Fear Itself

[The Lady Eve]

Boo. And not in a ghostly way. I really want to like this show but after 3 episodes I'm kind of underwhelmed. Okay, it's got blood & guts, fancy art direction, nicely paced editing and directing but where are the characters? Is anybody else having a problem with really caring what happens to the leads? It seems as if they're simply pawns set up so they can be terrified, sliced & diced and killed. If you don't have an emotional stake with them it just becomes a game of sitting back and predicting what's going to happen next. Which isn't hard at all in this show. I would bet most of the people on this board can see the plot developments coming down Broadway.

About the endings: I don't need happy endings but a predictable downer ending is just as boring as a reset button where things are magically put right again. Eh - it's summertime and slim pickins on TV. Might as well give it a chance. For a while.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Yeah, I was underwhelmed by the first two episodes. "Family Man" at least had an interesting premise and good actors, but was only marginally better. I was thinking we were going to see some clever way that Dennis is going to figure out how to foil Richard while sitting in a prison cell. Instead, we just get some arbitrary rules that "solve" the plot - if Richard's body dies, apparently Dennis' soul evicts Richard's soul from Dennis' body (why should that be true, rather than Dennis' soul simply proceeding to the Great Beyond while Richard's soul remains in Dennis' revived body?)

So when the original switch occurred, Dennis should have immediately committed suicide, solved the dilemma and saved his family - considering the attitude of his guards, goading them to murder shouldn't have been too difficult - but poor Dennis wasn't clued into the rules of the game because they didn't make internal sense. What would have been clever is if Dennis could have figured out the rules by thinking about the original soul-switch, but that would have required Daniel Knauf think harder about the rules he was establishing, and embed the solution in the original event.

Really I expected much more clever writing from the guy behind Carnivale. Also, this episode really wasn't the least bit scary - at least the first two attempted to be scary. If the summer TV season wasn't so dead, I'd bail on this series. Pickins are too slim to be fussy, tho...

I would bet most of the people on this board can see the plot developments coming down Broadway.

The first two were comically predictable. This one a little less so, but only because the rules of the game were arbitrary.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Yeah, I was underwhelmed by the first two episodes. "Family Man" at least had an interesting premise and good actors, but was only marginally better. I was thinking we were going to see some clever way that Dennis is going to figure out how to foil Richard while sitting in a prison cell. Instead, we just get some arbitrary rules that "solve" the plot - if Richard's body dies, apparently Dennis' soul evicts Richard's soul from Dennis' body (why should that be true, rather than Dennis' soul simply proceeding to the Great Beyond while Richard's soul remains in Dennis' revived body?)

So when the original switch occurred, Dennis should have immediately committed suicide, solved the dilemma and saved his family - considering the attitude of his guards, goading them to murder shouldn't have been too difficult - but poor Dennis wasn't clued into the rules of the game because they didn't make internal sense. What would have been clever is if Dennis could have figured out the rules by thinking about the original soul-switch, but that would have required Daniel Knauf think harder about the rules he was establishing, and embed the solution in the original event.

It sucks that Dennis' daughter fingered him for murdering the rest of their family, but it is understandable of course. Still, I doubt Dennis would be convicted of such. Richard's body dead on the floor...no one will bother to investigate further, they will assume that Richard did it (which is, technically, true!). Any of "Dennis'" blood in the rest of the house can be explained that he was struggling with Richard up there. And no one is going to convict Dennis on the word of one frightened child anyway.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Dennis and Richard never met again after Dennis' last visit with the lawyer, right?

Couldn't Dennis therefore prove his story at least to his lawyer (Richard's lawyer, but he could ask to meet with him) by recounting the last thing the lawyer said (you have to get on board, etc.)? Not that it would save him, but I suppose it would be some comfort to at least have one person believe the story.

It's pretty unbelievable that Dennis would crash into a serial killer and then become a psycho himself, after being a model citizen.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Dennis and Richard never met again after Dennis' last visit with the lawyer, right?

I don't know, I fastforwarded straight to the end (where they fight in Dennis' house).

It's pretty unbelievable that Dennis would crash into a serial killer and then become a psycho himself, after being a model citizen.

Must have missed that bit. Richard was driving the car that hit Dennis?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I assumed that Richard and Dennis were in the crash, which is why the ended up dying in the hospital at the same time and switching souls when they were revived. I don't remember whether I ever saw Richard in the truck that hit Dennis, but his injuries weren't otherwise explained.

 

[The Lady Eve]

^Yes. We just saw Dennis looking extremely dead & bloody in his totaled car. We only saw a shot of the banged-up truck and then cut to the hospital with the kid drawing on the glass and not being able to see Dennis on the other side. Um, I think.