Bitten, the new werewolf drama starring Laura Vandervoort, premiered Saturday in Canada on Space. It premieres tonight (January 13) on SyFy at 10/9c. Vandervoort plays Elena Michaels, the world's only female werewolf. The series is based on the novel "Bitten" by Kelley Armstrong.
Looking forward to it. Although I'm kicking myself for not getting a chance to read the books before it started.
I found it entirely meh, aside from the naked bits. They did show a surprising amount of skin; even Lost Girl rarely shows that much anymore, if it ever did. And the transformation/wolf effects were pretty good. Otherwise, though, it totally failed to engage me. I've always found Laura Vandervoort bland, and listening to her one-note delivery was getting grating toward the end. Nobody else appealed to me much either, except maybe the boyfriend's sister, who was kind of fun. I like Genelle Williams, but she was hardly in it. What is it with modern werewolves, though? It used to be, even as recently as Buffy, that they only changed during a full moon. But these days they're usually portrayed as being able to change at will, or sometimes when they get angry a la the Hulk. Is that just a symptom of our instant-gratification culture? Although, wait a minute, I think Being Human still obeys the full-moon rule. At least the UK version did, with George only changing once every few episodes, so it was a big deal when it did happen.
I'm not sure where the change came from, but it's been the case for a while. I'm not sure how long ago it started, but it was the case in the early Dresden Files and Sookie Stackhouse novels back in the early '00s.
One moment where the show would've lost me if it had ever had me at all: The scene with the college discussion about Jung's anima and animus. First, the wolf/professor said animus was male and anima was female; actually, Jung said anima is the feminine side within the male unconscious and animus is the masculine side within the female unconscious. But the really stupid bit was when the student asked if it meant we had creatures inside us and the professor replied "We're all animals." Research your Latin, you lazy writers! Animus/a is the Latin word for breath, spirit, or life force. It's the same root that "animal" is derived from (i.e. something with breath/life), but it doesn't mean our animal side. Really sloppy work there.
hmmm, let me guess, Canadian production? It seems to have the whiff of that from the first minutes at least. (EDIT:nvm, says so in the original post...)
Yep, and it even blatantly acknowledges that it's set in Toronto, with the city mentioned by name and the skyline clearly shown and everything. Although then the action moved to a small town in upstate New York, and I'm not sure whether the bulk of the series will be set there or in Toronto.
Kind of a slow opening, I agree. They spent a lot of time introducing a small army of supporting characters, which may be exciting to fans of the books ("ooh, it's so-and-so!") but fell flat if you weren't already invested in the characters. And the episode ended just as the plot seemed to be finally kicking into gear. (Maybe they should've considered a two-hour premiere or, better yet, edited the first two eps into one tighter episode?) Still, I'm a sucker for werewolves so I'll check it out again next week.
It was OK, mostly. It definitely wasn't anywhere near as good as The Originals, Sleepy Hollow, or Dracula but it interested me enough that I'm going to stick with it for now.
Anyone still watching this? I found the pilot underwhelming and let a few episodes back up on the DVR, but after seeing the second episode, I deleted the rest of them. So boring. And the random voiceover exposition in the second episode made me laugh.
I've stuck with it. IMO it's actually gotten better as it's gone on. It's still not up to Being Human, Lost Girl, or Teen Wolf's level, but I've been enjoying it.
I've stuck with it too. I think it has improved, I'm getting a feel for the other characters and I liked the recent flashback episode. I really like it and plan to keep watching.
I still keep wondering if they're going to eventually throw out any kind of hints towards other stuff from the books. The books are filled with all sorts of other supernatural races, and rotate through a whole bunch of different PoV characters. Women of the Otherworld. (The descriptions of some of the later Elena books are a little spoilery).
I think the series is meant to be based solely on the first book rather than the women of the otherworld series as a whole. I did read an interview with teh actress playing Elena where she said that the series would be just about the wolves without adding other supernatural races so either she hasnt read the books or the people making the series dont intend to expand the world the way the book series does. If its the latter then i dont see the series lasting very long before diverging very radically from the books as even the later Elena books involve other supernatural races pretty heavily.
I was wondering how they were going to do the series with the focus of the books being spread so widely. What you said would make the most sense.
The last couple weeks my interest had started to wain, and with the show now on at the same time as The Following, one of my absolute favorite shows, I'm officially done.