Fear Itself: Skin And Bones
By fred | August 1, 2008
(S01E08) As I said last night, when I heard that Fear Itself was classified as a show “on the bubble”, as in it’s renewal for a second season is far from being a given, I was shocked. Not because I thought there would be a second season, but because it seemed obvious to me there wouldn’t be one. Two reasons : first, the show has pretty much sucked from day one and all episodes have been a disappointment; and second, the numbers haven’t been all that good, pretty much loosing viewers week after week.
And this is also why I approached this episode differently, because this time I knew it wouldn’t be good, I didn’t expect anything, I didn’t even hope that this might be, finally, the episode that makes it all worthwhile - or at least, you know, a good episode. I had no expectations, which is the only reason I wasn’t disappointed this time, because other than that it sucked…
The direction was nicely handled, though it always plays the card of the off-screen fear, we never see really anything, all the horrible things and crimes that took place are done off screen, and there’s almost no blood shown — not that blood means good anyhow. Still, it was well done, and Doug Jones was perfectly creepy, and especially during the first time we saw him, lying on the bed with only his weak head visible… He looked enigmatic, scary, mysterious, and for some reason I couldn’t help but wonder what he was hiding behind the sheets, I kept having visions of a body very deformed, or similar-looking to what E.T. looked like. Yeah, E.T. kept coming to my mind for some reason, a weak face, a long neck, a weirdly shaped body…I don’t know.
Anyways, all of that was pretty good, and at first I realized naively thought there might be hope because, of course we knew since it’s Fear Itself, the horror anthology, but no time was wasted. Soon enough the dad shows up, it’s obvious he’s not really himself anymore, and it doesn’t take long before the characters are made aware of his condition, what happened to him and why he shall be killed.
But that’s about where things ended. Because then everybody knew what was going on, what needed to be done, yet no one could kill him and rather waited to be killed, and we had some stupid non-sense such as the mother who’s been told, in case anything happens, to just take the keys, start the engine and drive the Hell away from this place. So when something does happen, she just gets her kids out and get everyone to “hide” in a place where they obviously can’t really hide, nor do anything even close to running away. To make things better, when he shows up she just hangs him the gun basically! Forget that she told her kids a few minutes back that this wasn’t their father anymore, that something happened to him and they shall run, or that he obviously killed about anyone he could around here, and the Hell with the kids, who cares about them anyways!
Then we have the cooking scene, meant I suppose to be quite disgusting, if not scary, but it failed miserably. Also, how freaking retarded was it ? She kept looking at her son over & over, he kept making noise over & over, was at times about right in front of him, yet no reaction, the kid could take his time, get a gun, put the bullets in, go take a dump, watch TV, and then show up to “save the day” !
By the way, I never cooked human meat, but I was shocked to see how fast it was cooked !! I mean it was ready in what, 23 seconds !?? Nice… I mean, except that it’s human meat and all.
Never mind that, then came the ending, a surprising ending for Fear Itself in that in ended well. I mean sure a couple guys died, but in the end the monster was shot, the mother and her kids are all okay, and - shocker! - there wasn’t even the usual final “game-changer” twist! Well, unless the “twist” was the “I’m not your father” bit, but that would be incredibly stupid given how we had been told that at the very least twice before (”You don’t know what you think you know” / “Tell the kids the truth about me”). Oh and, what was the point of this stupid family secret exactly ??
At first I thought the kid would in the end have to make a choice, and kill his “real” father because he wouldn’t have been able to kill who he thought his father was, despite his “sickness” and all, only to find out who his father really was and that he basically got everyone killed, including himself. But no, not even. There was absolutely no point to this, it’s amazing.
In the end, another crappy episode but, truth be told, I didn’t expect anything more. Should be noted that this was the last Fear Itself for a while, since due to the Olympics and all NBC hasn’t set a date for the next episodes so far, though they should all be aired, at some point, at least that’s the word for now.
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Fear Itself
