tv

666 Park Avenue, “The Dead Don’t Stay Dead”

It’s becoming more and more apparent that 666 Park Avenue is all bout mystery.

When I thought that Gavin Doran was the devil himself, or something like it, I thought the arc of the show would follow Jane as she slowly uncovered the truth. That’s a reasonable premise for a movie, but for a television show, it sounds dreadfully dull, and more than that, it sounds predictable.

Fortunately, there’s more to it than that. Obviously, this show isn’t The Wire (although the insufferable news editor from Season 5 makes a brief appearance in this episode), but it’s shaping up to be a little more complex than Rosemary’s Baby: The Series.

First, there’s Gavin himself. He still appears to be some sort of demon with sinister wish-granting powers, but those powers manifest themselves in ways that don’t make him seem like he’s straight-up Lucifer. Look at the women he helps in episodes two and three: sure, his “help” ends up costing them dearly, but it’s not implied that a “for-your-soul” bargain took place. Hell, in this episode, Annie the journalist doesn’t even ask him for help, she just suddenly attains the power to change reality with her words.

And if Gavin is the devil, why does he seem so interested in Henry’s political career? We know that the Dorans need to “get Henry” for something, but what, exactly? And speaking of which, what’s the deal with Olivia Doran? Did she just marry into this demonic lifestyle, or is there more to her story? When Gavin tells Henry that he knows what it’s like to come from nothing and fight for everything you get, is it a lie or a hint about his true origins? What’s up with that thief girl who gave Jane the article last episode? Why can she see the future? Why wasn’t she in this episode? Why wasn’t my favorite character Tony the Doorman in this episode? Where’s Tony? WHERE IS HE, YOU MONSTERS?

The show wouldn’t work if I didn’t care about the answers to any of those questions, but I actually do. Sure, it’s based on curiosity of what direction the show’s going to take as opposed to me needing to follow these characters wherever they go… but, hey, interest is interest, and if a show can make me this curious, it’s doing something right.

Of course, when a series is based around mysteries, the creators are taking a big risk. It’s a risk that isn’t present in short-form mysteries, like an Agatha Christie novel or an episode of Law and Order. When an audience becomes invested in the mysteries of a long-running television show, they expect a good payoff, and if you don’t deliver that, you are screwed. Even if you do solve the mystery, viewers can still turn on you if it isn’t exactly what they wanted. Just ask anyone who bailed on the second half of Twin Peaks, or any of those people who didn’t understand Lost.* 

Yes, dear reader, I hear you: this business about mystery is all well and good, this is supposed to be a horror show, confound it! Shouldn’t 666 Park Avenue be trying a little harder to scare us?

True, the show is rarely “scary,” but it does its best to cram each episode full of horror tropes. This episode alone had Jane hallucinate blood pouring out of the mystery door and then seeing a creepy little girl in the hallway, whispering creepy little girl thing. Whether or not something is “scary” is purely subjective, but there’s no denying that the creators of Park Avenue have at least a basic knowledge of horror movies.

Besides, I’m not entirely convinced you can really “do” horror on television, at least not the way it’s done in movies. American Horror Story took the general framework of a haunted-house movie and stretched it out to 12 episodes, and we ended up with… well, I’m still not sure what exactly we ended up with.But for all the things that American Horror Story is, “scary” is not really one of them. Maybe it has to do with pacing or maybe it’s just hard to build an atmosphere when you have to break for commercials every ten minutes.

But that’s a broad subject, better suited for another time. And hey, you can’t say Park Avenue isn’t at least trying to scare us. So far, we’ve gotten one big “horror” set piece per episode:  In the pilot, it was the guy getting thrown against the wall and consumed in a manner that reminded me of the underrated The Exorcist 3. In the second episode, it was the exterminator getting attacked by birds and then ran over, which was laughable. I mean, seriously laughable. As in, I laughed at it.

“The Dead Don’t Stay Dead” gave us the short but well-executed scene of Kandinsky, Annie’s made-up Soviet assassin, coming into existence and breaking into Annie’s apartment. And speaking of him: the lack of resolution to the Damned Of The Week sub-plot was baffling to me… until I saw the “next week on” previews during the credits. I know, that’s cheating, but I’m glad I saw them, because I caught a glimpse of Kandinsky in the next episode. I wouldn’t be surprised if we never saw Annie again, but the fact that part of this week’s sub-plot is going to continue into next week is exciting, as it continues to dismantle my original low expectations.

Some of the mysteries within the plot of 666 Park Avenue are a little clunky—Jane finally unlocked the mystery door, and inside she found a MYSTERY BOX—but the meta-mysteries of what kind of show this is going be, where is everything going… I’m finding those more compelling as time goes on. Hopefully, I’m not the only one.

* – On the real, Lost isn’t a perfect show, but most of the people who still complain about the show’s “unsolved mysteries” are just being needlessly pedantic.

666 Park Avenue

There’s something fun about watching a show that has terrible ratings. I know, I know, it goes against the entire idea of “water cooler” television, shows you can’t wait to discuss with your co-workers/family/friends… I mean, everyone knows it’s fun to talk about TV, yeah?

“Aw, man, did you see Breaking Bad last night?”

“Yeah, I did! It was crazy! I can’t believe that happened!”

“Totally intense! That show is soooooooo good, though.”

“Aw, yeah, man, but it’s not as good as Mad Men.”

“What? No way, Breaking Bad is where it’s at, b.”

“But Mad Men artfully creates an atmospheric portrait of a time gone by, homes.”

And so on and so forth. But you don’t get that experience when you watch a show in a vacuum.

“Hey, man, did you see Men At Work last night?”

“No, because I’m not a shut-in. Leave me alone.”

It’s not nice, right? People’s feelings get hurt.

Well, maybe this is coming from someone who watches too much television—huh-huh, yeah, you think—but it’s a neat feeling to watch a show that no one else is watching. I’m talking shows with ratings in the low millions. In real life, a million people is kind of a lot, but in terms of television ratings? You might as well be watching that show by yourself.

This works better for dramas than comedies. When a comedy is failing, it’s kind of sad—it’s like watching a stand-up performer bomb. It’s not quite as viscerally unpleasant, but you’re still watching someone fail to make people laugh.

With dramas, it almost feels like you’re hearing a secret, a story passed down through the ages, only told to a select few, and guess what? You’re one of them!

It seems that 666 Park Avenue, ABC’s new serialized horror series, might be fated to join this realm of secret tales.  The premiere netted nearly 7 million viewers, something of a drop-off from the lead-in Revenge, but not terrible. Episode two, however, dropped by nearly two million, which is… not encouraging.

I was interested in 666 Park Avenue before I found out about the abysmal ratings. Part of it was curiosity (“How are they going to take what is basically Rosemary’s Baby and stretch it out to a whole series”) part of it was actor loyalty (“It’s good to know that Terry O’ Quinn is still getting work”), but a large factor was my love of genre TV. Sci-fi, horror, if anything like that turns up on television, I’ll probably check it out at the very least.

This has caused me some problems in the past. I stuck with Alcatraz even when it became clear it would never fulfill its potential, and I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more time thinking about FlashForward than anyone actually involved with the show’s production. But in a way, I am like every major network since 2004: I’m always looking for the next Lost.

Now, the pilot of 666 Park Avenue wasn’t exactly enthralling. Only a few things really stood out to me, including the two separate characters that were eaten by the titular demonic apartment and the fact that the actual address of the building is 999 Park Avenue, which inexplicably becomes 666 when casting a shadow.

Over the course of the first hour, my curiosity about the show curdled into a disappointed incredulity. How could they POSSIBLY keep this show running for even a season? No matter how long they draw out the central mystery of the show (what’s going on with that there building?), we know from basically the first scene that Terry O’Quinn’s character Gavin Doran is the devil. Or at least some sort of devil. Or he and his wife are… both the devil. Or something.

Terry O’Quinn also stood out to me, but in a positive way. He’s an actor who so effortlessly exudes a mysterious air that I can’t tell if he’s bored with a scene or completely engaged. If you want to add nuance and intrigue to a character that appears to be literally Satan, you could do a lot worse than Mr. O’Quinn.

I finished the pilot episode already mentally writing the show off. I would watch the next episode (and, let’s be honest, several after that) out of a sense of obligation, but I wasn’t excited about it.

Maybe it was a case of lowered expectations, but the second episode, “Murmurations,” actually impressed me, mostly in how it addressed my concerns of what the show would look like week-to-week. When I saw how much of the pilot was given over to a character making a deal with Doran and then being killed for it, I guessed that the show would include a plotline like that in every episode, a brief morality tale not related to the overall arc of the show. A Damned Of The Week, if you will.

As lame as it seemed at the time, I’m glad I was right. The Damned Of The Week in the second episode breaks from the first in that it doesn’t follow the boring arc of someone making a deal with the devil and then losing his soul/being removed from the show. The story this week has interesting twists and a few neat visual tricks, including a series of murders depicted in storybook style.

Better still, the Damned plotline intersects with the main story in some interesting ways, first when the main character Jane catches a glimpse of something she doesn’t understand behind the Creepy Door In The Basement, and then again when Doran confides in Jane’s husband about a property he’s purchased. I don’t want to give too much away—and really, there’s not all that much to give away—but the idea that everything that happens in the show is going to be somehow connected gives me hope going forward.

I’m still not entirely sold on the overall plot of the show, because it seems like there’s only one direction go: Jane and her husband eventually have to find out that Gavin Doran is evil. But I’ll be happy if the show can keep me entertained the way it did in the second episode: by throwing as much stuff at me as possible.

As I said before, the lead-in for 666 Park Avenue is Revenge. I first though that it was just a case of ABC trying to piggyback a new show on an established popular one. But it’s actually more than that. With its pulpy plotlines and never-ending twists, Revenge exemplifies “compulsively watchable” TV, and if 666 Park Avenue continues the level of improvement it showed in the second episode, it could easily join that category… and hopefully it won’t end up just another genre show with unfulfilled potential.

But even if it does… I’ll still be watching, you can count on that. Right to the bitter end. Right… to the bitter… bitter… end.