TVoholic.com: Full episode reviews of your favorite TV shows & news about television

Fear Itself: In Sickness And In Health

By fred | June 27, 2008

(S01E04) So last night we had another installment of the NBC anthology Fear Itself, and as said per the rules of the genre, one can never really judge or make expectations for an episode based on the quality, or lack of it, of past episodes. Because every episode exists on its own, without any link to the others. Their stories aren’t linked, they don’t share the same actors, writers or directors, and as a result you can go from one extreme to the other week after week, you can never know.

The first you’ll notice about this episode, is probably that it stars two known faces from USA comedy Psych, James Roday and Maggie Lawson. But this episode was written by Victor Salva, writer of Jeepers Creepers and its sequel. And in the end, I think he’s mostly the one to blame for this crappy episode.

Because let’s face it, that one sucked. It sucked so much I’m willing to call it the worst of the series so far. It’s not that we’ve been getting used to quality stuff, we really haven’t, but this one was so bad and so ludicrous that at times I found myself actually laughing at it it was so bad !

Last week’s episode wasn’t the greatest thing in the world, but at least it had something going on for it : strong acting performances. And it’s not that Roday and Lawson didn’t do a good job there, it’s just that they couldn’t do a good job, really, not with what they had to do. Adding to that some directing effects that clearly are overused and trying too hard, and really the result is quite laughable.

When Samantha (Lawson) read her famous note, I really laughed, how could you not? With that “visual effect” and everything, like it was something it wasn’t ? Oh please… But the real problem with this is that it doesn’t make sense, it sounds fake and forced, nothing fits. I mean, all along the reactions of Samantha versus that note are absolutely crazy, there’s no way a bride-to-be would/should react that way, she should not take this seriously, not be scared like that, none of it fits. And even when you take into account the usual “last minute twist”, it still doesn’t work.

Same goes for Carlos (Roday), who acted like a psychopath most of the times, and it was easy to guess after a bit that he was totally innocent, yet he kept acting weird, scary, and threatening. And really, did either of them ever feel like they were in love to you ??

They’ve been insisting about the fact that they may have rushed into this, that it might be too soon, and I don’t know how long it was before they decided to get married, but judging by the way they were acting ? I’d say they met last week, have since then been out a couple of times tops, you know, dinner and movie, and that’s about it. Because no one looked in love with the other, in fact not only did we feel like they didn’t know each other, but at times you wondered if they even liked each other.

And that final twist ?? I’m sure plenty of you saw it coming, it wasn’t too hard and became pretty obvious while in the church, but more importantly it really makes everything be a piece of crap : suddenly the actions of both Carlos and Samantha make even less sense, suddenly the entire thing is even less credible and more silly than it was before.

Close to nothing happened, what did made little to no sense, it was all very stupid, both the writing and the directing were once again uninspired, sadly this anthology isn’t turning out to be a really good one. And I think the main responsible for it might be the writing, which clearly lacks any originality, as it mostly puts boring clichés next to each other, and sometimes I think focuses too much on coming up with a “big” last minute twist “à la” The Sixth Sense, forgetting to actually tell a good and interesting story during the hour before it.

Well, at least you know the rule, it’s an anthology and the next episode could be absolutely fantastic. Let’s hope it will be, although that’s pretty much what we’ve been saying ever since the first episode…

And by the way, if you were wondering too : You’ll be able to catch James Roday and Maggie Lawson in something actually good when Psych returns on USA for its third season, which premieres on July 18; and I can’t wait.

Posted in Reviews
Shows: Fear Itself