Fear Itself: Family Man
By fred | June 20, 2008
(S01E03) Well well… we are now in for the third installment of NBC’s anthology Fear Itself, and if there’s one that (pretty much) always goes with anthologies - that you can’t really know what to expect from week to week, even from a quality POV - at least after three episodes we can start to see a pattern as to how each of the stories will be constructed.
No, not all are the same and there are no template they are all bounded to, but it’s become clear now that at least a few things can be seen about each story, a few things that are likely to be how each installment of the anthology will be constructed, and unfortunately it’s not really all for the best.
For instance, it seems all stories will be based on a very classic horror story. I mean, unless you don’t like the genre and never watched anything from that category, in which case you’re probably not tuning in to watch Fear Itself, you have seen all of those stories before. Who hasn’t seen the story about a group of guys ending up in a place in the middle of nowhere, where lives some kind of blood-thirsty creature ? Who hasn’t seen a story about a haunted house, or the classic switching body trick ??
This episode was the later, and sadly much like its predecessor, it showed no originality neither in the story itself or in the show it was told. It was your very classic body switch, preferably from a very good and religious family man, and a very bad serial killer/rapist who started at 12 killing his entire family. And from the beginning all the way till the end, it was what you’d expect from such a story, in each and every way, rendering the whole thing incredibly predictable.
Yet, it wasn’t actually boring. But there’s only one reason for that : the acting. Both Eureka’s Colin Ferguson and Clifton Collins Jr. did a terrific job in their respective part, and managed to keep us interested in a story that would have been otherwise pretty boring. So kudos to those guys, who perfectly nailed the slow evolution and emotional distress of each of their characters, in quite different ways. Side note, Ferguson showed he’s really a good actor, who can do much more than the goofy sheriff of Eureka – by the way, the third season of Eureka will premiere on Sci-fi July 29 at 9.00
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything else in this episode to make things good, and as good as the acting was, it’s not enough. If there had been something more, something else, something different, if the story had showed signs of originality anywhere it might have been a really great episode, I’m sure there were so much more that could have been done in bringing all those people together — the episode was written by Dan Knauf (Carnivále, Supernatural) and directed by Ronny Yu (Bride of Chucky , Freddy vs. Jason).
Sadly, all we got to see was this episode, an episode with characters not always being that bright, really. I mean, so Mahoney is trapped inside the body of a killer, Richard Brautigan, and what does he keep repeating to everyone who car hear, like lawyers, guards, etc ? “I’m innocent”, “you got the wrong guy”, “I didn’t kill them”… in other words, the classic thing those guys hear everyday. Why stay there, why not go for a “I’m NOT Brautigan, there’s a mistake, my name is Dennis Mahoney” or anything that applies to his current and very unusual situation, instead of sounding like a broken record ?
In the same idea, why did he never tried to get his chats with Brautigan at the prison recorded, or have witnesses ? Once he finally got his lawyer to check some facts out, why does he just let him go ? Why not ask to check the signatures this supposed “Mahoney” left when he visited, because they obviously won’t match every paper from before, like the driver license or anything, whereas he could sign the right way. Why not ask him to tell how he met his wife, when they got married, what happened the days his kids were born, anything he should know yet wouldn’t be able to “remember”, whereas once again he could, he knew all that, because he is the “real” Mahoney.
It’s like he really didn’t want to convince anyone about what was actually going on, but work this on his own. And so he did, and from the start you could tell where this was going. Which brings us to another thing that each of the episode of Fear Itself seem to share : the aim at ending with a “twist”. Only, and so far it’s been the case for every single one of the episode, that last so-called twist at the end of the episode is absolutely predictable, it’s everything but, a twist.
In our case, you knew he would go there, fight his alter-ego, kill him and I thought kill himself but he got a police officer to do it for him. Doesn’t change a thing, the ending was to be he switched back, only to find out his entire family had been murdered, and “he” did it ! (I even thought they might turn him into an accomplice of Brautigan)
In the end we’re left with an oh-so very classic and predictable story, and an episode that’s only worth watching because of the acting performances. But classic boring stories without any trace of originality anywhere, and a “twist” that’s the most predictable thing ever, doesn’t make for good stuff. Unfortunately that seems to be what it takes to make an episode of Fear Itself…
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Fear Itself
