In Which I Review Dead of Summer (1x10)

"You can be whoever you want at camp. Or...pretend to be," says evil, pathological, sadistic and sociopathic ax-wielding Amy in this season (series?) finale episode, "She Talks to Angels." Everyone came to Camp Stillwater pretending to be someone they really were not. These masks could be obvious (Jessie, Blair and Cricket) while some were opaque, needing to be exposed slowly through character exploration and flashbacks (Drew, Alex, and Amy). Whatever the case, Camp Stillwater was not just about the hot dogs and marshmallows; a summer at this camp, in reality, is about shedding those masks, showing the world your true face and letting those around you decide whether or not to stick around. We've got a long and dark run through the woods and while, hopefully, there's no homicidal maniac following, it's a dangerous trek. Grab a friend and let's go! 

The season finale goes about how one would expect; there's a decent amount of bloodshed, an unfortunate amount of running hither and tither and one final look back in time to see how far all our various campers have come. The finale doesn't quite live up to last week's shocker of an episode, but it doesn't make any seriously egregious mistakes that erase some good will the show built up. The most grievous error the writers made is that the mythology was never fully fleshed out so that this world--this Camp Stillwater--and its dangers felt real and lived in. I need to be immersed in the world, to be drawn into it to the point of almost total erasure of my surroundings. That's what good narrative does--it takes you out of your present and launches you into the fictional, blurring those pesky lines. The demon, his followers, the magical powers of the lake and general region are left unclear and talked about in very loose, broad strokes. Trying to explain the ins and outs of what exactly happened this summer and why it happened causes tongue trips and knots, so it's better left in the shadows, though the intangible nature of the mythos of this show does speak volumes about its overall quality and the ability of the writers. This show was, at its root, a character show. During the course of a character-based show, the audience should see natural evolution, a change--either for good or for bad--from one stage to the next. These stages can be archetypical (from a Boy to a Man; from a Girl to a Woman; from a Nobody to a Hero; from a White Hat to a Black Hat) but the progress must be a reflection of the inner psyche and the outer environment, working in tandem to move the character. With that in mind, our real question is whether or not Dead of Summer achieved a character driven goal.

I know I've been harsh on the show this summer, and not undeservedly so. My criticisms have been warranted, but, at the same time, the character progression hasn't been as dreadful as I might have imagined once upon a time (like what I did there?) Amy went from the good girl to the evil monster, though this was less through character work and more through a surprise about-face; the monster was always there, hiding behind the gentle Amy-mask. Alex went from an uber selfish pseudo-American playboy to selfless, proud Russian willing to die instead of go off and live his so-called American dream. While Cricket's character was killed too soon to fully develop or progress, her one flashback episode did help illuminate why she acted the way she did, creating myths around her own selfhood. Drew and Blair are....oddities. The show (and I) struggled with what to do with them. They were clearly brought in to emphasize diversity and appease the LGBT community (which is fairly repugnant, though Drew's episode was incredibly solid) but beyond their "otherness" they contributed nothing to the plot line. Blair never even got a flashback outside of his friendship with Cricket and neither of them played any significant role in the finale events. With that said, though, Drew's character shines as unique, interesting, well-played and one that moved into a new space by series end--from a scared loner to a proud man, ready to take on the world (and rock out to David Bowie). The biggest surprise here is honestly Jessie, a character I loathed--and, to be perfectly honest, still don't like. She's the actual heroine of the series; her vapid and deplorable nature finally illuminated as a way to anger her equally vapid and deplorable mother. The real Jessie is selfless, kind, smart, and willing to stand up for the Light against the Darkness. I may not like her at the end of all this but there's no denying that her development was brought about because of her own psyche (which, in reality, lacked all the "mean girl" qualities she presented initially) and enduring her torturous environment.  Joel was just plain useless as evidenced by his lack of dialogue and lack of flashback in this finale (no, really. Did he serve a point?). All of this taken together signifies that there were good elements of Dead of Summer. It had some interesting takes on friendship and nostalgia and at least a handful of worthwhile character development moments. Where it fell flat was in the mythology. But, honestly, my dear readers, are you surprised by this? I won't snark at OUAT just quite yet (3.5 weeks and counting...) but is it any wonder that the characters on this show are more solid and rewarding than any kind of mythology or story? No. I didn't think so.

Miscellaneous Notes on She Talks to Angels

--Drew and Blair probably got back to the camp via bus but how did they figure out that Amy was actually a murderer and not just possessed by a demon?

--So all the parents came and picked up their children but didn't bother to ask why their children were dropped off in a blood soaked van by two campers instead of licensed driver? Or, you know, why camp ended early?

--All the child acting in this show was pretty bad but nothing beats Anton turning around and telling Drew and Blair in a flat, monotone voice, "Go back..."

--"It's going to be me and you forever." Cricket and Blair really did have a special friendship. I'm sorry we didn't see more of it.

--Blotter's head swinging from a tether pole. That was a sight.

--So much for any kind of answers about Deb! I've heard rumors that should there be a second season, the show will become more of an anthology and move back to the 70s to visit Deb's stay at Camp Stillwater.

--RIP Garret and Alex. Oh, and Amy, I guess.

--Well, barring any movie reviews, that's it for the summer! The next time we talk, dear readers, we'll be staring down another 22 episodes of Once Upon a Time. See you then.

In Which I Review Dead of Summer (1x9)

Cages get a bit of a bad reputation. Here in the post (post?) modern 21st century era, we tend to romanticize the concept of freedom. Out there, beyond the confines of people, society, law, and order, we are free to be you and me. Here's the problem; what if this freer version of you is actually a homicidal maniac who delights in blood, mayhem, and dismembering your peers? Would you really want someone like that free and exposed? Probably not. In fact we built cages--euphemistically called prisons--to house and contain such peoples. But sometimes, oh but sometimes, they get out. In this week's episode, "Home Sweet Home," we are given good, sound reason for the advancement of cages and keeping doors locked. It's when we open those doors, when we unlock the bolts, when we free that which is contained within, that we are met with untold horrors and unspeakable bloodshed. Grab an ax, grab a mask, and grab some holy water---we're in for an exorcism! 

Sweet little Amy Hughes, she of the soft smile and simpering demeanor, is a cold blooded thug and ruffian who would bathe in the blood of untold millions in a heartbeat. I have made my dislike for Amy and, running in tandem with that, the way Elizabeth Lail plays her, quite well known. Amy has consistently comes across, week after week, as having no discernible personality, no oomph in her performance, and no hook to her character. She was simply a haunted girl looking for a fresh start and hoped that it would come about at a idyllic lakeside camp full of friends and marshmallows. Unlike last week's lack luster reveal that Holyoake was a white hat and not a proverbial black hat (yes, in spite of him actually wearing a black hat...) the denouement that Amy is a murderous psychopath who welcomed the demon called Malphas as part of her being, was actually an eyebrow raiser and a stunner. You see, that's not quite how the cliche goes. Amy is the good girl who gets corrupted and then is saved by her own purity of soul, her friends, and--most often in these early pseudo-feminist pieces told through the male perspective--a boyfriend or love interest who battles the forces without to save his lady love. Amy, in the true nature of the trope, would awaken from her possessed demonic slumber a shinning virginal princess who can now cross safely through the world because she was tested, tried, and ultimately survived the wilderness. Usually there's a sunset involved--literal and metaphorical. But in this week's episode, Amy isn't our good girl gone bad and she's not the princess locked in a tower. Camp Stillwater is Amy's life, uncaged. There were a lot of clues--both visually any through dialogue--that we should be thinking about cages and their importance to the idea of safety and security. Amy/Malphas straining against the ropes; the bus driver opening the bus door, only to be feasted upon by bloody rain; the specter of Deb thanking the campers for "opening the door" before her eyes flashed black; young Amy locked away in the garage while her family died of carbon monoxide poisoning and young Amy insisting that freedom was the best thing for the gerbil, even if freedom meant the garbage disposal and a swift death for the rodent. The cage, in this episode, is equated to safety and security. As long as Amy/Malphas stays locked up in the tiny cabin, everyone is safe. It's as soon as those ropes are cast away, as soon as the door is unlocked, that Amy and her demon buddy can hack up camp counselors with an ax (side note--holy gory visuals, Batman!) What I think I like most, though, about this turn of events is that the hope for Amy and her recovery--back to the simpering girl we thought she was--is next to nothing. Amy isn't in danger; her soul hasn't been tarnished and is not being held hostage (in a cage!) by Malphas. Amy really is this deranged; she really is this dark. This is what freedom is for Amy; Malphas isn't the warden holding Amy in a cage; he's freed her to be her best (worst?) self. And Amy...well. She has no intention of going back into her conformist cage. Look out, left over campers. Something tells me you're in for a rough season finale.

Miscellaneous Notes on Home Sweet Home

--This was easily the best episode of the season and certainly the best since Drew's centric. Does this episode make up for the blah nature of those that came before? Not really, but it's a step in the right direction.

--RIP Deb? But I'm guessing we haven't seen the last of her yet. And I bet there's more to our camp leader than meets the eye.

--Really wonderful (and wonderfully cheesy) special effects with the bloody rain.

--Garrett's Latin needs some work.

--So do Drew and Blair play any part at all in the actual story or were they just there as part of some diversity quota?

--Final death predictions? I suspect one more camper will die (Alex) and I think Amy will bite the dust, both her dark soul and the demon Malphas going down to the watery depths of Camp Stillwater to wait for another opportunity to rise. Jessie and Garrett will marry, move on to the camp property and keep a watchful eye for anyone who might awake the demon.

In Which I Review Dead of Summer (1x8)

Oh I get it. The writers assumed they'd subvert everyone's expectations by having the purported bad guy really be the good guy. Gosh, the wool sure was pulled over my eyes in this week's episode "The Devil Inside." Sarcasm! I won't deny that there was some shock value to Holyoake being a white hat instead of a black one, but it's marginal at best. If you know that the writers are setting out to shock the audience by way of overturning their expectations--and the show has been screaming that sort of thrust since the get go with Russian Alex, transgender Drew and death by bear trap Cricket--then the only way to subvert the dichotomy of good and evil is to make the ghostly specter into a helpful being. In other words, by subverting expectations you still fell into an expected mold. But hey, nice try; really, A for effort. I mentioned some reviews ago that the writing on this show feels as though it's a junior level screenwriting class where the authors are trying so hard to be innovative that they end up being perfectly, horribly cliche. That sounds like this show is a lose-lose however we slice it, and maybe it is, but either way my expectations were met and I remain unsubverted. Grab a friendly ghost and let's go!

Jessie has been the worst counselor from the start. Everything she has said or done has invoked a great dislike--from her jealousy over Garrett and Amy, to lying about her grandmother dying, to her initial treatment and blackmail of Drew, to Jessie's less than stellar advice to Cricket about boys, Jessie is the former ugly duckling turned beautiful swan who was about as deep and interesting as a shallow puddle of muddy water. I have no time for people who believe their intense outer beauty somehow makes them more worthy of my attention, but it was hinted at from the start that Jessie's "hotness" is sudden and shocking. In other words, our expectations (hot counselor, shallow personality, no trouble in life ever) were about to be subverted--or were they fulfilled by way of subverting? Hmm, ponder that. Like everyone else, Jessie is haunted by her past, specifically by her horrible mother, whose own fear of abandonment leads her to abandon her only child. It's not actually that uncommon; people who constantly fear being left tend to, in turn, abandon those they love. What Jessie's mother fails to realize is that emotional abandonment hurts just as much and does as much damage as literal abandonment. Instead of encouraging her daughter to follower her college dreams, Jessie's mom drunkenly admits that she never fully believed in her daughter and hoped Jessie would never make it into Northwestern. If Jessie never goes to college, then she never leaves home and she become as much a failure as her mother. It's a terrible reality, but that's what it is: reality. Sometimes parents are upheld in a saint-like light and we forget they are human. Jessie's mom is despicable, her dirtiest deed being between her drunken confession and forcing Jessie to switch seats with her after their intoxicated car accident, but she's also grounded in a realism that serves as a counterbalance to the bonkers magical shenanigans going on at Camp Stillwater. That balancing act between the mundane/real and the fantastical/otherworldly is usually a hit or a miss on this show; one aspect taking center stage while the other falls to the wayside, but Jessie's story about trusting herself and believing in herself, even when others doubt her, is nicely played out in both the past (she was smart and good enough for college) and in the present (she was right that Holyoake was not playing a trick on her).

What remains to be seen, though, is whether or not the magical nature of the show can reach anything other than absurd cringe worthy moments. We still don't know why anyone is doing what they are doing--why exactly do the men in masks worship the demon Malphas? Why are they under the impression that their lives will be different or better with him around? How did they even learn about the demon in the first place? With Holyoake being a good guy, we now need to question why exactly he set up a church/place of worship in the exact space where a demon was living and why he allowed his followers to bathe and purify themselves in the demon's abode. I mean, honestly, that just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Amy's possession, which I've been calling since about episode two or three, makes her a far more interesting character--or at least one with a measure of personality--but it still doesn't answer any of the big mythology questions in regards to the demon, the motivations of the masked men or Holyoake's less than candid and upfront manner. Nor does it answer any of the smaller questions like why it could only be Jessie to dump Holyoake's bones into the river or whether or not Blair and Drew have any sort of storyline outside of being "otherized" and being markers for a supposed progressive story. The show, as a whole, needs better balance. The entire supernatural and slasher feel of the show could have been left by the wayside and just been an exploration of character and what a childhood utopia can do to a haunted spirit. Sure, it means no horribly tragic CGI demons rising from a lake, but I think it'd be a far better (not great, but better) show.

Miscellaneous Notes on The Devil Inside

--So no one ever taught the counselors and kids of Camp Stillwater to not stare into an eclipse?

--The eclipse apparently made Deb remember a bunch of stuff from her time at Camp Stillwater in the 1970s. Anyone wanna place some money on Deb being a member of the masked group but better at hiding it?

--"What they know for sure is..." "...that Stillwater sucks at vetting cops?" Drew needs more to do.

--Seriously, where was Blair this entire episode? And why did Cricket choose to appear to Jessie of all people?

--Sympathy for Jessie doesn't erase the fact that she was a stuck up bitch for the first 7 episodes or so.

--Malphas is an actual figure in demonology. The writers did research (or at least looked at Wikipedia!)

--So is Joel really dead? The show was pretty explicit when Cricket died. Also, should we talk about how out of the three counselors to have died thus far, two were people of color?

--"But I don't want to be saved" Sorry, Amy. But that's not how this narrative works.

In Which I Review Dead of Summer (1x7)

I DVR'd this week's episode of Dead of Summer, "Townie." You see, the Olympics are on and tonight I watched Michael Phelps win his 20th Olympic Gold medal. The wonders of humankind. Why am I bringing this up? Mostly to remind myself that there is still quality TV out there, even if it's sportsball related--sometimes those stories have more drama and heart than your average scripted hour long program. Look, let's be real. This isn't a very good show; neither was my previous summer review show, Under the Dome, but at least it could be charmingly stupid in its own gibberish way. Dead of Summer is tedious, silly, and cringe inducing with bad dialogue, terrible acting, and over wrought platitudes about teamwork, being a man, and--this week--contemplating how far you are willing to go to get even. Spoiler alert! You'll go as far as murder. Grab a severed tongue and let's go!

My introduction was a rather long winded way of saying that I don't have much to say this week. I just have one question: why is anyone doing what they are doing? I know that sounds like a fairly simply question, but I honestly have no clue. Some writers keep their characters opaque to add mystery or because they are doing a deep exploration of the human psyche (cf: Don Draper). But for this show, the characters are simply ill defined and are granted no internal motivations. All the counselors, and baddies, are painted in the broadest of strokes with the dullest of colors. Amy, Joel, Alex, Garret, Damon, et al are "loners" and "haunted" and while their backstory tries to flesh out the whys for their emotional situations, it is so fleeting that I might as well be grasping at straws. Why is Garrett so determined to figure out what's happening at Camp Stillwater? Because his father died one summer there and it has haunted him ever since, especially given that Garrett and his cop father had a tense relationship. That's a perfectly fine launching point for a character but the problem is that Dead of Summer goes no further; it lets the character of Garrett rest there on just those bare bones of a story. Why was Garrett's relationship with his father so bad? Authority issues? Typical teenage angst? That answer is the root of Garrett's personal story, but the show doesn't bother to go there, to show its audience what's Garrett's damage truly is. And speaking of ill defined motivations, let's talk about Damon and his cronies, with their masks and ritual suicide (yeah, that happened). It really doesn't come as a major surprise that Damon and the rest of the Teacher's pets are those who feel powerless, alone; believers that the world "sucks," they sought power and agency in the realm of the magical and mystical. It's not uncommon; people turn to religion/spirituality for those reasons all the time. The problem, like with Garrett, is that the show doesn't nuance any of these experiences. Damon is simply "evil" (with his head to toe black clothing) and willing to go to murderous and suicidal extremes because he feels like the world doesn't understand him. No exploration is given to Damon's home life except a throwaway line about his father not being around; we don't get inside his head to understand his complex motivations--and complex they need to be if he is willing to slit his throat and believes it will allow him to "live forever." To put this into modern parlance, suicide bombers are not simply "evil" for the sake of "evil." Their culture, their upbringing, their societal instructions and a host of other factors like the entire span of human history and interaction inform their very being. Reducing complex people and complex situations to their most base and simplistic terms is how we get poor narratives and one dimensional characters. And in good (bad?) old fashion, the most one dimensional character on the show turned out to be the Teacher (Supreme Bad Guy). The old cop, who's name is apparently Boyd--a detail I did not know until Garret made sure to say it three times this episode--was apparently behind everything and, I kid you not, when I say that even Scooby Doo mysteries made more sense than this denouement. Boyd's screen time has been minimal and his influence on the narrative has been nonexistent. There was little to no obvious forshadowing or clues for this revelation and, in keeping with tonight's theme or being sans-motivation, I have absolutely no idea why Boyd took up with the Holyoake movement, how he even found out about it and the demon that lurks beneath the shores, or how he came to be the leader of a band of mask wearing men. Huh. Look at that. Turns out I had more to say that I imagined. Too bad the show didn't follow suit.

 Miscellaneous Thoughts on Townie 

--Amy, after she dressed herself in a traditional white gown, cut her arm to allow her blood to flow into the bottomless lake. It bled so much that it trickled out into a stream deep enough to wade in. And she neither died nor passed out and was able to scream in her increasingly irritating voice. This is not how the human body works.

--Blair and Drew were the only good thing about this episode and the show, to give credit where it's due, is actually trying to explore the complexities of relationships that have many hurdles to over come, both personally and culturally.

--Actual line of dialogue: "I heard your call and I am ready." This was said while a guy blew into a ram's horn that had been bathed in tongue blood.

--"You want to bring violent criminals into a camp? With kids?" Oh saints be praised, someone remembered that there are little kids at this camp and maybe we need to get them off the property! But no, they'll be fine. The color wars start today!

In Which I Review Dead of Summer (1x6)

There is something inherently meta in an episode that focuses on Elizabeth Mitchell's character and is called "The Dharma Bums." Yes, it's a LOST joke. The meta textural reference to LOST has made me seriously nostalgic for one of my all time favorite shows, which I suppose was rather the point. Not necessarily nostalgia for LOST but nostalgia for the past, the perfect past in all its golden and gilded glory. The past is always seen in such paradise-lite terms, and those feelings are captured in the setting of our show--the childhood camp where you can relive your perfect past. As Nick Carraway intones, "you can't repeat the past." The great tragedy of the Great Gatsby is learning that you can't repeat the past no matter how hard you try to line up all the right pieces; in trying to do so, Jay Gatsby dies and lives are ruined. But what if you had magic? Not metaphorical, gin-smuggling monetary magic but actual cosmic-changing, life altering magic. Then could you repeat the past? Or maybe better yet, if you were capable of repeating the past, should you? Grab your time capsule and let's go!

Deb Carpenter is not a happy woman. This comes as little to no surprise since everyone who arrived at Camp Stillwater is masking a particular pang or pain from the past and, let's be real, a woman who sinks her entire life savings into reopening a children's camp is probably not a ball of sunshine and rainbows. If everyone at Camp Stillwater is metaphorically haunted (and also being literally haunted), Deb's own ghostly specter is the perfect past and the choices she made (or didn't make) that took her further and further away from that glorious yesteryear. I find that I am disturbed, as long time readers of my reviews would suspect, that Deb's entire story revolves around a guy and a romance that did not pan out as expected. Sure, Keith gives some mumbo jumbo about how Deb's mission has never been about him, not really, but instead about Deb finding and becoming who she is truly meant to be. But, if that's the case then, one, why did it take a dead former lover who represents Deb's version of the perfect past to make that clear and, two, who exactly is Deb suppose to become because even after an entire centric about her, I have no idea. Is the show saying that Deb needed to reopen Camp Stillwater, a move that has resulted in several deaths and nothing resembling normal, happy camp past times? Is the show hinting that Deb is somehow imbued with magic that may help stem the tide of whatever is coming our way; maybe she's the one who can rid Amy of her possession (called that one!), a move that would be remarkable given that thus far Deb has been shown to have absolutely no magical powers, abilities or inclinations other than talking to her dead boyfriend after "summoning" him through the power of her sadness and self doubt (and yes, I am bothered by that). Deb's story could have been fairly interesting; maybe she lately discovered that she does have some sort of magical power that summons all manner of dead folk and she could help the campers (and us, the audience who is still stumbling around in the woods avoiding bear traps) understand what Holyoake wanted and how Camp Stillwater came to be the center of a demonic entity, energy, or what have you. But, instead, Deb's story doesn't get me any closer to understanding anything about Camp Stillwater and really not even to Deb. Her destiny is opaque and confusing and even if she ends up as some sacrificial lamb to save Amy or another camper, the act will fall on deaf ears (so to speak) since Deb's relationship to all her campers in tenuous at best and totally nonexistent at worse.

Centrics like this are supposed to help me care about a character and get inside their head space--and yes, oh woe is Deb, the Harvard graduate lawyer who got fast tracked to a partnership and married a handsome, supposedly caring and intelligent man, when she could have been gallivanting across Europe with her beatnik poet ex. And for the record, that kind of lifestyle is perfectly fine; go forth and be Sal Paradise, but Deb also made her choices and furthermore also chose not to leave her situation. Deb's choices might have been hard and resulted in some self reflection and melancholy, but at least she made them. Everything post finding Keith, dead on the hotel floor, reeks of her decisions being made for the sake of another, no matter what Ghost Man tries to say before vanishing into a cloud of smoke. Does it make me care about her? No not really. I'm empathetic to feeling the weight of your decisions crushing you under, and that seems to be a running motif for all our characters, but Deb's decisions did not result in her being bullied (Drew) or used (Cricket). In other words, Deb is coming across as a bit of a privileged woman who is lamenting that she can't go have sex in the woods every night like when she was a teenager. This is to say nothing of the fact that apparently Deb can conjure up her former flame for a tryst and some hand holding any time she's moved emotionally enough. The more I write about this, the angrier I get because the writers could have really done something more interesting with Deb (again, another theme that abounds, with the exception of Drew who really gave us something to sink our teeth into). We have four episodes to go and while I accept that this is a summer show and was never going to be must-see TV or anything beside a teen drama and all that genre carries, Dead of Summer needs to buckle down, get to work, and try for a plot that doesn't feel like filler, totally underwhelming and largely unnecessary in its flashbacks.

Miscellaneous Notes on The Dharma Bums

--Possessed Amy is 100% more interesting than Normal Amy.

--Why is Amy the Doorway? Why is she so important? Again, we've got  4 episodes to go and still need to see episodes centered on Blair and Jessie and perhaps Garret so I suspect answers might not be forthcoming anytime soon.

--The Ouija Board scene was actually well shot, if slightly cheesy in that quaint 1980s way.

--To contact spirits on the other side, you need ginger and chicken blood. Check!

--Who is in the mask helping out the bad guys? It's obviously a camper but which one? My guess in on Possessed Amy. We've already seem that she has a connection to the Lake Demon and loses time while under its influence.

--Keith really did walk backwards into a massive cloud of smoke/smog. There are quaint 1980s visuals and then there are cringe worthy ones.

In Which I Review Dead of Summer (1x5)

So, how do you stay alive in the woods? Easy; by not going into them! Obviously none of the campers in this week's episode "How To Stay Alive In The Woods" know this very basic rule that is made apparent in every horror movie made. If you suspect your childhood camp of housing Satanic rituals, murderers, and possibly demonic entities then Common Sense 101 means you stay in a public, well lit area with lots of witnesses. But of course, the gang ventured into the woods for "reasons." This show is one inorganic plot point after the next; it pushes its characters into situations for no logical reason other than the writers need something to happen to advance their plot. It's a shoddy writing practice because it means I can't trust what the writers tell me about a character from week to week. Cricket decided she wanted a mix tape type of relationship and had moved past Alex, accepting that a one night stand wasn't in her deck of cards. But this week, after this revelation and coming to terms with it, Cricket is persuaded to go meet Alex in the woods--not because it made sense for her character (she's barely interacted with Alex since their almost tryst) but because the writers needed to kill a character and her number was up. Oh, and Joel got a flashback this week. Grab your trusty video camera and let's go!

Do you feel like you know and understand Joel as a character? I don't. Very early on it was established that Joel is the "watcher" type; his video camera is never far from his hands and he delights in movies, direction, and trying to tell a story. All of those characteristics are intriguing enough to get a character off the ground but from there you need to flesh him out; you need to show me why videos, movies, and capturing the narrative through the medium of a lens is so important to said character, and that's where the flashback comes in. The narrative device of the flashback is a tricky one; often times they are vital and thus far "Dead of Summer" has actually tried to make the flashbacks relevant to their character work. Amy is a loner who lost her only friend; Alex is a con artist; Cricket is insecure and Drew cannot find acceptance for who he is. All of that works to explain their present day situations. The story for Joel should have added some much needed weight to his character but it simply failed to deliver. I still don't know why Joel likes to film as much as he does. Sure, you could argue that he was simply into movies and decided to give it a whirl, but for a kid to decide on their career path that early on--he was roughly 9 in our first flashback and already talking about Oscars--to the extent that he begin to film everything around them, there has to be more than just a passing curiosity. Joel's love affair with film and shooting his reality is given the rather dubious explanation in the present day that his camera is the only way he could know the truth after his brother Michael died via suicide but we already know that Joel was filming everything long before Michael died and Joel himself began to see the Tall Man. Instead of highlighting who Joel is at his core (maybe romantic artistic, maybe obsessed with perceptions and how people present themselves both when someone is looking and when someone is not and thus somewhat cynical of the world around him) we get a half-hearted truth that feels like an afterthought for both the writers and the character. There is nothing to grasp onto with Joel other than a love of film making, that goes woefully unexplored, and a bout of paranoia over visions that we, the audience, already know are very real because the first scene of the entire series is the death of Holyoake at the hands of the villagers. There is no narrative tension; we are not left wondering if maybe Joe has some sort of psychosis because all the episodes leading up to this one have already solidified the mythology that Holyoake as real and ever present. As for why Joel is seeing Holyoake, I have no idea but it's not a far leap in logic to notice that both Holyoake, Michael (who was seeing the Tall Man before his suicide), and Joel have one thing in common that no one else shares: their skin tone. Anyone wanna place some money on Joel being a distant relation to the Tall Man and thus linked to him because of blood? Don't really need a fancy video camera to find the truth in that; it seems all but inevitable.

 Miscellaneous Notes on How To Stay Alive In The Woods

--Why does the Tall Man want Amy to die? I don't really know but it could have something to do with her needing to read a manual to roast a marshmallow.

--It is interesting that neither Amy nor Deb seem to remember their romantic encounters from the night before, though I suspect Deb is faking and Amy's confusion is genuine.

--So there are bear traps in the woods but these campers have been running around, in the dark, since day one and Cricket is the first to fall victim to it? Also, parents are letting their kids go to a summer camp that has bear traps cleverly hidden in the woods?

--"Have fun pitching Deb's tent." Ew.

--Garrett finds a ring in the cabin with the initials JS and instantly deduces that the ring had to belong to his father and was there because his father was investigating the mystery of Camp Stillwater. Sure, Garrett. Whatever gets you through the day.

--God bless those ugly 80s prom dresses. Oof.

In Which I Review Dead of Summer (1x4)

Regular readers of this blog of mine will remember my review of OUAT's "Ruby Slippers" in which the writers finally dove into an LGBT relationship (or, rather, stuck their toe into the LGBT waters and then ran back to their safer heterosexual shores). When I reviewed that episode, I opened with a statement that because I am not a member of the LGBT community (just a committed ally) my feelings on the episode did not detract nor override in any way, shape, or form from the views and opinions of someone in said community. In other words,  I self-identify as a heterosexual cis woman and because I do occupy a certain place of privilege where my type of romantic love is constantly given weight and a speaking voice in narrative, it is harder for me to critically analyze an episode of TV that is designed to speak to those who do not occupy my social and cultural sphere--who are marginalized, disenfranchised, maligned and altogether lacking in true representation on TV--without sounding like a pompous arse. The same applies to this week's Dead of Summer episode, "Modern Love." Drew is transgendered and, as such, I am approaching my review with a respectful but still critical eye. Dd the writers do right by the trans community? That's the question with which we need to wrestle this week. Also, if masquerade balls are really something people have at summer camp (hint: no). Grab your favorite mask and let's go! 

The metaphor of the mask is not lost on me, nor probably on anyone who sat through a basic English high school class. Masks typically represent secrets, hidden identity, and a chance to play-act as someone else. It's not really shocking, then, that the masquerade ball comes at the same time as Drew's backstory, a character who has yet to be defined by any solid character traits except silent, sullen, and transgendered. This isn't to say that these qualities aren't traits to build a character on, but rather that the traits exhibited thus far were hiding the real Drew, the person he is underneath the sullen, silent, moody, reflective demeanor used to cover up his transgendered nature. The mask Drew wore for the first few episodes when we were getting to know the other campers did exactly what masks are literally and metaphorically supposed to do: it protected that which lay beneath. When you wear a mask (be it a plastic or less tangible one), you can become anyone. A mild mannered software engineer can become a hacker intent on taking down the capitalist society (yes, Mr. Robot is finally back on TV); a car insurance claim manager can open up an underground Fight Club (that I'm not supposed to talk about) for men to become men. A mask also gives you the chance to be whatever society wants you to be; in the privacy of home you can feel free to let your freak flag fly (so to speak), but out there in the judgmental and intolerant society, a nondescript mask can help you to blend in, which is what Drew was doing early on. But here's the question: is a mask still a mask if it is tailored made, perfected, just for you? Or can the mask you are wearing be a more true version of your internal, real self? To put it another way, as Drew's mother said and as was reiterated throughout the episode, "you can't hide what you are." For Jessie, the counselor who is quickly becoming the worst of the worst, and Drew's mother, the mask of Drew is simply covering up Andrea. The Drew "persona" is a cry for a help or a weird character tick that can be made fun of, taunted, and used as a tool for bribery. To the narrow minded, Drew cannot chose his sex (or more accurately, his gender) and the sex organs assigned at birth determined his gender and the way society expects him to act--i.e, as a girl named Andrea who wears dresses, speaks a certain way, and performs other "feminine" societal roles. I have to give the show credit for letting the audience sit with Drew in his 1989 flashbacks, trying to navigate his identity through a society that still doesn't quite grasp what transgendered means (and, hell, it's 2016 and we're still struggling with how to discuss and approach transgendered peoples). Maybe it's a little cliche to let the only flashback for Drew be about his transition, and it suggests that his only hallmark characteristic is as a trans person, but it was well done (in my eyes at least; if I have any trans readers, I'd love to know what you thought). The show didn't make Drew's transition into a Hallmark-made moment in which his mother lovingly opened her arms and accepted Drew, body and soul, but the show also didn't try to skip over the harsh realities; instead it kept Drew firmly grounded in the reality of trans people everywhere; this flashback and this episode fit with the outsider theme that is present in other characters so far like Amy, Alex, and Cricket. This outsider theme unites them slowly, episode by episode. To return to our mask theme, though, Drew isn't the mask. Andrea is. It's only by taking off Andrea--the skirt, the frilly shirt, the fancy shoes--that Drew can actually be who he is: a boy.

On the flip side of this internal and interesting Drew-centered episode, we have more mythology being played out slowly, which hear really does read as dull-dull-dull. The show can't settle into what it wants to be; it bit off more than it can chew, I think. While the characters are deadly dull and the mythology intriguing enough to keep watching one week, the very next week it flips on its head, as it did with this week's episdoe. The show could be a character study of different types of people have a summer of growth, a bit of a bildungsroman while engaging in camp fire stories and (apparently) smoking a lot of weed. Or the show could be a mythology based horror flick with lifeless, dull, non interesting characters that you don't care about but, instead, tune in just to be frightened by the things that go bump in the night. I know horror movies existed in the 1980s so haven't these idiots learned to not go walking in the woods by themselves? If they haven't yet then I hope a giant demon handing rising from the lake to say hi to Amy was enough. No, really. What was that? I guess Amy is the chosen one or something and I'm still learning toward the demon possessing Amy once it comes to the surface but this week none of this really mattered. What mattered was Drew trying to find acceptance for who he is, discarding his mask and asking others to see the real him.

Miscellaneous Notes on Modern Love

--I feel as though I would be remiss in my snark duties if I didn't point out that Adam and Eddy achieved a better LGBT narrative with Drew than they did after 5 years and a token romance over on OUAT with Red and Dorothy.

--Jessie is the worst and while she and Drew might both be "scared" the same can be said of Amy and Cricket and Alex. Jessie trying to compare her situation with Drew's is unnecessary and petty. Whatever went down with Jessie and her DUI was her choice and one she did not have to make. Drew declaring he's a boy is not a choice; it's a fact of his life.

--So Deb's box contains a....book? That apparently teaches the virtue of teenage sexual love?

--Drew has a some good taste in music with both David Bowie and Sonic Youth.

In Which I Review Dead of Summer (1x3)

I went to summer camp when I was much younger and I don't remember all the kissing that this week's episode, "Mix Tape," had in it. Or maybe I was just never invited; or maybe the constant hooking up and sexual concerns present at Camp Stillwater were frowned upon while staying at Christian Bible Camp. At any rate, the mythology and surrounding mystery of Camp Stillwater took a bit of a break this week (until the end) and instead the show tried to sell me on numerous relationships. You might be able to tell that it was not a rousing success. It's a sign of the caliber of writing that the romantic entanglements are flat, uninteresting, and eye-roll worthy while the friendship between Blair and Cricket is far more rewarding and organic. I keep bringing up how cliche the show is and how it sticks to its tropes, lock stock and barrel; the gay boy and the overweight self-conscious girl are no exception but that doesn't mean that a trope can't be compelling or, at the very least, not as dull and rote as the never ending parade of love triangles/squares/whatever shape this show is making itself out to be. Grab a dear heart and avoid the lightening and let's go!

Cricket is a bit of an idiot, right? I say that as someone who identifies with the body and self-confidence issues that have manifested in Cricket and to which we were treated this week. Since she's the cliche overweight (in this shows eyes, at least), non-traditionally pretty character, of course she's got body issues and is attempting to rectify the problem by making others think she is something she's not. Cricket might be an idiot (and I'll get to that in a second) but there's a nice through line in her story this week about creating a myth around oneself. There are lies we tell ourselves to make us feel better and usually we hope like hell that others around us, those who don't know us all that well, will buy into the myth we spin. Tell the same story enough times and people will take it as gospel truth, believing in stories that have no basis in reality. For Cricket, it's about changing the reality of everyone around her: if people hear that she's a "slut" and believe the stories of her hookups, then they will see her as something she doesn't see in herself: desirable. It's perfectly normal to want others to see us as desirable and given Cricket's backstory of an overweight mother and cheating father, it's even more so. I have some issues with the end result of this story, however. Cricket realizes that she doesn't want to settle and that she deserves a mix tape type of romance (side note, but once again setting this story in 1989 and bringing up the concept of a mix tape isn't doing the show any favors given that most of the audience barely remembers CDs and life before downloads and shared playlists). This is all well and good except that her chance at said mix tape romance is currently....dead. Alex, our Russian who is fooling everyone into believing he's an all American good boy, just wants a hook up and another notch in his stolen belt, so Cricket is left to chirp alone. It's not that Cricket needs a reward for coming to her conclusion, but I think the show is drawing a rather stark dividing line. You know, there's nothing wrong, with just sex. The show felt a wee bit Puritan in this regard. Cricket may want a mix tape type of romance, but the two are not mutually exclusive. Having sex (because, shock, it feels good) doesn't mean that you won't get a mix tape someday, that sex can't lead to a mix tape, or that you have to forgo sex in order to have a more serious romance. Sometimes feeling good, no strings attached, is perfectly fine. Those weighty considerations aside, we're back to my beginning assessment about Cricket being an idiot. Not that any of her fellow camp counselors are any better, mind you, but in what reality do you get into a perfect stranger's car to go for a ride around the block? Yes, there's the myth that Cricket is spinning for herself about being reckless and adventurous but there's also common sense and Cricket had enough of it to know that Damon (cliche bad guy name for the demon worshiper!) is bad news. She turned him away twice before agreeing to get in to his car-of-love-and-death. Cricket still knows that she's spinning tall tales, she hasn't bought into her own false reality, but just because Jessie gave her some seriously bad advise, she goes off and takes a ride from Damon, a guy dressed head to toe in costuming bad mojo? Dumb, dumb, dumb. However, given that Amy is afraid of tether-ball (and got struck my lightening), Joel is trying to hook up with Deb (probably Queen of the Damned), and Blair can't tell that Drew isn't into him and only kissed him to shut up his never ending blabbing, maybe Cricket's actually ahead of the pack.

Miscellaneous Notes on Mix Tape

--Is Cricket having premonitions or is someone warning her from the other side?

--Yeah, Amy got struck by lightening while standing in the demon-lake. That'll end well.

--So, we did manage to get a bit more information on the Satanic cult. Apparently they sprung up in 1871 with their intention to commune with the dead and were led by the piano player.

--I'm worried that all the TVs around Camp Stillwater only play the same Satanic Documentary over and over again.

--Cricket may be an idiot, but Jessie is just the worst, ever.

--"Women like us, sometimes we have to settle." There are bad parents in every single Adam and Eddy show, aren't there?

In Which I Review Dead of Summer (1x2)

Last week, I hypothesized that Dead of Summer is supposed to be a tongue in cheek satire of campy teen horror flicks. All the cliches and tropes are played to such an extent that they are ripe for taunting. In this week's episode, Barney Rubble Eyes, my theory takes the proverbial one-two punch and falls under the weight of the shows own tropes. I suppose the show was going for shock that all-American, preppy boy Alex is really Alexi from the Soviet Union, meaning he is labeled a Russian "commie" in the late 1980s, a time when being Russian wasn't met with much approval. Whether or not it's shocking in this show, though, is up for debate. We have little to no information about Alex/Alexi to begin with; last week he was just another camp counselor and I could barely tell them all apart. Had this revelation been kept until later in the season, after we got to know Alex without the Alexi component, then maybe I'd be more impressed at the sudden about face. As it is, the show blew the secret too early, leaving me underwhelmed. I have a sense that feeling with be reoccurring quite a bit. Grab your pocket knife and let's go! 

With the second episode of the series, we are still building the mystery and fleshing out the campers, if both are coming in piecemeal and rather slowly at that. As with last week, I find myself baffled that the writers of the show chose to set this program in the late 1980s. It's hard to relate to a former Soviet Union kid turned all-American wannabee. I have no frame of reference for this sort of life which makes it difficult, to say the least, to really care about Alex/Alexi. Without some sort of commonality, how can I see myself in Alex's story? Sure, he's an outsider but the sort that you are hard pressed to make any inroads with an audience. Amy's story of being an outcast as the new girl in a new school who finds it hard to make friends was far more understandable. What is more interesting and potentially more relatable is the way the show and Alex's story are mocking and deconstructing the idea of the American Dream--a vague and opaque ideal that I couldn't define anymore than I could explain quantum physics. With Alex's story we see the American Dream's seedy underbelly. Fake, fraudulent and with a definite "ick" factor, the American Dream is really about taking what you want, when you want it, and pretending to live a good, upstanding, moral life, one you can throw in others faces. All while screwing the Russian mistress. No one is who they say they are, and someone living the American Dream is likely posing, using the stereotypes and ready made cultural symbols to sell themselves as the embodiment of the Dream. It's almost Don Draper-like. In 2016, the American Dream gets a good amount of derision, a bygone phrase of an age that doesn't exist anymore (if it ever existed at all). Alex's story shows how flimsy that dream is, and does it through the eyes of a foreigner who is told that the American Dream is something tangible, something he can grasp. The show so far has a way of casting everyone as an outsider--Amy's a loner, Alex's a Commie, Drew is transgender, Cricket is the odd girl out when it comes to boys and I'm sure we'll discover weekly outcasts with each passing flashback. Does this mean that the show is somehow fresher than I possibly imagined? Not really. There is something to say about the American Dream, about the romanticization of a childhood past (captured perfectly in a summer camp), how that romantic past cannot last and about outsiders finding like minded individuals to take on the horrors of the world, but I'm still not sure that the show is making efforts to discuss these topics through the use of satirical tropes. It's more like they stumble into them and then move on before really digging in their heels and working out the nuances of the topics.

The issue arises with connecting these themes of being an outsider back to the larger mystery of the show. Lest we forget (and how could we with the show giving us the obligatory string wailing and ghostly visages every few seconds), this show is really a slasher/horror teen romp. The present day internal developments should somehow thematically link back to the mythology. The piano-player ghost makes several appearances, praying on little Anton (a Russian stand in for Alexi, of course). Why Anton? Is it because he's a loner? Because he's friendless? Does the ghost sympathize with this, or is he using that trait to his advantage? Why is the ghost targeting anyone? What does he want? The mythology of the show is obviously going to build very slowly, being teased out in simple strokes so that the writers don't totally show their hand. Is the mystery worth waiting for? Maybe and maybe not. It's hard to tell at this point. I maintain the cliche nature of the horror mystery, but I also have always maintained that telling me an old story well is better than telling me a new story poorly. There's a bit of intrigue still in the mystery, especially since it is all being kept so close to the vest, that does make me want to tune in and pay attention. Whether or not that interest stays is contingent on how fast this plot moves and if the show keeps dropping eye roll worthy lines like "it's just begun!"

Miscellaneous Notes on Barney Rubble Eyes

--Maybe I'm not cool enough (or old enough) to understand the reference that gives us this week's title, but...it's an odd one right?

--Holy love quadrangle, Batman. So...Amy likes Alex and likes Garrett. Cricket likes Alex and Blotter likes Cricket. Jessie likes Garrett and Garrett likes Amy and possibly still Jessie. Blair likes Drew and Drew hasn't opened up everyone that she's trans. On top of all this, Joel is crushing on Deb and trying to film her with his ever present camera. Yikes!

--The bar where Garrett's mom works and where Garrett goes to read secret police files just happened to be showing a documentary on Satanism.

--Two boys making a bet on who can score with a girl first. Yes, just what this show needed.

--"Where are you from?" "The Soviet Union." Do the writers understand that the Soviet Union isn't just one place; that it's a conglomerate of many nations that have many different languages and cultures?

--What is Deb's secret? Is it that she can create magnificent ice sculptures or freeze people? Maybe it's that she is secretly working for Ben Linus to get the lights turned back on before the "V" aliens arrive. (Yes, this is a meta reference to all of Elizabeth Mitchell's most famous TV roles).

--I just realized that the lead cop is Blackbeard from OUAT.

--The visuals for the acid trip were well done.

In Which I Review Dead of Summer (1x1)

Ah, summer television. A time of high drama, mostly poor narrative, and usually a fair amount of snark from yours truly. With Under the Dome off the air (mercifully) after three seasons, I desperately needed a new show to review while my normal TV shows are on hiatus. Thankfully (?) the creators of OUAT decided they didn't have their plates full with a 23 episode fairy tale drama and went to the more "family friendly" outlet of ABC to launch a brand-new sudsy camp filled program. Sounds like it is absolutely something I need to review! Reading the press releases and synopsis for Dead of Summer made both my eyebrows risee; a mix of LOST levels of mythology with OUAT fantasy and Pretty Little Liars type of cliche characters does not sound like recipe for anything other than a disaster. But summer TV is supposed to be slightly disastrous (maybe I'm biased after reviewing Under the Dome for three years) so I had prepared myself for laughable dialogue and an easy to read text and it's definitely all that, but what I got from the series premiere, "Patience," though, was something more and something unexpected. Don't misunderstand; this show is laced with the sort of cliches you'd expect from a summer-camp horror narrative, but these cliches are so apparent and so typical that it's hard not to wonder if the writers aren't playing to their audiences expectations and creating an overly dramatic, melodramatic, satire about teenage gothic summer camp stories. In other words, the show is laughably bad and predictable, but maybe it's supposed to be. Grab your hot dogs and marshmallows and let's go!

If anyone would like to hazard a guess as to why creators Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis set their campy camp (pun!) drama in 1989 then, by all means, lay it on me cause goodness knows I found the (semi) recent period piece aspect of this show a little too silly for words. On a network that targets directly to the generation that comes after me (still a baby chick, born in the twilight year of 1987) it's a weird step to take. There are no cell phones, no social media accounts, no insta-wifi connections that link our techno brains to the rest of humanity. Perhaps its nostalgia; the idea of being cut off from everything we think of today in terms of communication and connection creates a deeper story. Maybe it's fondly remembering when you could be one with nature without needing to snap a sunset photo to Instagram. Or maybe it's just that a soap opera derived camp horror flick doesn't make a lot of sense in the 21st century--everyone, at all times, has a camera, a video recorder, a phone, and literally a link to thousand, if not millions, of other people at their finger tips. Whatever the case, the 1989 setting gives rise to a contradiction for the viewers; it gives the show a totally out of touch feeling with the music, outfits, and general power dynamics between the genders it deploys; but at the same time, there is something very familiar about all this. It has been years (and years and years) since I attended a camp, but Camp Stillwater could be any Midwestern, off-the-beaten-path patch of youthful indiscretion that you remember from days gone by. Cliches might be obnoxious but we readily insert our own memories into their fully made forms. Everyone knew someone like one of these characters on Dead of Summer. Maybe you were even just like one of them--be it popular and cool, or a loner and struggling. Cliches don't necessarily have to be a bad thing and some of the best stories are as laudable as they are because of their rote direction, but in the 21st century, when TV is supposed to be making inroads in depictions of culture, society, gender, sex, and life in general, cliches are there to be made fun of; to be deconstructed so as to understand why certain attitudes, feelings, and sentiments belong to an age that has passed us by. And it's hard for me to believe that Adam and Eddy don't know this; I give them a lot (a lot) of grief over on my OUAT reviews--as does a good portion of the fandom these days--for adhering to traditions in storytelling that need to be placed by the wayside. After five years of that show, and the ever growing criticism around it, am I expected to believe that these two professional writers haven't realized that what their target audience wants is something that pushes the envelope beyond the stereotypical? That is why I'm inclined to read Dead of Summer as a clever satire of its tropes. These cliches are played to the hilt; played to such perfect type that if I didn't know any better, I would say this show was the first outing of a junior writer who is drawing from what he knows--and what he knows is the simple, un-nuanced, free from complications narrative that is like following a straight line from plot point A to plot point B.

So, if the story is so rife in cliches, what kind of narrative are we looking at here? Well, I believe the entire thrust of the show can be summed up from a scene straight out of "teen horror 101." Sitting around a campfire, smoking weed, and drinking cheap beer one character (a cliche "watcher and storyteller" figure who records everything on a old fashioned video camera) says, "anyone could come in here and kill every single one of us. They wouldn't find out bodies for days!" This eye-roll worthy line is followed up with the equally tropeish creepy janitor--who takes a little too much enjoyment in capturing animals in traps--speaking cryptically to the lead character, Amy, informing her, in a dull monotone voice, to leave Camp Stillwater because "you have no idea what this place is!"A tree also bleeds at one point. Demons, literal and metaphorical, abound at Camp Stillwater. Amy, as is her right as main character, is damaged, haunted, and, of course, the new counselor at Camp Stillwater. She's the outsider, one of two characters who didn't spend her golden childhood years by the lake with the rest of the gang. Amy's story is to find herself while figuring out the mysteries of Camp Stillwater, navigating all things personal and mythical. These mythical mysteries include all the classics: ghosts, magic, Satanism, and weird local legends. It's hard to get a handle on the full scope of the mystery in the first episode but given that the show begins with the murder of a negro piano player a century ago, and that all the ghosts so far were seen in the piano player's lake, it's not hard to guess. Lemme take a stab...the dead negro was accused of witchcraft and killed by racist townies to "protect their own." It will turn out that the dead man was a practitioner of magic--and possibly a Satanist who killed all the folks in the lake to appease some sort of demonic entity that resides at Stillwater and to keep the world at large safe--and is seeking revenge (and/or continual appeasement of said demonic force) using the natural magical properties of Camp Stillwater to continue exacting his revenge. Deb, the head counselor (who was miraculously brought back to life and defrosted from her time as the Ice Queen), knows all this but can't bring herself to shut down the camp because she sunk all her money into trying to bring her childhood camp back to life (this action reawakens the camp ghost, if I read the cliches right!) On the whole, there are too many characters (each one as opaque as the next), too many mysteries, too many narratives balls in the air, for anything to make a ton of sense right now. But I don't know that it needs to; as terrible and hokey as the premiere was, it's not without action, intrigue, and it does manage to create a desire to see how it ends--even if you could write the ending without seeing anything else from Dead of Summer.

Miscellaneous Notes on Patience 

--There really are way too many characters on this show. It's as if the writers couldn't narrow down to just a few cliches--they needed to have ALL of them. There's the ugly duckling who became the super hot swan (Jessie); there's Blair (who is supremely gay and needs everyone to know it); there's Alex (the popular but probably insecure alpha male); along for the ride is Drew who's only character trait so far is long hair and sullen silence and Cricket who fills our quota for the "stupid nickname" cliche.

--Amy's flashbacks reveal that the first friend she ever had 1) died (of course) 2) is the reason she went to Camp Stillwater (again of course) and 3) imparted the great life lesson that sometimes you have to do stuff that scares you.

--How about a round of applause for me for NOT making an Amy/Anna joke? Elizabeth Lail isn't nearly as captivating here as she was on OUAT, but she's also just being asked to act mopey, sad-eyed, and scream at everything that startles her (which occurred approximately every 5 minutes).

--Do I smell a love triangle between Amy, Garrett the Deputy, and Jessie? Adam and Eddy just can't resist, can they? On the other side of cliche romances, we have the somewhat icky set up of Deb and Joel in an autumn-late spring type of romance.

--The lake is apparently shaped like a ram/demon's head and the Camp sits at its heart. Naturally.