Sanctuary ReWatch: Sanctuary for All

A few weeks ago I decided that maybe I was wrong about the caliber of some of the actors and that maybe the fault was due completely to the randomness of the writing staff. Luckily, the place where I originally wrote the reviews managed to disappear, so I get to watch these episodes again somewhat fresh. If my memory were any better this wouldn’t work out so well, but here goes The Great Re-Watch:

If you think that you will ever forget that this show relies heavily on greenscreen, you are wrong. If you think that it will be expensive CGI that looks great, you are also wrong. We open the series with police investigating a noise complaint. I feel sorry for the black cop, he goes in first and I expect to miss him soon. There is a creepy kid under a bed, with a tentacle that kills people.

Our intro to Will is that he is a bit OCD or something. He whines to a waitress that his food is prepared different from normal. I forgot he was whiney from the beginning. I guess I was distracted by his attention to detail the first time around. Back in the beginning when the writers had at least a little bit of semblance of continuity, his ability to pick up on details was highlighted like it was a superpower.

He picks up on the details of the situation pretty quickly, but no one he works with believes him. It is sort of sad that they just kind of throw this away and coat Dunne in hair gel later. Too many Daniel Jackson Jr. jokes I guess. I like original Will much better than Plotonium Esquire. People change, but they don’t tend to just drop their brains off at the nursery all day while they work.

I started fading out while the show was really focusing on the police procedural part, but it caught me again when Druitt ‘ported in and shanked a hooker. Will’s hunches get him yelled at by his peers, who think he is talking the same crazy that got him fired from his previous job. Magnus pops up in the rain and offers him a job in a “take the red pill” speech.

He goes back to his apt, and [Kandyse McClure] is his recently ex’d gf. I am INSANELY jealous. She belittles him, but she is still bloody gorgeous. Of course this means will see her a maximum of twice after this episode, if that. I’ve watched this episode a few times and still neither learned her name nor heard any of the words she said.  He calls Magnus and she invites him to the Sanctuary. The CGI gets a workout when she gives him a tiny tour.

Ashley beats up some cops who have found the kid in a sewer. There is no real reason for this, and I wonder how many other silly things I let slide in the primary episodes of the show because I love Tapping. There is a dude with 2 faces (who is completely forgotten by the writers later IIRC)

Bigfoot’s intro has him serving evening tea. Later episodes now feel like a retconning. I’m probably right since they felt like that the first time I saw them.

Will and Magnus go to where Ashley is and Magnus chides Ashley for beating up the cops. They bag the kid and Ashley and Will do some lame flirting. There is a werewolf comment here that makes me realize that the episodes that correlate with the webisodes are pretty much an entirely different show from the rest of the series.

Henry! Henry mixes some cracks in at the abnormal in with his techinfodump. The Henry arch doesn’t take as much damage on the rewatch, but it is definitely a bumpy ride. Will figures out that the tentacle only gets all kill-y when someone is scared of it. They lay it on pretty thick. I guess they figure we are not paying close attention, which is more true on a subsequent viewing than they could possibly imagine.

Brown guy gets lines, then he gets impaled. This is my sad face. Druitt has shown up to foul a weapon score. It is kind of funny since they show him ducking from bullets instead of teleporting. I suppose old habits die hard. I like that Druitt is toying with her using his speed and agility, but I think that touch was more to leave the audience in the lurch since teleporting would wig her out more. Brown guy comes back and tazes Druitt – he sings a little song of foreshadowing on the way down and Henry picks up him and Ashley in the van. There is Will backstory in there, but I don’t really care.

Once back home, Druitt gets up and kidnaps Henry for a bit. He makes his way to Magnus and Ashley. John and Helen have a chat after he drops Ashley off in an angry abnormal’s cage. They reveal that Ashley is their child to the audience. It is only slightly less cheesy than having it scroll across the bottom of the screen, but the John/Helen moments are still great. The rest of the kids rush off to save her from a very upset lizard and Helen gives John “her blood” as he requested. He believes he need her blood to save him from his ailment, but she gives him something else, and he is twarted for a bit.

Magnus gets to the cage and Ashley is saved thanks to some heroism by the Big Guy and Will knocking down a lampshade. Will visits Biggie in the infirmary, then confronts Magnus for not saving his mom from the abnormal that attacked when he was a kid. He makes some young abnormal hunter digs before she tells him she is well past a century old. There have been so many retcons in this show, I had forgotten that Magnus had originally stated that Druitt was just a patient of hers who was dying and she gave him her blood to help. She was probably just lying to Will, but it FEELS like a retcon to me. Credits roll on his first day on the job.

Going back and watching this first episode made me angry. So angry that I kept stopping it and putting it aside for later. The early episodes that have corresponding webisodes and the few that followed, had big pacing problems but still had individual characters who weren’t one dimensional morons whose goal in life was to push the plot. In the beginning, everyone is written to show that they have higher brain function. I don’t know who dropped the ball on that and coated Robin Dunne in hair gel, but they need to be FIRED.

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