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BLOOD TIES |
Vicki Nelson - Christina Cox Henry Fitzroy - Kyle Schmid Mike Cellucci - Dylan Neal Coreen Fennell - Gina Holden 
OTHER BLOOD TIES SEASONS Season 1 OTHER VAMPIRE SHOWS Buffy The Vampire Slayer Angel Ultraviolet Blade Moonlight 
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DOAA cop that both Vicki and Cellucci worked with in the past comes to her office to ask her to investigate his own death. Confusingly for his ghost, he doesn't actually appear to be dead. This starts off like an episode of GHOST WHISPERER and then morphs into a rip off of the ANGEL episode Lonely Hearts. It is, therefore, very hard to actually raise any interest in. Top Wild BloodMike takes a woman into custody after a man is mauled by a wild animal, but his severed head is then placed on the table, not the act of an animal. Whilst Mike tries to break through her wall of silence, Vicki and Henry investigate just what she actually is. If there was any less action in this episode then it could be called a costume drama. The interrogation scenes are nothing new and nothing special and nothing entertaining. Vicki's investigation proves to be just as devoid of inspiration. Top 5.55Vicki gets involved in a case in which leads to a dead man and a box that, when opened, emits an evil that kills herself and Henry. She then wakes up to find herself at the start of the day with another shot at working out the problem. This time, other people get killed, but the day starts all over again. A variation on GROUNDHOG DAY or the recent DAYBREAK TV show, it manages to take the idea and run with it, coming up with an entertaining story that moves along pacily and has a killer central idea in the fact that what she is chasing is, in fact, Pandora's box - the actual Pandora's Box. Killing off a major character also adds to the strong emotional impact of the episode. For the first time, BLOOD TIES shows that it really might have what it takes to make a memorable impact on the genre. Top BuggedA young man dies in an alley outside a goth club. The body appears to have been badly chewed up by insects. Coreen asks Vicki to look into the death on behalf of a friend who owns the club. All the signs point to a very different kind of drug being involved. Henry and Mike, however are on the trail of another killer, a vampire moving in on Henry's territory. This is a better story with hints of what is to come. Henry's sire is in town and is looking to take him out. That ought to be worth looking out for. The main story is straightforward enough, but the bug demon was working on killing Vicki and that means that someone else is after her. Who and why remains to be seen. The final fight sequence promises much and then is over just before it really gets going. Top The Devil You KnowChristina, the vampire that turned Henry, has come to town against all the vampire code. She claims to need help defending herself from a newly-turned vampire that has decided to rid himself of her. Vicki and Mike aren't so sure that her story is true, but Henry is determined to see that justice is done. The run of better stories continues as Christina moves into Henry's life and starts manipulating him in ways that it is clear she has always used before. It is the twisted relationship between the vampires that forms the core of the story and gives it a bit more depth than some of the others have had. It does, however, also evoke comparisons with that other vampire series ANGEL, something that it has always struggled to escape. Episodes like this won't help. Top Drawn and QuarteredWhen the artist ex-boyfriend of a woman with whom vampire Henry has a family history suddenly goes missing, he turns to Vicki for help in finding the man. When the gallery owner later turns up dead, Detective Celucci gets involved and Henry is even more certain that the woman didn't do it. The answer seems to lie in some of the disturbed paintings of an artist that Coreen has just started dating. If you haven't figured out the whole plot of this episode by the time that you're ten minutes into it then you really haven't been paying attention. It's tired, familiar story isn't helped by the fact that the story takes time away from the character interplay that is the only thing that keeps this show from being terminally dull. It's also becoming a rule that the final confrontation that is supposed to be a climax of the whole thing is totally underwhelming. Top WrappedSome gang members accidentally manage to revive a millennia-old mummy that is practically invincible but for its need to take the lifeforce of others. Henry's lifeblood, as another form of undead, will give the mummy life eternal, but Vicki is not about to let that happen, no matter what she has to do to save him. Despite ripping its entire set up straight out of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER episode Inca Mummy Girl (although it does swap a pretty young girl with the much less pretty Danny Trejo), this episode starts off bright and cheerful with some snappy banter that shows what BLOOD TIES can aspire to at its best before it descends far too rapidly into some dark and dangerous places. For once it really needed more time, perhaps a double episode, to do the darkness some justice. Sadly, though, that final meeting with the bad guy is a real let down. Don't these people know how to come up with a climax? Top The Good, the Bad and the UglyA man who confessed to decapitating a woman tells Vicky that he now believes that the killer is in direct telepathic communication and is about to kill again. Detective Cellucci believes that it is the work of a copycat killer, but Vicky discovers disturbing evidence of experiments carried out on three brothers that might explain the case. Who really carried out the killing? It could almost be an episode of CSI for all the supernatural element. It seems strange that Vicky has access to all her old case files. Wouldn't they be kept by the department? She certainly spends a long time running through them, having black and white flashbacks of no discernable value and getting on the nerves of just about everyone she knows. In short, there is nothing new, or even interesting going on here and everyone seems to have suffered terminal humour bypasses. Top We'll Meet AgainVicki takes on the case of a 15 year old who claims to be an 'old soul' - a man reincarnated time and time again to be with his love. Only this time, he was kept alive in a coma when they both died, so he's a decade younger than her this time. She's also married, pregnant and not too keen on going through yet another life with. Love can overcome death, but it can also drive a man to murder. At last a case that doesn't have a monster, doesn't have bodies everywhere and still manages to make for an entertaining episode. It starts out with the usual light banter, but then goes all dark. The trouble is that the kid is really, really annoying and you can't believe that anyone would come back from the dead to be with him even a second time. He can remember being a soldier and a thief and total details about his past life when the plot wants him to be a credible threat to the husband and the woman, but then he can't remember something incredibly useful about her such as her being a haemophiliac when the plot doesn't want him to find her straight away. It's nice the way that Coreen finds the whole thing so lovely (at the beginning anyway) that they are in dire danger of needing to send out for tissues and there is some snappy dialogue, but it is somehow still not firing on all cylinders.
Deep DarkCoreen asks for help from the demon side to help Vicki choose between Mike and Henry. Astaroth slips through the veil and seizes control of Coreen's body. Capturing Coreen, the trio put their lives and relationships in danger to bring Coreen back from beyond death. Relationship problems are not the first thing that you think of when looking for a compelling plot for a genre show, but this at least has the virtue of a strong supernatural tale underpinning it. The possession of Coreen and the absence of her heart gives strong motivation to all, Mike's career hanging by a thread and Henry's threatening to leave are all personal crises. On top of that, Vicki has to make a decision that will end her friend's life or free Astaroth into the world. That's a lot of story and theme to get into one episode and the build up to it hasn't been that convincing throughout the season, but at least we are left with a situation that is interesting enough to make us hope for a third season. Top |
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