wasabi_poptart | (no subject)

Remember American Gothic? Oh, how I loved that show. Loved it, loved it, loved it. It's out on DVD now, so I've been rewatching it ... unfortunately, it does not hold up.

Gary Cole still rocks my world into a thousand pieces as the evil Sheriff Lucas Buck ("That's Buck, with a B"), but the show itself lacks focus. Obviously Buck is a supernatural entity, but his powers are very dodgy; it's never clear where the limitations are. Like, he can control the weather and resurrect the dead, but he can't run a nosy reporter out of town? Also, does he ruin people for the fun of it, or for personal vengeance, or to teach them a lesson, or what? The whole weekly morality play is very contrived. The whole show is contrived, really. Is there some symbolic occult relevance to Buck wanting to claim Caleb as his son when he's ten years old, or is that simply the age of the actor they found to play the role? I mean, the kid who played Caleb was great, but the rest of the show did not rise to the occasion.

Teevee has improved so much in the past ten years. You try to compare it to a show like Lost, or even Supernatural, and you just can't. I credit The X-Files with raising the bar.