Postmortem on Witchblade
I've been trying to find the time to write this entry for over a month, so it may strike some of you as really old news.
I was heartbroken when Witchblade was cancelled, especially considering the Gabriel-related cliffhanger ending of the season two finale, but I have to admit that the writing staff lost its way during season two.
Season one was dark, perverse fun and assumed that its audience was more intelligent than most series believe. Five-dollar words flew, and not just in the episode titles. Sara Pezzini, called "Pez" by many, was a genuinely tough, strong-willed woman. The series also had an episode in which she played with her homophobic partner's head by saying she was gay--since she didn't retract it, though she did fall in love with Conchobar, it's possible that she's bi--and later going undercover at a club as a drag king. Her partner was murdered in front of her, but came back as a kind of spirit guide, which was bittersweet. Ian Nottingham and Kenneth Irons had a twisted master/slave servant, father/son relationship. Ian is Pez's stalker and protector at the same time. I loved Gabriel, who was so erudite but also so young. His loyalty toward Pez develops slowly, which I appreciated.
The irony of season one is that Pez gains this super-powerful artifact, the Witchblade, which makes her nearly invincible, but gaining the Witchblade makes her powerless in every other way as it starts to shape and control her life. And the Witchblade could abandon her any time it wants to. Kenneth Irons, who wants to control the Witchblade and its wielder, is messing with her life every chance he gets too. In fact, a lot of the slaughter she has to do comes from his machinations.
Over the course of season one she loses everything that means anything to her: her partner, her job, her friends, her reputation, her innocence, and even her motorcycle. Even aside from seeing the existence of a kind of magic, she finds out that everything in her life is not what she thought it was. Her father wasn't actually her blood father, and she comes from a long line of women, all of whom looked exactly like her, who wield the Witchblade. Her precinct is rotten with corruption run by an organization of dirty cops known as the White Bulls. It turns out that they killed her father when he threatened to expose them. Her old lieutenant and family friend knew about it but kept it secret.
Season one was all about Pez being backed into a tiny corner and left with nothing. By the time the finale comes around, Danny's dead, her lover Conchobar is dead, she can't trust her rookie partner Jake McCarty since he seems to have ties to the White Bulls, her old lieutenant and family friend has been murdered by the White Bulls, she can't be a cop anymore, any cop on the street is instructed to bring her in due to a frame-up, the White Bulls want to kill her, even her motorcycle was crushed as an intimidation ploy by the White Bulls, and Ian sacrificed his life to save her. For her own safety, since all of her efforts to reveal the White Bulls ended in her fleeing for her life and the news not getting out, she's about to leave the country under a false identity with Gabriel, the one living person she can still trust.
With ten minutes left to run on the finale, Gabriel is dead, McCarty is dead, Ian's evil clone is dead, and Pez is badly wounded. She has nothing left except the Witchblade. But the Witchblade, which doesn't perceive time as we do, gives her one opportunity to turn back the clock. She does, and goes back to a moment when she can stop Danny from being murdered. She succeeds. Season two would be a reset, with her getting odd moments of déjà vu but otherwise having no idea of what had happened.
Some people were annoyed by the reset, but I saw the possibilities. The show could play with last year's established canon while introducing new elements, and there's fun in the audience knowing things the characters don't.
That's what could have happened, and season two started out promisingly in that vein. Season two's premiere skidded lightly over some of the events of season one's premiere, assuming that the audience had some idea of what had already happened, while adding new elements both small--Gabriel sitting on the bench watching as Pez runs after that criminal on her way to finding the Witchblade--and large--different murders, different cases. You can actually see what's going on in the screen, since they stopped shooting in near darkness, which was a season one thing. Some season one episodes were filmed under such dark conditions that I couldn't tell what was going on.
But the season two premiere completely disregarded the death of Pez's friend, which had been vitally important to her, and the discovery that the gangster had killed her father. Since the season was still young, I assumed they'd get back to it.
I was wrong.
Pez's first season two meeting with Gabriel was fun, since the déjà vu was registering on them both, and he's much warmer and less defensive this time. There's an instant connection. It made me wonder if the Witchblade somehow groomed him, since the Witchblade guides her life, and he's the only friend who shows up after she got it.
But a little less than midway through the season, things started to slide. Most of the season one plots were forgotten completely. No White Bulls, which made you wonder why Jake got assigned here undercover this time. No Periculum. Nothing about Pez's friend or father. Ian was wimpified. Also, the episodes seem to work more like a cop show with a quirk. It couldn't do that as much season one, since all the bloody deaths around Pez made her superiors suspicious of her and the White Bulls had started their vendetta against her. Cop shows with a quirk are like the cop show with the Mountie and his half-wolf or the cop show where the cop is a vampire. Witchblade became the cop show where the cop has a magic bracelet and bared abs of steel, which wouldn't have been so awful if they'd been intriguing cop show episodes. Unfortunately, the further into the season we went, the more likely we were to hit a senseless or snoozer episode. The episode with the killer pedophile resisted logic at all turns and introduced a teenage niece for Danny that we never saw before or since just so Danny would have a personal stake in catching the guy. As if he didn't just by dint of being a cop and a human being. The Fight Club one was a boring, nonsensical mess. Not even a multitude of bare-chested men in it could keep my interest there.
By the end of season two, any concept of the plots making sense was thrown away. We had a genetically evil branch of the Witchblade family tree. Yes, genetically disposed to be evil. And they were left-handed, just to smack you over the head with it. The finale never explained anything about how Lucrezia Borgia is walking around alive and well, or how she could steal the Witchblade from Pez as she slept. Irons' evil had changed from the ruthless, self-interested evil of season one to senseless, amorphous Evil with a capital E. Why did he want all those strangers to go on a random murdering spree? Because he's Evil. No other explanation is needed for the writers. And the internet is driving people insane and making them kill? Please. And how can Irons be alive and whole while Ian had his severed hand in a jar? The episode had no interest in explaining any of it, which makes me wonder if the writers had even bothered to work it out for themselves.
Season two had some good stuff even through the end of the season, such as Gabriel being unexpectedly helpful on police cases over and over again (notices tattoos, has some ballistics sense, reads ancient Bulgarian....) and Ian's hilarious ways of "helping" Sara, mostly by making obscure metaphoric pronouncements, appearing and disappearing out of nowhere, and threatening Gabriel. The dead Irons communicating with Ian from Hell and Ian keeping Irons' hand in a big glass jar so he can commune with it also amused me.
I was still enjoying the show enough that I hoped it would pull out of its nosedive in season three, and the cliffhanger with Gabriel had me on edge. Then TNT cancelled the show despite its ratings success, with rumors saying it was worry over Yancy Butler's past alcohol abuse motivating the decision.
So now Witchblade joins VR5 and Strange Luck on the list of shows I liked which will never resolve their final cliffhanger.
I was heartbroken when Witchblade was cancelled, especially considering the Gabriel-related cliffhanger ending of the season two finale, but I have to admit that the writing staff lost its way during season two.
Season one was dark, perverse fun and assumed that its audience was more intelligent than most series believe. Five-dollar words flew, and not just in the episode titles. Sara Pezzini, called "Pez" by many, was a genuinely tough, strong-willed woman. The series also had an episode in which she played with her homophobic partner's head by saying she was gay--since she didn't retract it, though she did fall in love with Conchobar, it's possible that she's bi--and later going undercover at a club as a drag king. Her partner was murdered in front of her, but came back as a kind of spirit guide, which was bittersweet. Ian Nottingham and Kenneth Irons had a twisted master/slave servant, father/son relationship. Ian is Pez's stalker and protector at the same time. I loved Gabriel, who was so erudite but also so young. His loyalty toward Pez develops slowly, which I appreciated.
The irony of season one is that Pez gains this super-powerful artifact, the Witchblade, which makes her nearly invincible, but gaining the Witchblade makes her powerless in every other way as it starts to shape and control her life. And the Witchblade could abandon her any time it wants to. Kenneth Irons, who wants to control the Witchblade and its wielder, is messing with her life every chance he gets too. In fact, a lot of the slaughter she has to do comes from his machinations.
Over the course of season one she loses everything that means anything to her: her partner, her job, her friends, her reputation, her innocence, and even her motorcycle. Even aside from seeing the existence of a kind of magic, she finds out that everything in her life is not what she thought it was. Her father wasn't actually her blood father, and she comes from a long line of women, all of whom looked exactly like her, who wield the Witchblade. Her precinct is rotten with corruption run by an organization of dirty cops known as the White Bulls. It turns out that they killed her father when he threatened to expose them. Her old lieutenant and family friend knew about it but kept it secret.
Season one was all about Pez being backed into a tiny corner and left with nothing. By the time the finale comes around, Danny's dead, her lover Conchobar is dead, she can't trust her rookie partner Jake McCarty since he seems to have ties to the White Bulls, her old lieutenant and family friend has been murdered by the White Bulls, she can't be a cop anymore, any cop on the street is instructed to bring her in due to a frame-up, the White Bulls want to kill her, even her motorcycle was crushed as an intimidation ploy by the White Bulls, and Ian sacrificed his life to save her. For her own safety, since all of her efforts to reveal the White Bulls ended in her fleeing for her life and the news not getting out, she's about to leave the country under a false identity with Gabriel, the one living person she can still trust.
With ten minutes left to run on the finale, Gabriel is dead, McCarty is dead, Ian's evil clone is dead, and Pez is badly wounded. She has nothing left except the Witchblade. But the Witchblade, which doesn't perceive time as we do, gives her one opportunity to turn back the clock. She does, and goes back to a moment when she can stop Danny from being murdered. She succeeds. Season two would be a reset, with her getting odd moments of déjà vu but otherwise having no idea of what had happened.
Some people were annoyed by the reset, but I saw the possibilities. The show could play with last year's established canon while introducing new elements, and there's fun in the audience knowing things the characters don't.
That's what could have happened, and season two started out promisingly in that vein. Season two's premiere skidded lightly over some of the events of season one's premiere, assuming that the audience had some idea of what had already happened, while adding new elements both small--Gabriel sitting on the bench watching as Pez runs after that criminal on her way to finding the Witchblade--and large--different murders, different cases. You can actually see what's going on in the screen, since they stopped shooting in near darkness, which was a season one thing. Some season one episodes were filmed under such dark conditions that I couldn't tell what was going on.
But the season two premiere completely disregarded the death of Pez's friend, which had been vitally important to her, and the discovery that the gangster had killed her father. Since the season was still young, I assumed they'd get back to it.
I was wrong.
Pez's first season two meeting with Gabriel was fun, since the déjà vu was registering on them both, and he's much warmer and less defensive this time. There's an instant connection. It made me wonder if the Witchblade somehow groomed him, since the Witchblade guides her life, and he's the only friend who shows up after she got it.
But a little less than midway through the season, things started to slide. Most of the season one plots were forgotten completely. No White Bulls, which made you wonder why Jake got assigned here undercover this time. No Periculum. Nothing about Pez's friend or father. Ian was wimpified. Also, the episodes seem to work more like a cop show with a quirk. It couldn't do that as much season one, since all the bloody deaths around Pez made her superiors suspicious of her and the White Bulls had started their vendetta against her. Cop shows with a quirk are like the cop show with the Mountie and his half-wolf or the cop show where the cop is a vampire. Witchblade became the cop show where the cop has a magic bracelet and bared abs of steel, which wouldn't have been so awful if they'd been intriguing cop show episodes. Unfortunately, the further into the season we went, the more likely we were to hit a senseless or snoozer episode. The episode with the killer pedophile resisted logic at all turns and introduced a teenage niece for Danny that we never saw before or since just so Danny would have a personal stake in catching the guy. As if he didn't just by dint of being a cop and a human being. The Fight Club one was a boring, nonsensical mess. Not even a multitude of bare-chested men in it could keep my interest there.
By the end of season two, any concept of the plots making sense was thrown away. We had a genetically evil branch of the Witchblade family tree. Yes, genetically disposed to be evil. And they were left-handed, just to smack you over the head with it. The finale never explained anything about how Lucrezia Borgia is walking around alive and well, or how she could steal the Witchblade from Pez as she slept. Irons' evil had changed from the ruthless, self-interested evil of season one to senseless, amorphous Evil with a capital E. Why did he want all those strangers to go on a random murdering spree? Because he's Evil. No other explanation is needed for the writers. And the internet is driving people insane and making them kill? Please. And how can Irons be alive and whole while Ian had his severed hand in a jar? The episode had no interest in explaining any of it, which makes me wonder if the writers had even bothered to work it out for themselves.
Season two had some good stuff even through the end of the season, such as Gabriel being unexpectedly helpful on police cases over and over again (notices tattoos, has some ballistics sense, reads ancient Bulgarian....) and Ian's hilarious ways of "helping" Sara, mostly by making obscure metaphoric pronouncements, appearing and disappearing out of nowhere, and threatening Gabriel. The dead Irons communicating with Ian from Hell and Ian keeping Irons' hand in a big glass jar so he can commune with it also amused me.
I was still enjoying the show enough that I hoped it would pull out of its nosedive in season three, and the cliffhanger with Gabriel had me on edge. Then TNT cancelled the show despite its ratings success, with rumors saying it was worry over Yancy Butler's past alcohol abuse motivating the decision.
So now Witchblade joins VR5 and Strange Luck on the list of shows I liked which will never resolve their final cliffhanger.