That balance gives this story a weight that Wagner’s acting range cannot.

Krista, not wanting her mother to die, is faced with the choice of losing her mother or turning her mother into a vampire.  There are several scenes where her mother, delusional from pain medicine, is asked if she’d like to be with Krista “forever” and always saying “yes.”  With this permission, Krista breaks into Blade’s lair Mission Impossible-style crawling on the ceiling to avoid the security system.  When in, she steals several vials of the serum to control her mother’s hunger, and then bites her dying mother before suffocating her with a pillow.

Poor acting and poor plotting hurt this storyline, especially when put up against Blade’s story, but it does have a wonderful element of moral ambiguity, asking how far you would go to save a loved one.  Krista cries as she suffocates her mother, and if only Jill Wagner could act her way out of a paper bag perhaps the scene would have gotten me emotional as well, but that is apparently asking too much from an actress who got her start pulling pranks on Punk’d? This poor casting choice will haunt the series forever.  But she does gets one great moment this episode, which we will get to in a minute.

It's an epidemic, children eating children!

But first, speaking of bad casting, little Emily Hirst is back giving her best daytime-soap-opera performance as the evil vampire child Charlotte.  Her spy Glynnis (Jody Thompson) is still trying to find dirt on Detroit House of Chthon leader Marcus Van Sciver (Neil Jackson), and is learning the Aurora project, which promises to cure the Vampire weaknesses for garlic, silver, and sunlight, may never happen.  With this news, Charlotte tasks Glynnis with investigating Krista, and we the audience wonder if Krista’s secret alliance with Blade will be revealed.

We also see Charlotte given a baby in a bag.  I wondered if they’d make Charlotte truly evil, rather than just petulant, by showing her eating a baby, but all we’re given is the ominous line “I could eat you up, yes I could.”  Hirst’s delivery of the line is so flat that I don’t know if it was trying to be menacing, charming, or funny.  Is this baby a meal, or a subplot?  By pulling this punch, it’s apparent the vampires may have fangs but Blade: The Series does not.

And lest we forget about the final thread that weaves through Blade: The Series we get one scene of FBI Agent Collins (Larry Poindexter) as he continues to investigate crooked-cop-cum-vampire Boone.  As Boone has not been seen, Collins is now trying to find Krista, who was one of Boone’s open cases when the cop went missing.

Krista vs Glynnis? Krista and Glynnis vs Collins? Krista vs Collins vs Glynnis? You mean I have to wait to find out?!?!

But all these B, C, and even D level subplots end magnificently, and together.  Krista, shortly after killing her mother, is visited by Glynnis, who grabs Krista’s bag of serum.  Krista and Glynnis both vamp out and we think we’re going to get a great girl-on-girl vampire fight, and I’m pumped…when Agent Collins walks in, flashing his badge and shouting “FBI!”  And when both she-vampires turn their fangs towards Collins, giving him proof of what he suspected, the existence of vampires!  It is a total rush…as the screen cuts to black and credits roll, making the audience wait a week (or me one day) to see the conclusion.

I have enough experience with television cliffhanger endings that I dare not hope for this scene to result the total violent riot I imagine; the fight will probably be perfunctory and end with Krista and Collins in tact, and minor character Glynnis dying to keep Krista’s allegiance secret as this show has no problem killing the minor characters.  Still, the excitement of the moment was perfect and I find myself for the first time in the series greatly anticipating the next episode.  And perhaps now that Krista’s secret is at risk, and now that Collins has seen vampires in person, these subplots that were given one scene per episode can take center stage as we prepare for our end-of-season showdown.

Once again Shen is let out of the lair to investigate with Blade.

If all that is not enough praise, a couple more quick hits. First, more kudos to the writers for Shen’s dialogue in this episode’s opening scene.  He’s been Blade’s whipping boy for 6 episodes, and his snarky replies at the start of this show are reminiscent of Ryan Reynolds’ Hannibal King from Blade:  Trinity, especially Shen’s response when Blade complains about the A/C in the car not working:   “Maybe you should get a bad-ass summer-weight coat”

I also love that little Eric Brooks is a comic book fan, reading both Avengers and Hulk.  As the entire Now Playing Marvel movie retrospective was sparked by The Avengers, it was cool to see a shout-out.

Television shows often take a few episodes to reach their potential.  With Sacrifice it seems Blade: The Series found its footing at last, and I cannot wait until tomorrow to see where the series goes next.

You can hear Arnie, Jakob, and Stuart review all the Blade films on the Now Playing podcast!

Read Arnie’s other Blade TV Series reviews:

September 7, 2011 Posted by Arnie C | Blade - The TV Series, Comic Books, Reviews, Television | Blade, Marvel, Review, Television | 8 Comments

Blade: The Series – Season 1, Episode 6: Delivery

Blade is very old school in the "I'll slap the bitch unconscious rather than talk to her" kind of way.

Original Air Date: August 2, 2006
Director: Alex Chapple

Warning: the following review contains spoilers for this and the previous episodes of Blade: The Series.  You can watch this episode free at thewb.com.

This episode kicks off with Blade (Kirk “Sticky Fingaz” Jones) and the prisoner he rescued last episode, the pregnant Vanessa (Sonja Bennett), on a train outside of Paris. When Vanessa starts to scream for help, which is completely reasonable given that she’s handcuffed with a strange, stoic man who just injected himself with some drug, Blade takes the step of bitch-slapping her unconscious.

That shocked the hell out of me.  I mean, Blade has always been an anti-hero, but I know groups of internet folks that would start letter writing campaigns over this.  Even I, more forgiving than most, don’t know if that was cool for Blade to do.  But I have to give the series this:  it has shown time and again that it’s not afraid to take Blade to some risky places, and this may be the riskiest so far.  Later this same episode a vampire attacks Vanessa and Blade says “Don’t hit the pregnant lady” – not because he had an epiphany about what he did was wrong but because … we’ll get into that in a bit.

Blade is taking Vanessa to Paris to see a doctor who will examine what she is carrying, and perhaps tend to the concussion Blade just gave her, but House of Chthon vampire Marcus Van Sciver (Neil Jackson) has sent teams of assassins to intercept and stop Blade.  The first of these assassins attack on the train, others attack in the Paris sewer, and I really wonder how Marcus’ trackers found Blade in those places.  The train I could almost see as Marcus somehow knew Blade was headed to Paris, and perhaps Marcus agrees with me in thinking Blade should avoids air.  But in the sewer?  How in the world could these assassins know exactly which sewer Blade would visit and when?  Is there some sewer in Paris that all the tourist vampires must see when in the City of Light?

What a feeling...when you're vamping on the ceiling.

I was happy to see these assassination attempts as it meant some action for the show, and one part was truly inventive–a vampire coming at Blade while crawling upside-down on the ceiling of a train-car.  But unfortunately violence without story is a boring thing, and between the random attack locations and the nameless, faceless nature of the attackers it felt like dull video game sequences rather than great action scenes. The walk into a sewer to be ambushed was the most video game-like, as if Blade just hit a checkpoint and triggered a wave of attackers.  Also, the fights seem small in scope as the assassins attack in pairs.  In the movies we’ve seen Blade take out a hundred vampires in five minutes, so two don’t seem like very much of a threat.

But during the fights Vanessa and Blade form a bond, Vanessa even saving Blade from one terrible stunt-woman evil vampire on the train.

And while I don’t know how Marcus knew where the assassins could find Blade, the show does explain how Marcus knew to send them in the first place.  Congratulations to the screenwriters, you fooled me.  Last episode I bemoaned the death of sexy, fun vampire Chase (Jessica Gower) in a lackluster explosion.  Silly me to think a raging fire could kill such a character, as she is found burned but undead, and sent back to Detroit.  I would however like to know how she’s sent back to Detroit, as when she’s delivered to the House of Chthon’s medical wing she is still smoking from the fire.  Now, Blade had to fly (presumably coach, vampire hunting doesn’t pay well I’d assume) almost 16 hours, not counting layovers, from Detroit to Berlin.    Yet somehow Chase’s burned body gets from Berlin to Detroit while still smoldering.  Okay, let’s move on.

Chase is smoking hot.

Through blood therapies (and oxygen? Why would a vampire need an oxygen tube?) Chase begins the change from the Freddy Kruger latex-monster she was back to the sexy English vamp we’ve come to love, and she reveals Blade’s interference and his rescue of Vanessa.  To stop Blade and retrieve Vanessa, Marcus dispatches his pairs of assassins, and also sends Krista Starr (Jill Wagner) to Paris.

But Krista has some personal problems to deal with.  Her mother has been diagnosed with leukemia, and Krista’s uncle tracks her down to ask her to donate bone marrow.  The vampire is afraid she’ll infect her kin through the transplant, so she refues the request and her uncle accuses her of trying to hide a drug habit.  Krista’s Paris assignment is probably a welcome diversion from her guilty conscience.  Of course, as Krista is Blade’s undercover operative in the House of Chthon she cannot actually partake in killing the daywalker, so she kills the two assassins who accompanied her, and meets Blade at the doctor’s office.

Blade himself is also a bit distracted as he’s been having visions of his mother (Alana Husband) when she was pregnant and recently turned, saying how she wished she’d killed Blade in the womb.  Of course, the doctor points out Blade’s mother’s name was also Vanessa, so the proximity to a possible vampiric pregnancy would bring back these thoughts.

Krista has a bad case of pink-eye. Perhaps if she treats it with Worcestershire sauce she'll turn into a zombie and Blade will have a new evil to fight!

Unfortunately none of these flashbacks worked for me.  Being delusions or visions or whatever, they carried little weight, and they didn’t provide me any more insight into Blade as a character.  I think the writer’s intent was to give us more of Blade’s back story, but there was no payoff to it.  More, it shows Vanessa Brooks vamped out and pregnant in the kitchen, whereas we know from the original Blade film that she went into labor immediately after being bitten.  Overall these scenes did not work for me, but perhaps this will come up again later.

The pregnancy story takes a big twist here, and once again I was mistaken in my prediction, for what Vanessa is carrying is not an army of pure-blood daywalkers, but actually nothing at all!  There is no baby in Vanessa’s womb, just a mysterious viscus fluid.  No one knows what the fluid is – only that it is not Aurora.

The doctor extracts all the fluid from Vanessa, and Blade arranges for Vanessa to go underground hiding from the House of Chthon.  Blade takes a small sample of the fluid for analysis, and Krista takes the rest to return to Marcus.

One great twist comes when Krista realizes she can’t return to Marcus without suspicion.  She has Blade cut her face with his sword, take out one of her eyes, and also mutilate her hand.  It’s a great touch that I didn’t see coming, even if it does lack weight since we know she will heal by next episode.

All the dramatic camera angles in the world can't improve Emily Hirst's performance as Charlotte.

We also get a scene that I actually liked of Krista wondering if she can continue to play double-agent, and realizing that this isn’t a mission with an end date but something that will go on perhaps forever.  It’s a great moment that actually served to drive home the emotional scope of Blade and her war on Marcus, though I wonder if she’s lost sight that her original objective was not death to all vampires, but just to avenge her brother.

Speaking of Marcus, he has problems of his own as Damek, head of the House of Armaya, has demanded a meeting with him and House of Chthon pureblood elder Charlotte (Emily Hirst).  Damek knows of the Aurora project and, worse, knows that over a thousand Armayan vampires were killed while being experimented on by Chthon scientists.   Charlotte thinks rogue vampire Det. Boone (Bill Mondy) spilled the beans of Aurora to the Armayans, but in the meeting it’s discovered that the leak was Sands, the vampire from three episodes ago.

Still, Boone is on the loose and we do get one scene of FBI Agent Collins (Larry Poindexter) still on Boone’s trail and investigating the shootout at the Louisiana funeral home.  Collins’ chief Sorenson calls to take Collins off the case, but Collins refuses and we’re given an insight that Collins’ investigation may be personal, related to the death of his family.

I believe this sewer is mentioned in Frommer's Paris guide as a Suggested Itineraries for Three Days

Overall this episode failed to impress me.  While my early reviews complained of there being no action, this episode had action for action’s sake and it was unfulfilling.  While I am hooked on the X-Files-like mystery of the strange amniotic fluid, Marcus’ grand scheme, and what will come of Boone and Collins, these are all the slow-moving subplots that weave through every episode but yet progress very little.  It’s these myth-building elements that have hooked me on shows such as X-Files, Lost, and Heroes, but the Blade mysteries honestly can’t hold a candle to the black oil, The Others, or Sylar.

If the overarching stories of Blade were more compelling, I’d be more engaged.  Likewise, if the larger arcs remained the same but each individual episodic story, such as the assassination attempts here or the Bad Bloods previously, were more entertaining then the show would be passable.  But right now, the episodic adventures are lackluster, and the overarching story minimal.

My only hope is that, as we approach the end of the season, the larger story arcs will come to the fore and (dare I dream?) have a satisfying payoff.

Current verdict: complete not recommend, even for Blade fans.  Pick up a comic instead.

You can hear Arnie, Jakob, and Stuart review all the Blade films on the Now Playing podcast!

Read Arnie’s other Blade TV Series reviews:

September 5, 2011 Posted by Arnie C | Blade - The TV Series, Comic Books, Reviews, Television | Blade, Marvel, Review, Television | 10 Comments

Blade: The Series – Season 1, Episode 5: The Evil Within

Do filmmakers really think audiences can't tell the difference between real night shooting and daytime shots put through a filter? Or do the filmmakers just not care?

Original Air Date: July 26, 2006
Director: Michael Robison

Warning: the following review contains spoilers for this and the previous episodes of Blade: The Series.  You can watch this episode free at thewb.com.

Again, this next episode of Blade continues where the last ended, with Krista (Jill Wagner) in the pool of blood at the house of Leichen having a vision showing where rogue vampire Det. Boone (Bill Mondy) is hiding.  And I can’t help but wonder if Krista sees her vision as we do–poorly filmed behind a darkening lens filter to try and make daytime look like nighttime.  In the vision Krista is visited by her dead brother, and then sees Boone saying he’s going to Louisiana where he is trying to make contact with House of Armaya.

With this information, Krista’s sire Marcus Van Sciver (Neil Jackson) sends Krista and her vampire mentor Chase (Jessica Gower) to Louisiana to capture and kill Boone.  After they leave we see Frederick, Chase’s ex-husband and Leichen guru, has discovered one of Krista’s serum vials, leading the Leichens to believe Krista may be swayed to their house.  Frederick resists this idea, not wanting to upset Marcus, or perhaps Chase.

Chase and Krista lead several House of Chthon soldiers to Louisiana, interrupting Boone’s attempt to meet with one of the Armayaian pure bloods.  Several vampires of both houses die, and Krista’s attempts to save a human Boone took captive.  Boone wounds the human and runs, and when Chase walks in and sees the wounded human, she believes Krista stopped for a mid-fight snack.

With such a drastic temperature change, wouldn't Vanessa notice her stomach skin is several degrees colder?

Boone hides in a bathroom and Chase shoots blindly through the bathroom door killing a vampire she believes is Boone but is actually a random Armayain.  But thinking their mission was accomplished, Chase and Krista return to Detroit.  But the human Krista saved is taken to a hospital, and interrogated by FBI Agent Collins (Larry Poindexter), who has been trying to find Boone, and helps confirm to him that vampires are real.

Meanwhile in Detroit Blade (Kirk “Sticky Fingaz” Jones) continues to follow his lead on Dr. Vonner, the gynecologist who committed suicide last episode.  At Dr. Vonner’s funeral Blade spots Vanessa, the waitress to whom Krista delivered a package back in Episode 3.  Using his infrared goggles, Blade realizes whatever Vanessa is carrying in her womb, it’s body temperature is too low to be human.

While following Vanessa, Blade has an altercation with a drug dealer and shatters a baseball bat in the dealer’s face.  I wonder if this was to set up a new enemy for Blade, or just filler.  Time will tell.

Chase returns to Detroit, and Marcus asks her to immediately take Vanessa to Berlin to keep her away from the purebloods, and as if on cue Vanessa is visited by Charlotte (Emily Hirst) – a pureblood vampire “child” and one of the rulers of the House of Chthon.  Charlotte knows Marcus is up to something, and is remaining in Detroit to keep an eye on Marcus.  Charlotte even recruits Marcus’ aide Glynnis to perform a full audit of all the activities of the House of Chthon.

The actress who plays Charlotte has dethroned Jake Lloyd as "worst child actor I've had the misfortune to watch"

Blade tracks Vanessa to Berlin, where he infiltrates the nest and rescues Vanessa (though she thinks she is being kidnapped), and sets off a bomb which kills Chase.

And back at the House of Chthon, Krista continues her search for the Aurora vaccine.  After several aborted attempts at stealth, she finally loses patience and breaks the glass case to steal a sample for Blade.  But she is caught in the act by Marcus who confides in Krista that the vaccine is a ruse.  Aurora only works for a couple of days before vaccinated vampires have a negative reaction and decompose.  Marcus has a plan to use Aurora so he can rule the House of Chthon and offers Krista a spot at his side.  She agrees, but whether she’s resigning herself to her life as a vampire or continuing her deep cover we need to wait until the next episode to see.

I have to say Blade: The Series hits its stride with Episode Five.  It was action-packed and exposition-light.  Previous episodes would have spent fifteen minutes on Krista’s vision alone, but here it was under five minutes, and before we knew it they had gone to Louisiana to kick Boone’s ass.  And once in Louisiana we are treated to a huge gunfight, with vampires being dusted left and right.

Then later we have another action sequence with Blade in Berlin.   There is less action, but what action it has is more expertly executed.  We also see that Sticky Fingaz has been practicing his martial arts, or his stunt double got an upgrade, as we get a well-staged martial arts fight that is almost worthy of the Blade feature films.

This is the first episode of Blade that doesn’t feel cheap.  The hokey vampire ashings now take place behind warped glass or closed doors.  And they milk a hospital explosion from several angles, and even engulf Chase in convincing CGI fire.  Perhaps this is to the credit of a better director?

My favorite vampire gets hot and bothered.

Even with all these improvements the episode still had several problems, the first of which is the introduction of Charlotte, the girl vampire who is Marcus’ superior.  Evil little children are nothing new; we’ve seen them done better in Children of the Corn, Village of the Damned, Pet Semetary, The Omen, and so many others.  And as far as evil vampire little girls, this is coming perhaps a decade too late after the theatrical adaptation of Interview with the Vampire where Kirsten Dunst stole the evil from Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.  And sadly the little girl who plays Charlotte is no Kirsten Dust; she is wooden and her performance comes off not as powerful but petulant.  Between the hackneyed concept and the poor acting, this is a major misstep.

Another problem with this episode is the death of Chase.  I see how this could be considered a plus; killing major characters to keep the audience off their toes is a staple of such shows as Heroes, Lost, and The Sopranos.  But Chase was one of the most malevolently fun characters in the series and her death is a major loss.  More, it feels like her death was extraneous and unfulfilling.  She doesn’t get the glory of dying in a fight, nor is she even Blade’s target.  She’s collateral damage in an explosion she’s too inept to escape.  If Chase had to go, I would have liked it to be earned.  (Note: I learn later I fell for it, Chase survived this.  Kudos to the writers for fooling me)

Do you think Blade pays for a checked bag or just carry-on? Does he read on the flight? Play on the Game Boy? These are questions I should not be asking.

And in the most head scratching moment, Blade flies to Berlin and we see him in the airport.  Does he fly coach?  Does he check his glaive? He’s given a cache of weapons by a Berlin airport security officer who seems to know of his reputation, but what if she didn’t?  The entire thought of Blade traveling internationally does not hold up.  We should have skipped that scene and just had Blade somehow arrive in Berlin; showing him travel raises questions better left unanswered.

Still, if I’m bothered by these things, it means the show has finally engaged me with its action and intrigue.  While I don’t like the little girl vampire, I am interested in Marcus’ fight with the purebloods and the strange dead fetus in Vanessa’s belly.

More, I think I’ve figured out two things – first, I think Marcus is going to use the vaccine to inoculate the purebloods only to have them be killed, giving Marcus rule of the House.  Second, I wonder if the vaccine Marcus is working on is the creation of half-vampire daywalkers.  After all, the creation of Blade came when his pregnant mother was turned into a vampire, and now we have pregnant women carrying dead babies that I presume will be vampires…an army of evil daywalkers could be quite the coup, though I know the series will not last the 18 years needed for the infants to come of age.

On to Episode 6.

You can hear Arnie, Jakob, and Stuart review all the Blade films on the Now Playing podcast!

Read Arnie’s other Blade TV Series reviews:

September 4, 2011 Posted by Arnie C | Blade - The TV Series, Comic Books, Reviews, Television | Blade, Marvel, Review, Television | 8 Comments

Blade: The Series – Season 1, Episode 4: Bloodlines

Original Air Date: July 19, 2006
Director: Felix Enriquez Alcala

Warning: the following review contains spoilers for this and the previous episodes of Blade: The Series.  You can watch this episode free at thewb.com.

There seems to be some Bad Blood between Blade and his old friend Steppin' Razor

With episode four of the Blade series we are given yet another episode of Blade that serves to deepen the characters’ backstory in the least interesting manner possible.

Now that I am one-third through the entire Blade run, I’ve come to a conclusion on where I sit with this series–it’s not good but it has potential, and some aspects of the show  I like well enough to keep coming back for more.  There are many television series that I’ve watched which fall into this category, some of which come to mind are True Blood, Smallville, Heroes, and the latest incarnation of V.  All of those were series that I watched religiously, but to which I never devoted my full attention, often keeping them on while I do other things, paying the show only half of my attention until a big moment occurs.

So given this, I can say that were I not watching this for Now Playing, had I just caught Blade when it was first run on Spike, I would have watched every episode, but not paid full attention.

However my duties for Now Playing don’t give me the luxury of being halfhearted,  so I watched this fourth episode of Blade giving it 100% of my attention, and not feeling rewarded for my efforts..

In this episode, our multiple storylines continue to progress at a snail’s pace, with the the hunt for cop-cum-vampire Detective Boone heading to the forefront  though Bill Mondy, the actor who portrays Boone, never makes an appearance.  FBI Agent Ray Collins (Larry Poindexter) meets Boone’s former partner Detective Gibbs.  The two search Boone’s apartment and find a book of the House of Armaya, but the text is in German.  Gibbs also delivers all of Boone’s open cases, and Collins notices the open case of Zack Starr, and his missing sister Krista (Jill Wagner).  To be continued I’m sure.

The house of Leichen, gonna make vamps sweat 'til they bleed.

Meanwhile, the House of Chthon is also on the hunt for Boone as the corrupt cop was aware of Project Aurora.  Marcus Van Sciver (Neil Jackson), the man in charge of the Aurora vaccine, asks Chase (Jessica Gower) to take Krista to the House of Leichen – a group of mystical vampires that have sworn off human blood.  The Leichens have what is described as the vampire version of a sweat lodge –  which allows bloodsuckers locate the whereabouts of the people they’ve turned.  Marcus hopes Krista can find Boone (whom she bit in the pilot) in this way.

Performing the ritual is Fredrick, Chase’s ex-husband.  Chase’s past marriage was mentioned in two of the first three episodes, so seeing him was no surprise.  What was a surprise was that he seems to be a nice vampire, warning Krista that Chase knows of Krista’s attachment to her former self.

But while both those plotlines have some motion this episode, there is no resolution and, for once, the focus of the episode is on Blade (Kirk “Sticky Fingaz” Jones) himself.

The episode opens exactly where the last one ended: Blade storming the obstetrician’s office.  However that plot is quickly (ahem) aborted as Dr. Vonner commits suicide as soon as Blade enters his office.

But as Blade leaves, he is hit by a truck and taken hostage by Reverend Carlyle and three unknown vampires.  Carlyle believes these vampires only want Blade’s serum, and he hopes they will also be able to convince Blade to stop helping ash dealers like Cain.  But the Reverend should know better than to trust three strange vampires, as we see they were only using the Reverend to capture Blade, and once that’s accomplished the vamps quickly kill the Reverend and reveal they don’t care about the serum–the vampires have a personal beef against Blade, for he is their sire.

We learn quite a bit about Blade’s past here.  As a child in the 70’s Blade was hungry and lost and came upon a street gang called the Bad Bloods.  The Bloods took Blade in, but in his hunger he fed on the gang members, turning them all into vampires.  The Bad Bloods became a gang of vampires terrorizing Detroit, feeding on their enemies and innocents alike.  In a bit of a revelation for Blade, we are also finally told the origin of Blade’s trademark tattoos–they are the markings of the Bad Bloods and all the members have them.

Shen finally gets out of the lair as he has to rescue Blade with this special gun that shoots serum instead of bullets. I don't see a lot of use for that gun, but lucky he had it lying around.

Years later Whistler found Blade and separated the daywalker from the gangs.  But as Blade’s legend grew in the vampire community, all twelve houses began hunting and killing any vampires sired by Blade.  These three Bad Bloods are presumably all that remain alive, and Blood leader Steppin’ Razor  (Bokeem Woodbine) hopes that he can trade Blade to Marcus in exchange for the surviving Bloods being made members of the House of Chthon.

Marcus reluctantly agrees to the deal but before Blade can be delivered he is rescued by Shen, who spent the episode tracking the Bad Bloods.  Shen injects Blade with his needed serum and Blade dusts two of the vampires, though Steppin’ Razor manages to escape.

This plotline had a lot going for it.  We learned a lot more about Blade, why he has his tattoos, and more of what happened to the daywalker before he was found by Whistler.  The story also gives Shen a chance to shine and actually leave the lair and engage in some detecting and some action as he sleuths out who kidnapped Blade, why, and where he is being held.

That said, while I did wonder about Blade’s tattoos, finding out they are gang markings is somewhat unfulfilling.  I had hoped there would be a vampire origin, or mystical origin, to his tattoos, similar to Harry D’Amour for those familiar with Clive Barker’s works.  Instead, they are just gang symbols, and human gang symbols at that.  What a letdown!

Also, while we learned a lot about our hero, there was just too much angst between the Bad Bloods and Blade.  Instead of rage and vengeance, Steppin’ Razor spends too many scenes talking about how they were wronged by Blade, or talking about how they planned their vengeance.  Instead of coming across as dangerous and unpredictable these speeches just make Razor seem like he is all talk.  Because of the poor writing and worse performance by Woodbine, I just wished for things to move along at a faster pace–a feeling that I could apply to this entire series.

SyFy called. They want their original movies' special effects back.

And when Shen finally broke Blade loose for our few seconds of action this episode, I was struck by the worst effects I’ve seen since perhaps the original pilot.  Just after I praised Blade’s production values last episode, this time I am treated to uncomfortably close camera angles, and special effects that look like they were made on someone’s home Amiga for YouTube.

If the dusting effects weren’t bad enough, this is also the first episode without a gratuitous “titty shot”.  We do get to see the bare ass of Krista’s stunt double as she enters the pool of blood buck naked, but obviously actress Jill Wagner is above showing her breasts for a cable TV show.  And to that I say, good for you girl!  You may not be able to act worth a damn, but this show doesn’t deserve your nipples.  Good for you for recognizing this series for what it is and not allowing your morals to be bent for this.

Still, for all my gripes, my favorite character remains Boone and I hope he makes his way back to Detroit quickly, and with Steppin’ Razor now out there to make things worse for Blade I continue to hope this series may find its footing.  So while I’m not happy with the series, I continue to watch.

You can hear Arnie, Jakob, and Stuart review all the Blade films on the Now Playing podcast!

Read Arnie’s other Blade TV Series reviews:

September 3, 2011 Posted by Arnie C | Blade - The TV Series, Comic Books, Reviews, Television | Blade, Marvel, Review, Television | 9 Comments

Blade: The Series – Season 1, Episode 3: Descent

Original Air Date: July 12, 2006
Director: Jon Fawcett

Warning: the following review contains spoilers for this and the previous episodes of Blade: The Series.  You can watch this episode free at thewb.com.

Before I get into this episode’s plot and my thoughts on the continuing series, I want to take a moment to comment on the cinematography of this series.  During the director’s and producer’s commentary for Blade’s pilot episode, they kept discussing the digital high def cameras used for filming the series and I didn’t see the big deal.  They talked about how they could work with existing light, and I didn’t care; I thought they were just talking about cost savings when they should have been focused on character and story.  But in this episode I saw some really great looking use of light, color, and grain (yes, grain in a digital recorder).  I loved the “grim and gritty” look of this series, and the selective use of light really worked for it.  Perhaps it took a handful of episodes for the lighting and camera teams to really understand the power of this camera, perhaps this episode just had a more artistic cinematographer, but in this episode I thought it was one of the better shot things I’d seen lately.  For TV it’s astounding, and even for a film it would have been very well done.

That plus the par-for-television effects give this series some very good production values, which is something I hadn’t commented on before as only in this episode was I really impressed by the series’ technical aspects.

That said, on to today’s episode:  Descent.

Chase is quite fetching in her disguise for luring in recovering addicts. But is she okay to drive if she's always sucking on drunks?

Krista Starr (Jill Wagner) is recovering from her wound suffered in the last episode, which is healing slower than usual due to her refusal to eat human blood.  Chase (Jessica Gower) takes her out for a night on the prowl, feeding on some hapless AA members.

Krista is also tasked by Blade (Kirk “Sticky Fingaz” Jones) to get a vial of Aurora, the vaccine that makes vampires immune to damage by the usual methods, though it is under lock and key and Krista tries several times unsuccessfully to obtain a sample.

Finally, Krista is tasked by Marcus (Neil Jackson in his only appearance this episode) to deliver a package to a wedding. We are never shown the package’s contents, obviously setting up a larger plot later.  The recipient, a waitress named Vanessa (Sonja Bennett), tells Krista to “thank the doctor” for her.

Blade, meanwhile, has finally tracked down last episode’s target, the ash dealer Cain (Caprica‘s Ryan Kennedy) and grills him for information.  Cain reveals he was the familiar of a vampire named Sands who had been taken hostage and undergone some involuntary experimentation, possibly related to Aurora.

I had never considered what happens to an amputated piece of a vampire when exposed to sunlight, but I suppose it makes sense that it turns to ash, even if it is a tooth.

Once they’ve captured the vampire, Blade, Sands, and Blade’s weaponsmith Shen (Nelson Lee) return to the secret lab where Sands was captive.  There they find several other vampires that were with Shen still trapped in the lab.  While dusting the vamps, Blade finds a scalpel left in one vampire’s body, and Shen is able to track that scalpel to the office of a local doctor.  Blade barges in, expecting a major fight, but finds himself in the office of a gynecologist with a waiting room full of pregnant women.

Finally this episode also focuses on the exploits of crooked-cop-cum-vampire Boone (Bill Mondy), who’s murders in Kansas have garnered the attention of FBI Agent Ray Collins (Larry Poindexter).  Collins discovers Boone’s yanked fang at the murder of a police officer, and matches the fang to a hole in the bag of the burned-out truck from which Boone escaped at the start of the previous episode.  Prints from the truck track to Det. Boone, and Collins watches as the fang dissolves to ash in the sunlight.

In addition to moving the plot along, this episode starts to explore our characters as well.  Blade’s Machiavellian moral ambiguity is explored as Blade endorses the exploits of ash dealer Cain, seeing Cain’s selling of ash (and, thus, creating amputee junkies) as the lesser of two evils when put up against a race of beings that feed on humans.  But despite approving of Cain’s methods, Blade steals some of Cain’s drug money to give to Reverend Carlyle (William MacDonald) who is not a true Reverend but gave himself the title after feeling a calling to help ash addicts.  Carlyle and Blade’s clash over Blade allowing Cain to go free does show that Blade’s methods, while effective, leave many humans to suffer and die in the crossfire of his war on vampires.

The wound Krista sustained last episode is quickly explained away and forgotten.

While I did enjoy the focus on Blade and his methods, this episode was a mixture of character-piece and filler.  Truthfully, despite my paragraphs above, when the episode ended it felt as if nothing had really happened. Such is the case with television series; sometimes entire episodes are used to get the characters where they need to be for the next episode. Additionally, sometimes budget is such that episodes need to focus more on characters and less on effects and fights.  The result is an episode such as this one, which simply treads water, slightly escalating the situation while really not changing anything.

Were it not for the introduction of Collins, who I’m sure will be a major player later, and perhaps Sands, who lived and thus may return, I would call this episode “useless”.  As it is, while Descent helped to deepen the world Blade, it could barely hold my interest.

Again, it’s virtually impossible to judge a serialized TV series on an episode-by-episode basis.  If the series continues to deliver episodes like this one then it is slipping deep into Not Recommend territory as it simply doesn’t have characters compelling enough to make up for the lack of action; put another way, the series is dull.  But that said, if there is payoff later, it was nice to get to know our main characters a bit better, so I remain optimistic as I enter into Episode 4.

And perhaps best, I still am curious where this is all going and how it will all pay off.  I am excited to watch episode 4, though I’ve not really enjoyed episodes 2 or 3 very much.

You can hear Arnie, Jakob, and Stuart review all the Blade films on the Now Playing podcast!

Read Arnie’s other Blade TV Series reviews:

September 2, 2011 Posted by Arnie C | Blade - The TV Series, Comic Books, Reviews, Television | Blade, Marvel, Review, Television | 8 Comments

Blade: The Series – Season 1, Episode 2: Death Goes On

Jones and Wagner compete this episode to see who can give the most one-note performance.

Original Air Date: July 5, 2006
Director: David Simkins

Warning: the following review contains spoilers for this and the previous episodes of Blade: The Series.  You can watch this episode free at thewb.com.

The second episode of the Blade series continues every storyline from the pilot episode, while also introducing many new characters and twists to deepen the plot.

Crooked cop-cum-vampire Det. Boone (Bill Mondy) escapes his shrink-wrapped cage and dusts his fellow captives, on his way back to Detroit to get revenge on high-ranking House of Chthon Vampire Marcus Van Sciver (Neil Jackson), setting up what is sure to be a major showdown later in the series.

Meanwhile, Krista Starr (Jill Wagner) continues to deal with her transformation into a vampire, secretly using Blade’s serum to unsuccessfully quell her vampiric thirst, and her hunger causes her to even dream of feeding on her own mother.  She is both Marcus’ captive and object of desire, as her charismatic maker continues to try to seduce Krista to the dark side.  But Krista continues to play both sides by acting as Blade’s spy, secretly digging deeper into Marcus’ operations and learning of Aurora – the vaccine that makes a vampire impervious to garlic and sunlight.

Is it still an Elektra complex if Krista wants to eat her mother?

The Aurora project is in upheaval due to Blade’s interference last episode.  We are introduced to Winston Haupt (Adrian Hough), a leading member of the House of Chthon, when he arrives to ensure Marcus pulls up roots and moves the Aurora experiment from Detroit to the west coast.

As for our titular hero (played by Kirk “Sticky Fingaz” Jones), he is perplexed by his fight with Fritz, the seemingly invulnerable vampire he fought in the pilot.  To investigate how Fritz could be unaffected by garlic and silver, Blade starts hunting down a group of ash-addicts who snort vampire ash to get high.  His investigation leads to an ash dealer named Cain.

Marcus is also seeking Cain.  Cain’s methods of harvesting his product include trapping and murdering vampires, including Winston.  As Marcus looks into Winston’s murder, the trail leads straight to the ash lord.

The climax of the episode comes at Cain’s ash lab–Marcus’ other favorite female vampire Chase (Jessica Gower) is leading a group of vampires, including war-trained Krista, to take out Cain, while Blade has been following one of Caine’s addicts to the lab.  But Cain is one step ahead of Blade, and detonates a bomb in his evacuated lab that kills all of Marcus’ vampire troops except Krista and Chase.

But as Blade is about to finish Chase off, Fritz ignores his orders to stay hidden and crashes a car into the Ash lab, itching for a rematch against the daywalker.  During the fight, Krista’s loyalties are tested.  Blade needs to capture Fritz to study Aurora, but Chase orders her to kill Fritz to keep Aurora’s secrets.  Krista chooses her cover over the information and beheads Fritz, falling on a stake and severely injuring herself in the process.

The episode moves along quickly and the rematch between Blade and Fritz is welcome, though the fighting is still quick-cut and poorly choreographed.  It also falls prey to WWE conventions as, for no reason I can fathom, there is a large wire-mesh cage in Cain’s lab, allowing Blade and Fritz to literally have a cage match.

I’m starting to accept Sticky Fingaz more as Blade and I’m actually coming to like Marcus as the charismatic vampire leader.  But Krista’s one-note character, matched by an equally one-note actress, grates on me and makes me have no sympathy for the she-devil.  Several times I wished Chase would just give into her jealousy and stake Krista.

I do like the character of Boone and welcome his return to Detroit.  The actor’s energy really is a great wild card in the series, and his inventive self-mutilation by pulling out his own fang to cut through his body bag and free himself was very well thought out.

And the overall series plot is being revealed as knotted and intricate, and it has my full interest, despite seeming to be a retread of the reaper story in concept.  The House of Chthon is appearing to me like a mob family, and I’m enjoying the internal power struggles as the layers are peeled back for the audience.

The dialogue is also improving, as some lines this episode got a genuine laugh from me, such as when Winston goes to see Mina, a woman who sells vampires to humans as food.  Mina offers up a blonde from Illinois and we get this exchange:

Boone is the most interesting character in this series, so it's a shame he only bookends this episode.

Winston: Carpet matches drapes?

Mina: Hardwood floor.

Winston: (Sarcastically) Kids.

But while the dialogue and overall story seem strong, the pacing is off.  We are being introduced to characters that seem important, such as Mina and Wiston, just to have them die 10 minutes later.  The writers do a poor job of telling us which characters are important and which are merely storytelling devices, and that is a problem.

Also, with the exception of the end fight, the episode is lacking in action.  Instead of the exciting and entertaining wire-fu we got in the Blade films, Blade the TV series is a soap opera for the testosterone set.

While I remain interested, I am by no means enthralled.  Two episodes in, the series is a weak recommend for Blade fans, a not recommend for everyone else.

You can hear Arnie, Jakob, and Stuart review all the Blade films on the Now Playing podcast!

Read Arnie’s other Blade TV Series reviews:

September 2, 2011 Posted by Arnie C | Blade - The TV Series, Comic Books, Reviews, Television | Blade, Marvel, Review, Television | 8 Comments