Monsters in a Box

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ince the beginning of television, every generation has gotten the horror shows it deserved. The late ’50s and early ’60s had The Twilight Zone‘s scathing dissections of Cold-War paranoia and button-down conformity. Dark Shadows was a nostalgic, almost square denial of changing Nixon-era attitudes toward sex and drugs. A recession-weary, government-skeptical country had its X-Files, and a generation weaned on media-sanctioned decadence and irony had its Buffy.
     Now we’ve got Lost, a show whose first season began with apocalypse from the skies, evolved into a fruitless battle against an unseen enemy, and even featured a former Iraqi torturer as one of its heroes. The creator, like all of us, is trying to sort some stuff out. Based on this fall’s schedule, network executives have obviously been trying to figure out what made Lost such a water-cooler phenomenon. I can’t remember when there were this many horror shows debuting at once.
     Most Likely to Succeed is ABC’s Invasion, which is different enough from Lost to seem fresh, but still contains the elements essential for success in this genre: It takes a small group of sympathetic protagonists, pits them against a mysterious and seemingly unbeatable phenomenon, and lets the situation deteriorate on its own terms. The first twenty minutes take place during a massive, realistically rendered hurricane in The Everglades. But unlike Katrina and Rita (at least I hope so), the storm

in Invasion is a cover for a shower of glowing alien pods. The acting is good enough, the suspense builds gradually to an effective cliffhanger, and the effects are simple and believable. An average family faces unknown enemies in their midst that arrived during a natural disaster. You can’t get much more zeitgeist than that. This show will be an enormous success. (Its premiere last Wednesday earned ABC the highest ratings in that timeslot in five years.)
     On the other hand, NBC’s entry in the Next Lost Sweepstakes, Surface, asks the timeless question: What would happen if an alien race of giant manatees attacked a beautiful, recently divorced female oceanographer? The pilot is seemingly composed of discarded pages from Steven Spielberg’s playbook. There’s a skeptical professional with intimate knowledge of the enemy (Jaws), a middle-class guy who becomes obsessed with the unknown based on a scary incident (Close Encounters), and a troubled preteen who comes into possession of a baby alien (Schindler’s List). I suppose you could say that Surface reflects our anxiety about the dying oceans, but that would be a bit of a stretch. It’s really just derivative genre trash, complete with government cover-up, a brilliant but mad scientist with a pan-European accent, and the following legendary line of dialogue: “I was the one that saw it . . . in a disabled submersible! A new vertebrate!” Even most of the scares turn out to be red herrings. Hell, maybe the monsters will turn out to be actual red herrings.
     That said, I’ll probably stick with Surface, if for nothing else than to get a clear look at a monster’s face. I won’t be revisiting ABC’s Night Stalker, which I can call, without reservation, one of the worst TV shows of all time. The original Night Stalker, with its cheesy guest stars, was in some ways the horror version of The Love Boat. But it also featured a charismatic, goofy lead in Darren McGavin, a great sense of gallows humor, and, in its better episodes, a palpable sense of creeping unease about American urban decay. The new version is just sordid, dumb and incoherent.
     Though I shouldn’t waste many more words on the new Night Stalker, since it will be a miracle if it lasts more than six episodes, I was so appalled by what I saw that I must. McGavin’s Carl Kolchak was homely, witty, intelligent, and kind of incompetent. This show’s version, Stuart Townsend, is handsome but possesses a stare blanker than Matt LeBlanc’s. He’s also, apparently, the greatest crime reporter of all time, and as a reward gets to live in what looks like the penthouse at the Hollywood Standard. He says things like: “Bodies of dead people used to scare me, too, until I realized that people living in those bodies, they’re not there anyway. They’re somewhere else.” Kolchak is driven to fight evil because a monster not only killed his wife, but also tore his unborn child from his wife’s body. As the pilot proceeds, we learn that this monster was actually some kind of weird mutant Rottweiler, and there are lots of them, and the FBI might, for some reason, be covering up their existence. Kolchak’s partner — as if all reporters had partners — is played by Gabrielle Union from Deliver Us From Eva, of all people. She’s skeptical of the conspiracy, but Kolchak is determined to find out what lurks in the dark, and to face our fears for us like some sort of bland, flashbulb-popping Christ-figure, and oh, lord, why don’t I have a pilot deal?
     However, the horror landscape isn’t all darkness. My favorite of this season’s horror offerings comes, surprisingly enough, from the WB. Supernatural has what you might expect from the network, like sexy young stars, a decent soundtrack (whereas Invasion and Surface lean heavily on hoary classic-rock standards), and snappy, pop-culture-referential dialogue, but other things that you might not, like genuinely creepy atmosphere. Of all the shows, this was the only one that actually scared me. The pilot, in fact, is reasonably gory, and just as terrifying as any contemporary crappy horror flick like Skeleton Key or Gothika.
     Oh, that’s right. I forgot to say what the show’s about. Well, it’s kind of The Hardy Boys with monsters, crossed with The X-Files, minus the portentousness and faux skepticism. Two brothers are trained by their father to be monster-hunters after their mother is killed by something deeply evil. One of the brothers wants to escape his destiny by going to Stanford Law School, while the other one drives around the country in a junker, killing creatures and listening to Mullet Rock’s Greatest Hits on cassette. Meanwhile, their dad has gone missing, and they have to find him. The show doesn’t have any generational relevance as far as I can see, but it is good, dumb fun, well-acted and well-executed. And sometimes that’s all you want from TV.  n°

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
	Neal Pollack is the author of The Neal Pollack Anthology Of American Literature, Beneath The Axis Of Evil, and Never Mind the Pollacks: A Rock and Roll Novel. For a daily dose of his satirical brilliance, visit his website, www.nealpollack.com. He lives in Austin, Texas.