Posts tagged: Shadowhunters

Shadowhunters S01E10 “The World Inverted” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Netflix, new episodes each week on Wednesdays
Writer: Y Shireen Razack
Director: J Miles Dale

Essential Plot Points:

• Meliorn says that Clary can use secret Seelie portals to reach her father.
• But she has to go via a parallel dimension, where she can find another portal which – when used in conjunction with her own portal pendent – will take her to her father.
• Meliorn only allows Clary through to the parallel dimension. He and Jace remain to guard the open portal in case it attracts demons.
• The alternate reality is like a happy happy happy joy joy version of Clary’s own life.
• Her mum and dad (who’s an Alice Through The Looking Glass-obsessed internet guru) are still together; Alec is openly gay; Simon and Izzy (who’s a complete nerd) are going out; Jace serves burgers; Magnus is a spiritual healer who advertises on TV.
• Clary meets alt-Magnus and convinces him of her story. She reignites his magic which he hasn’t used for a while.
• He uses his magic to locate the portal; it’s in the Institute, which here is the HQ of Valentine’s internet company.
• Luckily there’s going to a party there that night and Clary, being Valentine’s daughter, has a plus one invite!
• Back in the real world, the Clave arrests Izzy on suspicion of aiding Meliorn. If found guilty she will have all her runes removed and no longer be a Shadowhunter.
• Alec tries to save her from this fate by bargaining the Mortal Cup for her freedom. Then he finds out Jace and Clary have swiped it.
• Furious, he uses some parabatai version of Friend Locator to find Jace, which apparently is very rude and not the done thing in polite Shadowhunter society.
• Annoyingly for Jace, Alec does this just as a demon attacks. Distracted by his brother’s meddling, Jace lets the demon slip through the portal.
• Meliorn allows Jace through the portal to defeat the demon then closes the portal for safety.
• At the party in the alt-Institute Magnus and Clary slip into the basement when nobody (except alt-Jace) is looking to find the portal.
• The demon attacks, but our-world Jace arrives to help Clary defeat it. However, Jace is badly injured in the fight.
• Magnus finds the portal and Clary uses her pendent to take her and Jace to Valentine’s Chernobyl base in our world.
• There they find Jace’s presumed-dead dad in a cupboard. Which is only slightly less silly on screen than that makes it sound.
• Meanwhile (on our world) Simon uses his vampiric abilities to help Luke get the internal affairs cop investigating him off his back; Simon pretends to be the “demonic killer” and allows Luke to shoot him “dead” in front of the investigator.

Review:

There comes a time in every telefantasy show’s life when it has a stab at an alternate reality episode. And since Shadowhunters has cheerily ripped off Buffy in every other way, it was bound to give us its own version of “The Wish” at some point (it even has a demon that looks suspiciously like it’s a hand-me-down from Buffy). But whether by accident or design, Shadowhunters does give us a new twist on the old trope (we’re guessing accident). Usually the alternate reality is a place full of evil versions – or at least darker, twisted versions – of the show’s main characters. In the parallel reality of “The World Inverted”, though, everybody’s really normal and nice. Hell, Valentine wears comedy hats and laughs off his daughter holding a knife to his throat. So no evil-double-goatees but a lot of spectacles and sensible haircuts.

Actually, Magnus wears a cardigan. That’s pretty terrifying.

To be honest it’s difficult to bollocks up an alternate reality episode. All you have to do is have fun reinventing your main characters in unexpected ways, usually making them as opposite to what they really are as possible. Shadowhunters embraces the rules and we get a geeky version of Izzy, a cowardly version of Jace, an out-and-proud version on Alec and a restrained version of Magnus. Oh and Valentine as Dad Of The Year (though with a disturbing hint that he would quietly murder Jace if he ever hurt Clary). Oddly, Simon is barely any different, but there are a couple of “Hey, you’re not a vampire!” gags (which don’t ring totally true as he hasn’t been a bloodsucker long enough for Clary to instinctively protect him from sunlight yet.)

There’s a lot to enjoy here – including Magnus’s wonderfully awful TV ad – but you can’t help feeling that the episode doesn’t fully exploit the potential in its set-up. Because the alt-characters are all so nice, the episode doesn’t have the self-parodying bite that these episodes often have. Alternate reality episode can also be used to reveal something unexpected about the main characters in a lateral manner; readers of the books will know there’s one humdinger that could have been revealed in a jawdropping way here, but the episode shies away from it. The end result is that while this detour through the Looking Glass is entertaining fluff, it remains fluff.

Back in the real world, becoming a vampire means Simon no longer wears Converse All-Star. Creatures of the night wear stylish shoes only. And he doesn’t need glasses any more. In every other way, though, Simon is now the same old Simon, just with a bloodlust and unwanted dental erections in moments of hormonal lust. This is a good thing, as the whingy Simon of the past few week was getting dull. At the Initiative, the low-rent politicking continues with Alec showing a loyalty to Lydia that she’s done precious little to deserve. Every week she proves to be ever more of an unimaginative jobsworth. Alec, meanwhile, seems convinced he’s ripped his parabatai connection with Jace to shreds while Jace shows every sign of not having noticed in the slightest.

As for the cliffhanger… it’s really difficult to be gobsmacked by the revelation when you’re distracted by the fact that Jace has just found his dad in a cupboard. How very odd.

The Good:

• Clary’s impression of Magnus.

• Izzy as a geek. Especially her dancing. Emeraude Toubia is one of the best things about this show.
• As with any “alternate reality” episode of any genre show, there’s fun to be had seeing how the writers have reinvented the characters. Aside from Izzy the geek, recasting Valentine as Mad Hatter-obsessed Steve Jobs was an amusing choice, and confident-in-his-sexuality Alec was a nice touch especially when he echoes “our” Magnus’s words about “our” Alec a few week’s back: “Playing hard to get? I do like a challenge.”

• Alt-Simon giving a “Dracula stare” was a nicely-ironic injoke too.

The Bad:

• Meliorn’s Doctor Strange moment. You must have heard jokes about drama students being asked  to “act like a tree” – that’s exactly what Meliorn looks like he’s doing here.
• Lydia now officially has no discernible character whatsoever. She just appears in scenes and intones her lines.
• The demon was so Buffy, it would have been downright nostalgic if the director hadn’t decided to cut every scene involving the damned thing so fast in an obvious attempt to stop us seeing how poor the rubber suit was.
• The explanation for why Clary needed to go to the alternate dimension as the worst kind of fantasy babble that failed miserably to disguise the real reason Clary had to go there – because alternate reality episodes are fun.
• The web of relationships in the alternate reality doesn’t really make sense: if shadowhunters had become obsolete here long ago, that negates the reason why many of these character would ever meet.

And The Random:

• There are Alice Through the Looking Glass references throughout the episodes, though unlike many other telefantasy shows, Shadowhunters resists the opportunity to call the episode “Through The Looking Glass” (Angel, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Farscape, Lost, Earth: Final Conflict, Fringe all had episodes by that name… although Fringe’s was actually called in full, “Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There”).

• A few grabs from the faux-advert, just because we know you like this sort of thing.

• Why does Magnus use a graphic of a set of fireplace tools to snap Clary out of her haze?

• When Simon says, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” he’s referencing the early ’80s TV series The Incredible Hulk.
• POTENTIAL SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK Um… if the show has the same revelation as the books about Clary and Jace relationship (and there are no signs so far that it won’t) how does that pan out as regards the relationship between their alt-selves in this episodes? There would be no reason for them not to know…!

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Shadowhunter reviews

Shadowhunters S01E09 “Rise Up” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Netflix, new episodes each week on Wednesdays
Writer: Hollie Overton
Director: J Miller Tobin

Essential Plot Points:

• On behalf of the Clave, Lydia arrests Izzy’s Seelie casual sex partner, Meliorn, on suspicion that he’s been leaking secrets to Valentine.
• Under questioning he reveals that Clary has found the Cup.
• Lydia thinks he has more information (he ex was killed because she once didn’t interrogate a warlock enough so now she’s overcompensating) so she sends Meliorn to the Silent Brothers, putting her new fiancé Alec in charge of the team taking him to them.
• Meanwhile Clary finds Simon and tries to convince him that being a vampire isn’t all bad. He’s not convinced and nearly feasts on him mum.
• Jace warns Clary that Lydia knows about the Cup. Worried that Lydia will come looking for her, Clary and Simon hide out at the Hotel DuMort.
• Raphael, who’s proving to be the worst vampire sire and mentor ever, locks Clary and Simon in a cage for “their own safety”. They don’t appear to find anything strange about this situation…
• Simon begins to come to terms with his new state of being when Clary says, “Hey, welcome to my world,” and he realises that being a vampire gives him a new excuse to hang around her.
• On being released by Raphael, Clary brokers an uneasy alliance between the vampires, seelies, werewolves and rogue Shadowhunters with a “let’s face the common enemy” argument that, bizarrely, no one else has ever thought of before.
• The new alliance intercepts Alec’s team and – vastly outnumering them (by about four to one it looks) – they rescue Meliorn.
• The ego known as Jace manages to make it all about him by telling Alec he knows Alec’s only acting like a git because Alec loves him and is jealous that he loves Clary (this from the man who pulls the expression below when Clary gives an old mate a hug…)

•  Jace and Alec have a bitch fight. But Alec remains resolute that he wants to remain a git.
• A thankful Meliorn tell Clary he’ll help her find her father.

Review:

While not as actively irritating as last week’s instalment, there’s very little to get excited about in the latest episode of  YA Supernarural Template… sorry, Shadowhunters. Okay, there’s the epic spat between Alec and Jace – a kind of testosterone-fuelled lovers’s tiff with added leather. It’s both immensely silly and yet completely on point for this series at the same time; and once again the show proves to refreshingly matter-of-fact about homosexuality. When Jace blurts out that he knows Alec loves him, its not sensationalist; Jace clearly has no problem with the idea a guy could love him. Instead the real jawdropping element of the fight is how Jace manages to make it all about him. To be fair, he’s probably right – Alec is obsessing – but there’s still an annoying smugness to the way he announces it.

There’s also some fun to be had with Simon accepting his vampire nature (“Let’s work up to hugging, because I haven’t had dinner yet”) and the way he annoys his new bloodsucking buddies by fistbumping a werewolf. Also, Magnus gets to pout amusingly at Alec acting like a prat. Other than that, though, this is another exposition-heavy episode full of sketchy characters who frown and cross their arms a lot.

Clary somehow manages to unite supernatural factions who’ve been warring for centuries by whining, “Were better together” and looking really, really concerned. Lydia reveals why she’s such a hard-ass with a piece of cheesy backstory delivered with all the emotion of automated phone message. The Clave make major decision off-stage, revealed in “by the way…” dialogue. Valentine fails to turn up at all; after nine episodes he’s been in the show so little it’s difficult to imagine why everyone seems so worried about him. He’ll die of radiation poisoning from his base in Chernobyl before he gets to do anything really evil.

We’re on episode nine now, more than two thirds of the way through the series, and it still seems to be meandering aimlessly. We keep hearing tales of the larger “Shadowhunter” universe, but aside from brief flashback glimpses the show seems to be 50% the Institute, 40% wandering around streets and 10% bedrooms. Let’s hope that as the first season enters the home strait it picks up some momentum.

The Good:

• The exchange of insults between Raphael and Luke (“Stay. Good dog.” “Bite me.” “Roll over.” “Play dead.”)
• The Alec/Jace lovers’ tiff.

• This shot may have all sorts of dodgy oedipal undercurrents, but it’s still a classic, excellently framed and lit vampire shot.
• Although Simon is whiny and whingy for the first half the episode once he accepts his fate, the old spark is back.
• Izzy and the vampires’ attack on Team Alec’s men may be brief but it is fun.

The Bad:

• Raphael’s characterisation is all over the place.
• Jace thinks everything has to be about him!
• Simon and Clary don’t thinking that Raphel locking them in a cage together is weird.

• This werewolf’s bendy leg.
• Valentine still not showing us why he should be so feared.
• Lydia is stultifyingly two-dimensional and her back story about how her ex died was cheesier than a slab of gorgonzola.
• Are we supposed to have any empathy for Alec? He’s just stroppy git.
• The ease with which Clary unites factions that have been warring for centuries.

And The Random:

• Considering a big deal has been made of Simon being Jewish surely the fact that this little altercation takes place next to a kosher food van can be no coincidence; now that Simon’s a vampire he’s certainly not going to the eating kosher.

• Here are a few shots of that epic lovers’ tiff that pop up larger if you click on them. Why? Call it a pubic service.

• God knows how Alec got that injury. We just rewatched the fight at the end of last week’s episode and, yes, he was hit on the arm but his shirt sleeve wasn’t torn or bloody which you would expect with a wound that deep.

• Magnus decides that stealing Alec’s stele does have fringe benefits.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Shadowhunter reviews

Shadowhunters S01E08 “Bad Blood” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Netflix, new episodes each week on Wednesdays
Writer: Allison Rymer
Director: Jeremiah Chechik

Essential Plot Points:

• Raphael arrives at the Institute with an unconscious and transforming Simon.
• Clary must decide whether to stake him or bury him and let him go full vampire. This involves talking to lots of people, gasping a lot and saying, “My God!” and “This is all my fault!” repeatedly for three quarters of the episode.
• Valentine sends a monster called The Forsaken to attack the werewolves’ Chinese takeaway.
• But it’s a ruse. The werewolves kill the Forsaken and the body is taken back to the Institute, which somehow (in a way that’ll presumably be explained next week) enables a “twin” monster to locate and infiltrate the Institute to have a dance-off with Hodge. Luckily Alec arrives to help Hodge wave his arms in the vague vicinity of the monster to defeat it.
• The Clave, fed up with the Lightwood kids having all the fun, send an envoy to whip them into shape.
• Said envoy, Lydia Bramwell, is all cold and harsh and judgey for about 10 seconds until she starts flirting with Alec.
• Alec, despite still having the hots for Magnus, proposes to Lydia, sacrificing his own desires for a canny political union (plus he’s showing every sign of bicuriosity).
• Clary decides to let Simon go full vampire. He wakes up with fangs and a ravenous hunger for blood. He is not happy about this and runs off to mope somewhere.
• Clary will no doubt say, “This is all my fault!” some more times next week.

Review:

What a shame. For the last two episodes Shadowhunters has been showing massive improvement, but “Bad Blood” is a huge disappointment. Bland dialogue, revelations that lead to zero emotional fallout and Clary spending the entire episode looking like a spaniel that’s just clambered out of a freezing cold pond make this a really dreary endurance test.

There’s little sense of the emotional enormity of Clary’s dilemma about whether to save or stake Simon, and in the end she might just as well have resorted to “eeny meeny miny moe”. Big new meenie Clave envoy Lydia arrives to kick Lightwood butt, is mean for about 1o seconds then starts pouring her heart out to Alec. By the end of the episode she’s merely another girly YA trope, all excited at the thought of marriage, albeit a marriage of political expediency. To be honest, the Lightwood kids could do with having their heads knocked together so it’s a shame Lydia didn’t hold off going all soppy for a bit longer.

Camille turns up to be defeated moments by Raphael’s superhuman debating skills… or something (it looked like the idea behind this scene was somewhat lost in translation to screen). Alec learns his parents are ex-Circle, which you’d think would be a cue for a massive strop or major slanging match but just kinda falls flat. Luke has a flashback that apparently has some emotional resonance to Clary’s dilemma but it’s so dull you drop off before the point is made. Jace tells a moral story about strangling falcons which has Clary mentally ticking off “puppy” from his potential Christmas present list.

Some of this might have worked if it weren’t all delivered in such a po-faced manner. What made the last couple of episodes so much fun was that the show was clearly aware of its own inherent silliness and was cleverly inverting (or even subtly sending up) its clichés and tropes. Here we’re back to “Let’s pretend this is serious, important drama”. The result amplifies rather than disguises the problems.

Let’s hope that next week we have the comedy misadventures of Raphael trying to teach Simon how not to be the crappest vampire ever turned. There’s got to be at least one, “And don’t  bite your tongue,” gag, surely?

The Good:

• Um… er…
• Well…
• No, hang on… give us a minute…
• Oh, this was pretty… it reminded us of the Joker.

• Seriously, though, it wasn’t all bad, but there were no “great” good moments, just a few okayish ones. Alec proposing to Lydia was a solid piece of drama but we can imagine that Malec ’shippers were having kittens! And Simon made a great ravenous vampire at the end, but kinda ruined it by taking the “I’m a monster” way too far into teenage self-pity territory.

The Bad:

• Not much happens. And what does happen seems to drag.
• The Hodge/Forsaken fight is very poorly staged. It’s more like a weird interpretive dance.

• Scenes with vampires running superfast are always a little dodgy (it pains us to admit the Twilight films probably managed it best) but Simon skedaddling at the end here is like something out of a Hannah Barbera cartoon.

• Lydia Bramwell goes from “fearsome envoy” to “girly teen romance cliché” quicker than Alec got his shirt on when Magnus arrived.
• All the wit and spark from last week has entirely dissipated. Even Magnus is worryingly bland.
• Jace’s story about the falcon is a real eye-roller. And no, Clary complaining that “now’s not the time for stories” doesn’t make it any less corny.
• Clary actually says, “Now I’m left with two reprehensible choices!” Reprehensible? What teenager ever uses a word like reprehensible? The whole script is peppered with unnaturally florid lines like that.
• We get yet another of those conversations where Alec raises an objection, everybody else says, “Well, tough luck we’re doing it out way anyway,” and he backs down.
• What was the point in Camille turning up at all? She was so defeated with such perfunctory disdain, it hardly seemed worth paying the actress to appear.

And The Random:

• The director of this episode, Jeremiah Chechik, has directed loads of great episodes of a whole bunch of telefantasy shows (Chuck, Helix, Warehouse 13, The Middleman) but sadly he’ll only ever be remembered for directing the almighty turkey that was The Avengers movie (the 1998 one with Ralph Fiennes woefully miscast as Steed, not the 2012 one with the Hulk hitting Thor a lot).
• How come Simon’s mother seems totally oblivious (or insensitive) to the fact that Clary has just lost her own mother and her home? The whole scene suddenly makes you realise how Clary has almost slipped into a bubble universe since the pilot and the real world has pretty much forgotten she ever existed.

• Did you spot? The monkey that Jace knocks off the shelf to stop Clary blurting something stupid is the “speak no evil” one.

• This picture in Simon’s room is resting on a CD of the Tom Waits album “Swordfishtrombones” which featured the track, “Just Another Sucker On The Vine”. It’s probably a co-incidence, but Simon has just become, “Just Another Sucker…”

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Shadowhunter reviews

Shadowhunters S01E07 “Major Arcana” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Netflix, new episodes each week on Wednesdays
Writer: Peter Binswanger
Director: J Miles Dale

Essential Plot Points:

• Clary has worked out that her mum used her “turning objects into pictures” power to hide the cup in the Ace Of Cups cards of the deck of Tarot cards. Clary has inherited this power – let’s call it conscriptiomancy – so she’ll be able to turn the picture back into the real thing.
• Luke says those cards are now in his desk drawer at the police station.
• When Luke goes to fetch them, he’s apprehended by Internal Affairs before he can get to them. They’re trying to work out why his car was found, wrapped around a lamp post, covered in blood with GPS records showing it had previously been at the site of a murder. You can’t really blame the for being suspicious, can you?
• So Jace and Clary try to find the Tarot cards instead, but they’ve now been moved to the evidence vault.
• Anyway, a lot of misadventures and near-misses with demons later – and with help from Alec and Izzie who are freed up from infodumping duties back at the Institute this week – Clary finally has the Cup!
• But the mission has brought her and Jace closer together and they end the episode snogging.
• Simon, meanwhile, starts hallucinating and inflicting damage on innocent furniture.
• He ends up returning to the Hotel Dumort where Camille is waiting, ready to bury her teeth into him.

Review:

Ah, Simon, how wrong you’ve proven us. A couple of weeks ago we were complaining that Shadowhunter’s little Jewish Xander Harris avatar had lost his geeky charm with the onset of vampirism. This week, though, Simon’s increasing blood lust provides all the best moments.

There’s his rapid reversal of fortune in his first scene: one moment a rampant sex God, and the next a callous love rat who can’t remember the name of the girl he just slept with. Then he starts making lists to help him weigh up the likelihood of him becoming a creature night, which bemuses a delightfully sarcastic coffee shop barista (“Where’s what’s-her-face? Latte-and-no-whipped-cream girl?” “Clary? Uh, I don’t know. She’s not answering my texts.” “Can’t imagine why.”). Finally he has a melt down and destroys a desk in front of his mother and sister, who, considering they think his weird behaviour is down to drugs, must now be convinced he’s on PCP.

Sadly campire Camille (is “camp”-ire a thing?) turns up to derail things with her usual pant0-vamp performance. It truly is like nobody’s told her this isn’t an Addams Family reboot. She certainly makes Simon pull the bizarre expression; he looks like he’s going to vomit a frisbee.

Until that point, though, this has been Simon’s episode. Now, you might expect a statement like that to be followed by some snarky comment about “which isn’t hard because the rest of the episode is a stinker”. And considering the main Clary & Jace storyline in little more than “hunt the Tarot card” in a police station, there’s certainly not much in the way of a plot to enthuse about.

And yet… it’s actually a lot if fun too. Much of that is down to a level of wit, snappy dialogue and deft character moments that are a cut above the norm for this show. There’s almost a Buffy-esque quality to Binswanger’s script in the way it pokes fun at the show’s own silliness in lines such lines as, “Paying off a few demons is easy, especially as they rarely survive long enough to collect.” Also like Buffy there are loads of geeky references (Star Trek, The Mummy, Nosferatu), amusing inversions of supernatural tropes (Simon ordering a garlic bagel with extra garlic to test that piece and vampire folklore) and a refusal to treat any guest character, no matter how small the part, as mere dialogue-dispensers. Vargas may be dead before long but she still has a lovely moment with Clary (“Matching tattoos? Big red flag.”). We’ve already mentioned the barista but even Fisk, the Internal Affairs guy, develops somewhat surprisingly from clichéd pain-in-the-butt jobsworth into a sympathetic character by the end.

None of this quite excuses the skimpy plot but it does go a long way to making it more palatable. The episode also benefits from a massive reduction in the amount of exposition it want to dump on us.

Alec/Magnus shippers may be disappointed on the lack of movement on that front but hey, delayed pleasure can be a very good thing. Instead we get Jace and Clary finally snogging even though Jace continues to have all the charm of driftwood. Yep, for all the other things the episode gets right it still can’t make the idea of Jace and Clary as an item feel in any way believable. Which for the purposes of the show at this point it needs to be…

Overall though, a very satisfying example of how good this show can be when it ups its game just a little. And now Clary’s found the Goblet Of Fire (or whatever) at least we can move on from that search finally.

The Good:

• Lots of really amusing dialogue.
• Even the secondary characters have a chance to shine.
• Simon’s bedroom gaffe.
• Simon’s lists and garlic experimentation.
• Simon’s meltdown in front of mum.
• Simon had a good episode, didn’t he?

• Oh yeah, and… Gruesome grandma!

The Bad:

• Not much of a plot.
• Camille manages to be disproportionately  irritating in about 30 seconds of screen time.

• There’s something faintly ridiculous about way all the staff at  just wander off like they’re bored when Clary turns up safe and sound.
• Let’s be honest – there’s still no sign of chemistry between Jace and Clary. They’re only together because the script says they’re supposed to be together. (There’s something we REALLY want to mention now but in deference to those who haven’t read the book or worked out the significance of the initials “JC” yet, we won’t).

• Simon’s impression of Rygel from Farscape was frankly disturbing.

And The Random:

• Despite the episode’s title, the Ace Of Cups is not one of the 22 cards that make up the Major Arcana in pack of Tarot cards.

• The film that Simon is watching is the 1922 German silent classic Nosferatu, directed by FW Murnau. It was an attempt to dodge the Dracula copyright by changing names and locations but Bram Stoker’s estate was having none of it, and a won a legal case against the film. All copies of Nosferatu were supposed to have been destroyed but some survived and it went on to become a cult classic in its own right.

• We see the work experience guy at the LAPD was left to do the filing again.
• Maureen proves to be a loud-and-proud geek. After her night of passion with Simon, she says it was like Pon Farr, the Vulcan mating ritual from Star Trek when male Vulcans are overcome by emotions. Incidentally, a Vulcan only comes on heat once every seven years, which is probably how long Simon will have to wait for sex with Maureen again after calling her “Clary”.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Shadowhunter reviews

Shadowhunters S01E06 “Of Men And Angels” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Netflix, new episodes each week on Wednesdays
Writer: Y Shireen Razack
Director: Oz Scott

Essential Plot Points:

• Werewolf Luke is not reacting well to having been bitten by an Alpha.
• Jace, Clary and Simon take him to Magnus rather than the nearest vet.
• Magnus needs special ingredients to concoct a cure.
• Jace and Simon fetch the ingredients – bickering all the way – while Magnus administers magic painkillers to Luke.
• Magnus also says he needs Alec’s “virgin Shadowhunter energy” but sulky Alec doesn’t come running immediately.
• Magnus tells Clary a bit about the the history of her mum and dad; how Luke and Jocelyn stopped Valentine from using the Cup to make an evil Shadowhunter army to eliminate all downworlders.
• Back at the institute Dad Lightwood (Robert) and little bro’ Lightwood (Max) arrive.
• Seems all of Alec’s, Izzie’s and Jace’s unsanctioned adventures have dented the Lightwood’s reputation within the Clave. Mum and Dad clash over how to rectify this.
• When Alec learns he is going to offered up for an arranged marriage, he leaves the Institute in a strop.
• Izzie, however, decides to be a good little girl and become the obedient Shadowhunter her parents want.
• Alec arrives at Magnus’s and gives him the strength he needs to keep the magic painkillers working (allegedly).
• Luke and Simon return with the extra ingredients for the cure. Luke is saved!
• Luke tells Clary the rest of the story of the him, her mother and her father back in the day because Jocelyn told him that the key to Clary finding the Mortal Cup is for her to know “everything”.
• Seems Valentine went insane because he thought his wife, Jocelyn, and his parabatai, Luke, were having an affair (though it could have just been because he hated the way Jocelyn drew him in her terrible pictures).

• Learning all this doesn’t seem to open any new memories in Clary’s head, so she demands to know everything… including what’s so important about that box she found under the floorboards of her old house last week. The one her mum hid that has the letters JC on it.
• Reluctantly Luke reveals that JC stands for John Christopher; Clary’s brother who died in a fire when he was very young.
• (Audience hums Star Wars theme…)
• The shock of this news makes Clary accidentally turn the box into a sketch of a box. Realising this power could be hereditary she announces she knows where Jocelyn hid the Mortal Cup.
• Magnus admits that he lied about “needing” Alec… he just wanted to see him again, and says he fancies the pants off of him. Alec doesn’t know where to look.

Review:

Good grief, for an episode bursting with so many “MAJOR REVELATIONS!” this was suspiciously like being read a bedtime story at times. The last third may as well have been bedridden Luke reading passages from The Mortal Instrument books aloud.

Sure, there were some pretty-looking flashbacks full of impressive fights and special effects showing a bit of what happened back at the time of the first Circle uprising. But the story isn’t told in flashback; the story is told in voiceover. The flashbacks are more like illustrative material or edited highlights. They look great but crucial elements of the story are delivered via exposition only. We don’t get to see the Circle, or the uprising, or the Clave in action; we see Joceyln, Valentine and Luke and that’s about it.

The result is that Valentine still doesn’t feel like the epic, world-ending threat we keep being told he is. He comes across more like an abusive husband, which is a bad thing to be, sure, but hardly makes him the new Pol Pot; the tale feels too small and too personal.

Plus, we get an awful lot of exposition again. The episode tries to use the flashbacks to disguise that fact but it’s stealth exposition nevertheless. Which when added to all the extra new info being dumped on us by ma and pa Lightwood, leads to a very dialogue-heavy episode. Once again, the show seems to want to load every little detail from the books on us as quickly as possible and the overload means we get told a lot without actually seeing much.

The show’s main saving grace at the moment is Magnus, who livens up every scene he’s in. His “coy” attempts to get into Alec’s pants are amusing and kinda sweet. Let’s hope when the two of them do get together all the fun vanished.

Surprisingly, Jace and Simon make an entertaining double-act this week too, even though Jace is doing what he’s done every other week with Alec badly: bickering. There just feels something more genuine about these two butting horns and it helps that the arguments are tinged with self-effacing humour too. The only bum note is Jace’s rather muted reaction to Simon pulling a knife on him. Either Jace thinks that Simon is infected with vampire blood, in which case he would follow it up, or doesn’t, in which case he’d be “WHAT THE F**K, MAN???” Just kinda letting it drop feels wrong.

So, having left us with revelation fatigue this week, hopefully the show can have a couple of weeks when it moves on the plot in the present. After all, Valentine has done precious little since the pilot and ma and pa Lightwood haven’t done much apart from natter on about vague details so far. Let’s see the arc plot actually start to make some significant progress.

The Good:

• The bit where Jace comes running out of the meeting with his black market supplier chased by a giant scorpion was wonderfully random. We thought we were going to be in for a dull, dialogue-heavy bartering scene. This was much more fun.

• The Magnus/Alec relationship is just about the most natural, well-played, engaging relationship on the show.
• And while Magnus is a tad camp at times he remains the show’s most memorable character. We loved, “I’m not being cryptic, I’m being coy.”

• Not sure why, but the little moment with Simon licking blood off his hand, worked well, even though it’s a beat we’ve all seen before in a zillion vampire shows and movies. Maybe it was the slightly baffled way Alberto Rosende played it.

• And while the Jace/Alec arguments are usually the low point of any episode, the extended Simon/Jace bickering scene here was pretty entertaining, perhaps because they did sound like two sulky schoolboys – one  a geek, the other a wannabe alpha male – arguing over a girl. “There are tons of women out there who have more-than-a-friend feelings for me,” was a painfully recognisable line, while Jace’s petulant, “Where are they?” was the kind of dumbass playground logic we’ve all heard at some point.
• The young Val versus young Jocelyn fight scene was pretty decent.
• Our first look at Idris was impressive.

The Bad:

• Alec and Jace argue so often it was difficult to recall why they were both sulking at the start of the episode.
• Far, far, far too much clunky exposition, even for this show.
• Robert and Maryse Lightwood’s motivations are really muddy and vague, even at the end of the episode. What are they planning, exactly? What is their beef with each other? You get some vague idea but not the details. Which probably wouldn’t matter except that their actions and decisions impact on Alec and Izzie in ways it’s difficult to fathom. Alec initially seems happy to play the obedient little boy, but then learns he’s going to be married off and simply vanishes in a huff. The complete opposite happens with Izzy, and yet in both cases it’s not entirely clear what’s instigated these changes.
• There’s some really inelegant dialogue. Worst offender: “If only the Clave would listen to reason!” “We have to make Val listen to reason.”

And The Random:

• This is the first episode to feature both Robert Lightwood and Max Lightwood (who we were pleasingly surprised to see was around the age he’s supposed to be in the books; we assumed the show would take the opportunity to introduce another good-looking teen).

• Did Owen Roth’s audition for young Valentine consist of him proving how many different ways he could glower?

• How to make Ham-Pye. 1) Take a selection of actors from Shadowhunters…
• Sorry, but we couldn’t help sniggering when Magnus told Alec, “I’m glad you came…”

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Shadowhunter reviews

Shadowhunters S01E05 “Moo Shu To Go” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Netflix, new episodes each week on Wednesdays
Writer: Angel Dean Lopez
Director: Kelly Makin

Essential Plot Points:

• Big Mama Maryse Lightwood arrives at the Institute and instantly makes Alec and Izzy feel like something she scraped off her boots, but treating Jace like he’s the best thing since sliced Circle members. We suspect no one’s ever bought her a “World’s Greatest Mum” mug for Christmas.

• Alec tries but fails to tell Jace that he loves him – and not just in a BFF, parabatai bro’ kinda way.
• Maryse deploys Jace and Izzy to talk to the Seelies to find out why they’ve stopped communicating with the Clave.
• She tells Alec to keep an eye on Clary and keep her at the Institute.
• Clary has other ideas. When Alec is distracted by a phone call from Magnus (“Fancy a shag… sorry, drink some time?”) she nips out to go back to her burnt-out home. There she hopes to find a box that her mum used to open in secret when she didn’t think Clary was watching.

• Simon – who’s suddenly developed into Super Simon, but no one seems capable of putting two and two together and coming up with “Vampire blood!” –  helps her find the box under the floorboards. There doesn’t seem to be anything useful inside it.
• But then the two of them are captured by werewolves (who are also after the Mortal Cup) because Simon’s super powers mysteriously vanish whenever they might actually be useful.
• Having found out nothing useful from Izzy’s Seelie bed-buddy, Jace and Izzy meet up with Alec so that Jace and Alec can have this week’s sulky Jake-and-Alec-argument-scene. They try to trace Clary using their parabatai shtick but fail, either because Clary is over water or because Jace isn’t hard enough… sorry, isn’t concentrating hard enough.
•  Finally, Luke comes to the rescue in werewolf form. He kills there werewolf pack’s alpha and becomes de facto the new alpha. One problem: he’s critically injured in the fight. (What does happen when an Alpha dies instead of being defeated? Do the others draw straws or organise an election campaign?)
• Valentine does something nasty to some extras. We’re sure it’ll all become clear soon.

Review:

Let’s face it – “Everybody has fun at Alec’s expense” is a far more interesting plot line than, “Everybody wants the Mortal Cup”. After the Circle and the vampires, this week it’s the werewolves who want the bloody thing. In coming weeks we fully expect to see the pixies, the Spanish Inquisition, the CIA, the Illuminati, the Hair Bear Bunch and the IRS turn up to demand, “Where’s the Mortal Cup!?” while hanging Simon upside-down from his feet. It’s getting a little dull now.

On the other hand, while most of the actors (especially Matthew Daddario as Alec) are still giving performances that teeter on the border between “icy restraint” and “can’t be arsed”, some of the character work in “Moo Shu To Go” is a lot more engaging than previously. Clary is a little spunkier and a tad more like her counterpart in the novels. Jace is finally being allowed to smile. Alec is irritated that everyone except Jace seems to have noticed that his wandering eyes tend to wander below the belt. And Simon has apparently gotten over his vampire fugue and is now leaping and quipping about like Peter Parker after the radioactive spider incident.

So while the werewolf plot is about as interesting as watching a dog moult, the central relationships are finally showing signs of being able to carry the show through less exciting episodes.

We also learn more background about the Lightwoods and the Shadowhunter world, though thankfully for once there are only teasing mentions rather reams of exposition. So now we know that the Lightwood siblings have another brother called Max who’s a bit like Simon, and that the Shadowhunters have a hidden homeland called Idris (which, despite its name, isn’t located in Wales – see below). Plus, we meet Maryse, who for the moment appears content to fill the stock role of “hard bitch mother” (with a hint of “tough love”). Nicola Correia-Damude has little to do other than say her lines while scowling (which is some feat considering she’s also sporting an extreme Croydon face lift).

The Good:

• The werewolf-flap in the Chinese restaurant was very amusing. Why did Sam Merlotte never make one of these for himself?
• Simon has rediscovered his sense of humour. The comment, “I’m at the Jade Wolf Chinese restaurant on the pier at Greene Street… and they have really inexpensive cocktails!” is wonderfully random and kinda sweet.
• Clary also seems slightly closer to the cheerfully irreverent Clary in the books this week, too. The best moment in the episode has to be when she outs Alec:

• The brief phone-call Alec receives from the unashamedly fruity Magnus is great fun too. It’s highly amusing watching everyone except Alec acting as if Alec’s sexuality is a matter of public knowledge.
• While a couple of the werewolf shots are a bit ropey, most of them are very impressive for a TV show.
• Finally, Luke has something useful to contribute to the show.

The Bad:

• The fuzzy effect the show’s suddenly decided to use whenever a Shadowhunter does some Shadowhuntery action is cheap’n’not-very-cheerful. It looks more like something’s gone wrong with your TV.
• Even granting that we don’t get to see much of Maryse she’s spectacularly wooden and one-dimensional.
• Bloody hell, will somebody just find the bloody Mortal Cup. We’re already fed up with people demanding to know where it is.
• Simon’s powers seem to fail him when they’d be most useful.
• The werewolves are a right dull old bunch. (It would make a refreshing change to have an urban fantasy franchise where the werewolves are the posh aristocratic ones and the vampires are the blue-collar louts).

And The Random:

• So why is Clary sketching pictures of Bruce Willis? Yeah, okay, it’s supposed to be Valentine, but even accepting that  – why’s she sketching him? Does the Institute need a photofit?

• When Jace and Alec perform their parabatai there’s some graffiti in the background saying “Rise! Rise! Rise!” which is surely some comment on what’s happening inside Alec’s kecks.

• Right, okay, so the Shadowhunter’s weapons are invisible when they’re not in use! That answers one query from last week.
• This episode introduces two new key elements from the The Mortal Instruments novel series (and in an unusual step for this show leaves them both as casual mentions for now rather the regaling is with massive swathes of infodumpage). Alec and Izzy’s brother Max is nine in the books but we’re guessing the show will make him older when he eventually appears. Idris is the Shadowhunter home country, a sanctuary hidden from the mundanes, that’s situated in Central Europe, between Germany, France, and Switzerland.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Shadowhunter reviews

Shadowhunters S01E04 “Dead Man’s Party” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Netflix, new episodes each week on Wednesdays
Writer: Michael Reisz
Director: Tawnia McKiernan

Essential Plot Points:

• Simon alerts the Shadowhunters to the fact that Magnus Bane was probably the warlock who took away Clary’s memories (he learnt this accidentally from the vampires last week).
• But Magnus is in hiding from Valentine’s followers, shielded from discovery in his mystical bolthole.
• So the Shadowhunters lure Magnus to a swanky party using an amulet they know he’s desperate to have back as bait.
• Magnus reveals he fed the memories to a memory demon but isn’t keen on offering any further assistance and scarpers with the amulet.
• Valentine’s boot boys show up and ruin the party. They also discover Magnus’s magical hideaway.
• Luckily Jace and Alec have also located the hideaway by staring into each other’s eyes and wishing very hard.
• (Something else is going hard for Alec at this point though he’s in self-denial about it.)
• The Shadowhunters deal with Valentine’s men and Clary saves a young Seelie girl.
• This impresses Magnus who agrees to summon the memory demon so it can vomit Clary’s memories back up. Or something.
• But to do this each of the Shadowhunters and Magnus must give the beast one cherished memory involving the person they love the most.
• Embarrassingly for Alec that memory involves Jace (cue one very bi-curious raise of an eyebrow from Magnus). His shock interrupts the summoning and allows the beast to go postal.
• Clary has to kill it… losing her chance of regaining her memories.
• Meanwhile Simon has a strop, goes home, pines for Clary and realises he’s turning into a vampire. So he returns to the Hotel Dumort and Camille.
• Valentine randomly kills some spies in his Chernobyl hideout.
• Luke has a scene so boring it’s difficult to recall what he said in it.

Review:

Hail Magnus, for he shall bring some fun to the endless squabbling that is Shadowhunters. He might make Missy in Doctor Who look like a “master”piece in understatement (sorry, we could’t help ourselves with that gag) but he’s exactly what the show needs – a bit of anarchic, hedonistic, larger-than-life colour.

Because, let’s face it, all Clary, Jace, Alec and Simon do now is mope, moan, bicker and infodump. To be fair, Jace also takes his shirt off occasionally but that’s about it. Izzy tries to liven things up (and her “What if Cleopatra lived in the 1920?” party outfit is phenomenal dah-ling) but her efforts are increasingly coming to nowt. And it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Clary is short for “clarify” because her most important function in the show (other than saying, “we must do it to save my mum” multiple times an episode) is to prompt the Shadowhunters into revealing vital information about the magical world.

Magnus, though, injects some life back into the show. It may not be a subtle performance but it’s certainly a performance. He’s also been the catalyst to making Alec about ten times more interesting too, because the other great thing about the episode is the big reveal of Alec’s sexuality. And it’s not done in a titillating, smirking or mawkish way. It’s just: the evidence, the denial, the knowing look from the potential suitor. It’s quite amusing that Magnus has been “coming on” to Alec for most of the episode in a teasing way, presumably assuming he’s straight and trying to embarrass him to amuse himself, only to discover that he might be in with a chance after all.

So there are some interesting developments, but the show remains far too plodding, far too predictable and far too reliant on teenage-hormone-driven who’s-gonna-snog-who? shenanigans. There’s one scene each for both Valentine and Luke as lip service to the greater plot but they only really serve to remind you how much you don’t miss them when they’re not there.

The Good:

• Harry Shum Jr’s Magnus is a weird old mix; fruity as Carmen Miranda’s hats, uninterested and aloof and posturing like an extra in a avant garde pop video, he’s no one’s idea of a centuries old mage. Yet the performance becomes such a piece of camp artifice – more spectacle than acting – that it actually begins to win you over. At least he’s not as bland as the many of the guest stars (and some of the main stars) have been so far on this show. And Shum puts everything into his magical gesticulating.

• This show is clearly after a GLAAD award with its delightfully on-the-nose approach to homosexuality. If you hadn’t read the books the moment when Alec is outed by his own subconscious must have been a bit of a shock – it was certainly one of the best bits of the episode. Or maybe it wasn’t such a shocker. After all, everything you needed to know was in the parabatai scene; even Clary notices that it’s very “intimate”.

• The mural in Simon’s bedroom is awesome!

• The pentagram was very pretty too. But, no, Magnus – it wasn’t a patch on Michelangelo.

The Bad:

• It was a bit strange that horny guy was killed off-screen; it felt like there was a scene missing.
• So much whinging and whining. Everyone except Izzy seems to be in strop
• The Luke scene at the police station was utterly pointless and felt like a contractual obligation. When is his character actually going to add anything to this show (which, if it follows the books, he must do at some point, but the writer’s aren’t exactly building him up)? The Valentine scene was forgettable too.
• Usually becoming a vampire adds all kinds of fun to a character, but Simon’s gone from being one of Shadowhunter’s biggest plus points to one of it’s biggest bores since he was bitten.

• The memory demon effects are terrible. And there was something really strange going on with Jace’s hair when he got sucked into the off-the-peg swirly cloud effect (that’s been a staple of Once Upon A Time’s CG since season one).
• We started off making jokey references about the way that Clary’s mum paid Magnus to take away her memories was child abuse, but the more this series goes on, the more that’s exactly what it feels like. Clary’s having nightmares about the experience now!

And The Random:

• Okay, so where was she hiding that dagger while wearing that dress? Just before she attacked the memory demon it looked for all the world like she’s produced it out of her front bottom…

• Looks like they’ve turned up the lights a bit at the police station this week. Or somebody has drawn back some blinds at the very least. Still looks gloomy in there, though…

• Considering Magnus seemed to be fuelled by the mystic power of clichés we can’t believe there was no, “Feeling a little horny?” gag.

• In case you didn’t recognise him, Magnus is played by Harry Shum Jr, best known for playing the twinkle-toed Mike Chang in multiple seasons of Glee. Meanwhile, Simon’s mum was played by Christina Cox, an actress with a huge list of sci-fi, fantasy and cult credits to her name including Elysium, The Chronicles Of Roddick, Arrow (Mayor Castle), Defying Gravity and the lead role in much undervalued vampire show Blood Ties.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Shadowhunter reviews