From MadCap's Couch - Kindred: The Embraced: "The Original Saga"

Alrighty! New series! Don't worry, I highly doubt I'll be touching on this particular one at any time other than October, so it won't be getting in the way of the regular series reviews like Doctor Who, Supernatural, or Sliders. Plus, with only eight episodes of this series existing, this won't take long.

So, Vampire: The Masquerade had a TV series! Who knew? I did, actually, but hadn't really gotten around to it watching it beyond a few clips and giving Sybil Langtry her last name because of this show. I knew of it by reputation, of course, being that it was from the mid 90s and is something that is controversial at best to fans of the table top game due to the many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many breaks it makes with the lore even in the eight short episodes that it has.

Given my own breaks from White Wolf's labyrinthine canon, I would be rather foolish to judge the show based on that. I will point out inconsistencies between the show and the game, but I will judge the show based on its own merits. Apart from that, I am going into this show completely blind and with no expectations for what I will see going forward. So, if I don't mention something or I skim over something, I apologize ahead of time. Not just to the White Wolf purists who are know who are out there, but also to the fans of this show - yes, it has fans - who may not be all that pleased with my decisions regarding popular characters and certain plot developments.

If you have any problems with this, I invite you to send me a message here.

With all of that out of the way, let's get into The Original Saga. Said saga begins with an opening credits sequence involving the Golden Gate bridge and really unsettling chanting-esque theremin music, so points there. Our focus is drawn to three men running across a rooftop at what is clearly the middle of morning at the absolute latest. Keep this in mind, as it is a recurring problem throughout the entire show. Two cops, Detectives Frank Kohanek (C. Thomas Howell) and Doakes from Dexter, are following a lead about a supposed mobster named Julian Luna (Mark Frankel). More specifically, his bodyguard Stevie Ray (not htat one) who is being chased by one of the other two men on the roof. One of the men, Eddie Fiori (Brian Thompson), impales the man through his chest with an antenna before he and his partner leap off the roof much to the confusion of Frank and Doakes - who is actually one Sonny Toussaint (Erik King).

"Mmm... those muffins smell like they're almost done..."

The bodyguard, meanwhile, bursts into flame after telling the detectives to tell "his Prince" that "I told them nothing, I gave them nothing." The autopsy that follows reveals what can only be a case of spontaneous combustion, as no accelerant for a fire was found at the scene of the crime. Sonny tries to convince Frank to let the case of Julian Luna go, but he refuses.

Julian Luna, meanwhile, is absolutely distraught of the death of Stevie Ray and cries out for vengeance. However, his sire and advisor Raine (Patrick Bauchau) advises him to handle the matter of getting Stevie's body before he can be properly examined and thus reveal their nature to the world.

That night, Frank goes out on a date with his girlfriend Alexandra (Kate Vernon), who it seems has some knowledge of and connections to Julian in some way we aren't yet made privy to. She insists that he doesn't know how powerful Julian really is, but Frank is adamant that he's on the right path. Frank, despite being a hardened gumshoe detective, hasn't worked out that his girlfriend is a vampire despite some very obvious signs like she's ice cold, she's always pale, and she orders her steak very, very rare.

There's also a bit of a lesbianism tease at one point, because it's the 90s and bi vampires are hot.

Julian heads out to handle some business and we cut back to Frank and Alexandra, where it's clear that Alexandra is using Frank in order to feel human again. They seem about to bang when Frank gets a beep on his pager - because it's the 90s - and he heads off to follow his lead. Julian meets up with Lillie (Stacy Haiduk), the primogen of Clan Toreador and some members of Clan Gangrel such as Cash (Channon Roe), who were sired by him and seek vengeance for his death.

The Gangrel also rightly point out that Julian is out of touch with things going on on the streets, and Julian decides to bring Cash into his organization as a Gangrel he can trust. The Brujah, headed by Eddie, launch a drive-by that - besides tearing apart an intricately designed set - seems to not actually do any damage. Frank and Sonny arrive in the aftermath, Frank and Julian squaring off to no real effect between Frank being unable to make anything stick to the man and Julian just... not caring.

Later, at his home, Julian journeys down into his basement and encounters Daedalus (Jeff Kober), the head of Clan Nosferatu... which, in Kindred, translates to a bald cap and weird ears. Like many things, we'll be getting back to that later. Julian sends Daedalus to get Eddie to come to the table to talk and sets him to go and retrieve Stevie Ray's body from the San Francisco morgue.

They also share a bit of wine, which is... odd. Again, we'll be getting back to it.

"...are you gonna eat that?"

Frank speaks over the phone to the coroner, who is able to determine that it is Stevie Ray that he's autopsied... but something is horribly wrong with his internal organs, they're all significantly older than they should be. Frank tells the coroner he'll be down there shortly, but Daedalus gets to the man first and has him cut open the veins on his arm so he can take a drink. When Frank arrives, he finds the coroner dying on the slab and the body of Stevie Ray nowhere to be found.

A little bit of intimate time between Julian and Lillie gets ruined by some news that Raine delivers - Julian's last grandchild from his mortal lineage has passed away of old age, something that very deeply effects him. As he's leaving to somewhere else, Julian briefly meets with Alexandra, who tries to make a bargain for Frank's life. She promises to leave San Francisco with Frank, but Julian ultimately refuses. He rightly brings up that Frank is a cop and taking that away from him would e taking away part of his humanity, but Alexandra simply says it's vengeance against her for their relationship going bad.

After this, Julian visits the grave of his mortal wife and speaks to her about the death of their last grandchild in a rather touching scene that gets ruined a little by the effect when Julian melds with the earth at her tombstone.

Later on, Julian gives a eulogy for his grandchild - under the guise of "that uncle from the city who never gets older" - that is all meaningful and touching... and gets shattered with the arrival of the rude, crude, and disturbingly hot biker chick Sasha (Brigid Brannagh), Julian's great granddaughter. Despite scandalizing the family by downing the wine and giving her dead grandfather a quick peck, Julian is quietly amused and even praises her for the act.

Back in the illusion of domestic bliss, Alexandra mentions Frank's ex-wife (who committed suicide by jumping out of a window) and causes him to cut himself shaving. Alexandra licks the wound to seal it and Frank, for some reason, is just mystified rather than utterly confused given that he was looking into a big ass mirror and saw the wound not seconds before. It really contributes to one of the problems of this as a pilot - namely that they're inconsistent on what Frank does or doesn't know and what he can rationalize. More on that later.

Julian seeks advice from Raine, the former Prince, concerning current events. Raine reaffirms that he chose Julian for good reason.

Alexandra and Frank talk in the garden outside of what is presumably her home, her mentioning that the pair of them coming here helps to keep the roses red and lush. She spies one of Julian's men outside and later brings the unconscious... man?... back to Julian's doorstep, leaving with a warning that she will not be ruled by any man or Prince.

Lillie meets with Eddie, where she and Eddie plot concerning the future direction of the city.

The Clan heads meet, Julian demanding to know who murdered Stevie Ray and using the lawyer trick of asking questions he already has the answers to. It seems that the table is turning toward Eddie when Daedalus arrives with the body of Stevie Ray and declares Clan Nosferatu's loyalty to their prince. The Masquerade, in that instance, is saved. However, it seems that Alexandra is considered as having broken the Masquerade and the punishment for that is Final Death. Julian declares a Blood Hunt on her, which seems to get the others back onto his side.

Mark Frankel does pretty well with the material given. Ima just say that now.

Alexandra tries to break things off with Frank, but he isn't having any of that. After the two sleep together, he suddenly realizes that he can't feel her heartbeat... and now, only now, does Alexandra finally relent and explain who and what she is. She explains that she was born in 1876, her father having come out to California during the Gold Rush. She is a vampire, who lives by drinking the blood of the living and thus can imitate them to a certain extent - even to the point of walking in the sunlight for a short time.

Frank becomes sickened after drinking some of Alexandra's blood... again, we'll get back to it. And after flushing his face with water, Frank hears Alexandra asking him to forgive her... and then he finds a wolf on his bed in her place. The creature flees into the night.

Getting back together with Sonny, Frank is on a warpath after finding out the shotgun shells used in the drive-by were phosphorous rounds and Sonny thinks he's crazy with his talk of vampires. After he asks to be let out, Frank drops Sonny off and Sonny tells him to call him when he gets his mind back on straight.

Finding Alexandra outside his home, Julian consoles her but demands to know why she would do this any of this. She was seeking to be consumed by love, love for and from a man who truly needs her. She ends up begging Julian once more to spare Frank, and he agrees. She leaves behind a pendant that Julian once gave her, and Julian weeps blood as he whispers that he needed her, too.

Julian and Lillie have a complicated moment where it becomes clear that Julian never completely got over Alexandra and that he gets no pleasure in what must be done involving her and the Final Death.

Alexandra, meanwhile, flees several vampires out for her blood only to end up in a cab driven by Daedalus. He slashes her throat and brings her off to the San Francisco Bay in the very, very, very obvious daylight. Laying her body out on the ground, he whispers to her that water is her sanctuary before leaving her there. She makes her way to the observation area and Frank has been contacted by the same creepy voiced man who tipped him off about Stevie Ray in the first place and rushes to her... finding her just as she bursts into flame in the sunlight and falls into the Bay while he screams her name in protest.

...whether or not she's actually dead is another matter, but never mind.

"Glowing eyes, motherfucker!"

At his home, Frank receives a call from a dispatcher, apparently not having answered his pager - the creepy voiced individual expresses his condolences and explains to Frank that he is Kindred and that he's looking to take out other Kindred... and we learn when he hangs up that Sonny is the Kindred in question! Working with Eddie, it seems that Sonny wants vengeance against Julian for siring him which Eddie is just too happy to give him. 

Sonny had mentioned to Frank during that last conversation that he'd find Julian "among her dead roses", and so Frank returns to Alexandra's home to find a mourning Julian there. The Prince attempts to make peace, warning Frank to stay away from it. Frank responds by shooting Julian not once but multiple times to very little avail. He declares that he's going expose Julian for what he is and take his life like he did Alexandra's. When Julian leaves after declaring that he is the law, Frank finds Alexandra's locket on the ground.

Julian, returning home, looks out over the Golden Gate Bridge stoically... and we come to the end credits.

...well, that was a bit of a slog.

Setting aside the adaptation (or lack thereof) that the show is, looking at it from the basis of a product of its own: the show is cops vs. mobsters with the supernatural sprayed in generous heaps over it. Honestly, if you take out the vampire bits, it's not bad for that... but the episode is still pretty bloated even without that. Now, this is a problem with a lot of television pilots - you have to introduce the characters, their dynamics, and what is essentially a sample for the series to be within a good hour or so. However, it is how that is all delivered that makes it work.

The focus here should have been more on Frank and him discovering the world of the Kindred... and it's really not. Granted, Julian having time to shine works well and we do well by seeing some of his part of the world, but we switch perspectives far too often and so there's nothing really to intrigue or surprise us going forward.

If I were to rewrite this one, I'd either have A) the focus and our perspective as the audience kept entirely on Frank and following him as he goes through the police procedural clichés in order to learn the truth about the world around him. Or, B) do the diametrically opposing story lines with the focus being on Frank and Julian, with Alexandra being the link between the two.

That's what they were trying to do with The Original Saga, but it quickly gets bogged down by... everything around it.

With that settled, there's all of the changes that they made from the original source material for one reason or another. Some of these are for budgetary reasons, such as the monster prosthetic for the Nosferatu potentially being very expensive or the costs for night shoots in San Francisco being astronomical, but then there are just so many things that make absolutely no sense. For example - insisting that it's "just before dawn" when it's clearly the middle of the day, or mixing up the Disciplines that vampires can use. 

Even the clans are mixed up in some cases from how they are in the game, such as the Brujah no longer being the Lost Boys-esque rebels, but being essentially the Ventrue but being overall grumpier, more brutish, and power hungry. The Gangrel, who are more animalistic and wild... basically end up becoming what the Brujah are in the games, at least in terms of aesthetics. Having a super rebellious faction going around trying to bring down The Man™ isn't really what you need when trying to run a mafioso story, so they end up becoming yet another Clan that falls into line with the status quo.

Needless to say, The Original Saga is not the most auspicious start to the series. Will it get better as it goes along? We'll have to wait until next October to look into the next chapter.

For now, it is Halloween... and I think it's time to enjoy the spooky before the morning sun comes to vanquish the horrible night. Horror Month 2023 is almost over, my readers! But... remember:

The dark side is always there, waiting for us to enter - waiting to enter us.

Until next time...try to enjoy the daylight...

Happy Halloween!