Netflix Original Series Round-Up: Hemlock Grove

A few posts back--Revenge, to be exact--I mentioned that there was a show I had watched recently that brought up way too many questions, and yet way too few answers. This was the show.

While I loved House of Cards, Hemlock Grove can go die in a fire. My vitriol may have a lot to do with the, in my opinion, unnecessary cat sacrifice--funny how I get more upset about a cat's death than a human's in tv shows--how unlikeable most of the characters are, how little they answered, how much it feels like they pulled the ending out of their butt, how much I hated Famke Janssen's accent, and how unnecessarily, unrepentantly, and unceasingly dark it is.

Now, let's be fair. I know the cat sacrifice thing bugs me because I'm an animal lover. I know the accent thing is very trivial, no matter how out-of-place it feels. And I know DARK shows have their place. But I feel that dark shows should have their light moments, and Hemlock Grove never did. I didn't need a laugh, but a smile, or a quiet moment, would have been nice.

Hemlock Grove opens with what is called a cold-opening, where we are introduced to someone who gets immediately killed, and then it never stops.

The two main characters are a werewolf and a vampire. The vampire's sister, Shelly, is some sort of completely unexplained creature--all we know about her is that it was heavily implied she was brought back from the dead when she died as a baby--with the ability to manipulate light, glow when she feels emotion, inability to speak, very large stature, overly large eye, scars all over her head, and baldness.

Shelly exemplifies the 'all questions no answers' philosophy this show has. Sure, the whole 'died as a baby' thing threw me a pretty good bone, but it was never followed up. WHY DOES SHE GLOW? Why can't she talk? Why is she so monstrous looking? Why? Why? Why?

I didn't need all the answers, but one or two would have been very helpful.

The nature of werewolves is explained thoroughly, and quickly. The nature of vampires might as well have been Grandma's secret recipe for all we knew about them, until the end. Even then, the questions move along. We are introduced to an ancestor of the vampire character, who had a movable tail mid-back. She cut it off, and died, and became a vampire. Apparently, vampires are created when they die of their own hand. (Important.) But they also have to be born of a vampire?

Now, I'd like to discuss two reveals, and how pissed they made me. Due to the spoilery nature, they will be vague. Do not read until the next sentence in bold if you don't want spoilers. 

So, first, the rogue werewolf. It's the white-haired girl. This was almost completely pulled out of the show's ass. The retrospective explanation did help a lot, and the death of the two blonde girls did make sense, in retrospect. However, the girl's reasoning didn't make a lick of sense, even in a 'oh, she's a crazy person' way. The character spends most of the time in a mental hospital, and she still gets out to go kill people. There were no clues whatsoever.

I will give the werewolf reveal props, however. The scene where she transforms needs to be used in special effects schools, because it was good. It was even better than the first transformation scene. The actress gets credit too: sexual release she got from transforming was effectively creepy.

Now secondly, the father of the 'immaculately conceived baby.' This one had at least a little more lead-up, with the father going and raping a girl, then mind-raping her afterwards to cover it up, before the reveal. And the father is the only one shown to have mind-powers like that, and the father of the girl even suggests she had been raped, which she had.

Come to think of it, I can't find a totally logical reason why I hate that reveal. I just do. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you are expected to like this character enough to follow him. Shows can do anti-heros well, but there are some lines people just can't cross, and still come off as likeable.

I have to compare this to House of Cards, because the cast of both series is supposed to be full of 'anti-heros:' people who aren't good people, but still likeable. The difference is how they handle it: House of Cards makes it work. Every character, no matter what lines they crossed, still came off as fascinating or likeable. By the end of Hemlock Grove, none of the characters we've spent any time with--excluding Shelley--come off as likeable or fascinating.

Netflix is perfectly happy to cross some lines due to freedom from censors. It's VERY gorey. It's sexual in a very creepy way--like the reveal that the evil werewolf goes straight for the female victim's crotches, or, as mentioned before in the spoiler-paragraph, the evil werewolf's sexual release before their transformation scene. It's dark. There's swearing. Nudity galore. Most egregiously: a girl kisses a half-corpse who is nude. Why? IT'S EDGY. At least the rape scene, graphic as it is, has some foreshadowing, character-development-implications, and so-on, to it. The half-corpse thing gets the girl in the mental hospital, which just raises more questions later on. The only thing it can imply is the girl's complete mental collapse, which could have been shown effectively any other way.

There are only two characters that are completely likeable from start to finish, (three if you count the cat who gets sacrificed) and one dies, and one gets framed for a murder she didn't commit, and has to leave town.

The mother of the werewolf disappears for no good reason--yes, her trailer was destroyed by hicks who were destroying it for completely illogical reasons themselves--but she leaves her son with a family of vampires she openly admits she hates, with almost no justification whatsoever.  Then, the werewolf leaves the vampire completely alone, which destroys the vampire. This is done for no clear reason. He gets cleared of the murders, but still feels he has to leave town.

The most frustrating thing about the show was probably the entire town jumping on the 'he's a werewolf!' train. I've seen groupthink. I've studied groupthink. But I highly doubt groupthink would cause people to collectively agree a man committed crimes an animal clearly did, and brush it off as: 'well, he's a fictional--as far as we know--creature!'

How do they get this idea? Crazy girl says so. Yes, they blame a man for murders based on the word of a crazy teenager, who has based her decision about the boy being a werewolf from his complete and total sarcastic response to: "Are you a werewolf?"

This show left me very angry, very frustrated, and very disappointed. When it was supposed to be disturbing, it was just confusing. When it was supposed to be heartwarming, it wasn't. When it was supposed to be intriguing, it was frustrating. When it was supposed to make you sad, it made you angry.

Despite my dislike of Famke's accent, the actors all did a fabulous job. They just had a shit script to work with.

And for those who want to see the only worthy scene (very gory), the werewolf transformation, here it is, in all its naked and disgusting glory:

The second transformation was much better, as the special effects in here are a bit iffy when the skin starts ripping in the back, but that would be spoilery and not on youtube, so I'll settle for this one.