Tuesday 13 January 2009

TV Snark - Demons: The Whole Enchilada OR The Holy Hand Grenade!



Demons is still going, will episode two improve on the woeful first instalment?

No. Well, slightly but that's mainly due to Richard Wilson's appearance as a grumpier version of Gaius Meldrew. His old wise man routine is used again as he's an undead erm, priest zombie guy from the Middle Ages who dispenses magical wisdom and owns a complete set of magic items from the Adventurer's Vault. The only difference to his character in Merlin is that he's less sociable and he's some kind of ill defined zombie person.

Anyway, the plot of this episode involves an angel that steals children. That's about it. Oh, and Luke has a driving test. As for the rest of the episode, here are a few thoughts I jotted down.

- The low budget version of the Matrix training sequence. In the course of an episode, Luke now knows kung-fu at a mystical, wire fighting level. Excuse me show, but could you stop for a second and explain WHY Luke is a superhuman fighting machine?

- The Stacks is supposed to be a library, how come the team have to rummage through a box of old scrap papers to find information on a demon? They had a name, surely the place should at least be alphabetised. That's what happens when you have a blind librarian I suppose.

- The accent, the terrible, teribble accent. All too horrible to contemplate. It's Alabama via Salford.

- There's an 'hilarious' driving test sequence that makes little to no sense. The holy hand grenade is used to attract the demon but all it seems to do is appear as a little girl, make a half-assed attempt at taking the grenade and then buggers off for the rest of the test. It seems like there was half an idea for that scene but no real point to it other than cause Luke to fail his driving test. Woo, that's high drama right there.

- Ruby's brother's (Jamie) birthday wish is to hang out in Luke's flat while he's out? That kid has the lowest demands for a child ever. Surely he should be demanding a party at Pizza Hut and a go on the ice cream machine at the very least?

- Naff action sequence alert! Rupert (after summoning the demon/angel) jumps into the ring of fire, shoots at the angel and then seems to just... fall over. I think he was supposed to have burned his arm but it just looked like he had a fall. That's pretty bad action choreography.

- Luke gets in on the crappy attempt at Ye Olde Dialogue with this effort, "Turn and face me or I will most surely smite thee." No. Stop it. And the sword fight that followed it was short and very poorly executed. Even Merlin had fight sequences that were more dynamic than that.

- What was the demon's plan?

1. Steal some kids.
2. Chain them up.
3. ?
4. Profit.

It made no sense. The demon just seemed to exist to be killed like an end of level boss in a console game.

- Back to Luke's flat for jelly and ice cream! Yay! There was no Snarf to make a joke though, just Luke's mum moaning that he's not telling her about his secret double life.

Next episode - Attack of the Hyena Hoodies. And Mr. Tibb. Yes, really.

2 comments:

Doc Hall said...

So what you're saying is, had this been on the BBC it could actually have been Giaus Meldrew from Merlin?

Aaron said...

Yeah, it was pretty much completely the same character. Except his wig had stringier hair and he looked tired.