'The Dead Don't Stay Dead' - 666 Park Avenue, Season One

666 Park Avenue

Season One

Episode Three

'The Dead Don't Stay Dead' - 2.5

Has anyone noticed that squash is by far the scariest sport ever? No, me neither. 

There was only one scene tonight that even came close to giving me the heebie-jeebies, with the vast majority of this so-so horror drama leaving me a little... well, bored. As shows like The Walking Dead tell us, horror is a genre oddly fit for character exploration, but so far 666 Park Avenue has presented uninteresting or run-of-the-mill pawns in its winding tale; that will clearly devolve into some morality thing.

I'm not quite hating it yet, there is something about it that hints that the writers are both going somewhere and actually trying, but there is this deadness to it all that I can't avoid. There's no irony, no humour, no real emotion. The actors are asked to walk around and be normal, yet I want to see them screaming and, well, torn apart. Yeah, secondary characters die, but so far no one who's been here more than one episode has bitten the dust; and yes I'm aware this is the third episode. 

Once again we are given something what resembles a monster-of-the-week, but rather it is a victim-of-the-week. Tonight it's young Annie, a down-and-out obituary writer who wants to see her star rising. However after a talk with Gavin in the lift she is suddenly blessed with the power to make whatever she writes the truth, i.e. write fake obituaries that suddenly aren't bullshit. Hooray! You could like end wars and stuff, but no, she makes some dead guy a spy for the CIA. Whatever. 

In a slightly ironic (are there varying degrees of irony?) twist, her powers of anti-bullshitting create the ultimate villain, when the man that she claimed her fake CIA spy tracked turns up in her apartment, violently pulling her away from a window she'd broken in a futile attempt to escape, dragging her over the bathroom floor and leaving a bloody trail on the tiles. In her last scene, we see her bound to a chair while the man she created gets to work with the torturing and junk. Good for her. 

Has anyone ever done a scary little girl before? Other than of course The Shining, Children of the Corn, The Ring, Orphan, Buffy, [REC], a whole host more. Ok, she isn't that scary, but it is still a tired trope that was cool the first few times but is getting more and more irritating with every passing evil infant. Tonight this girl seems to have escaped from the weird room that Jane uncovered - at the cost of an unfortunate exterminator's life. She never tries to like kill anyone, but only our heroine can see her and she revels in providing cryptic warnings that lead Jane to a briefcase with some sort of demonic force inside it. 

It is the ten-year anniversary of Gavin and Olivia's daughter's death after she killed herself by driving full speed into a cement embankment. Obviously only Olivia is aware it was a suicide, with Gavin assured that it was purely accidental. In the end we learn that Sasha had done the deed to escape from the shadow of her 'evil' - in her words, hence the quotation marks - father, though we learn this through a note that Olivia burns during the conclusion. Vanessa Williams tried her upmost to portray a mother's remaining grief, but really it came off as very staged and unbelievable. It didn't help that Rachel Taylor's Jane spends the whole episode going 'Awww' and 'I'm so sorry'. Grow some balls, woman. I know you think this woman is your friend, but you are unbelievably dull. And stupid, FYI. Who continues to venture into places you believe to be haunted, unless you have some sort of death wish - which would actually be an interesting and enjoyable twist. Anyway, how can you have friends?

Henry, what the fuck are you doing? All he does is talk about work. Who cares? And you're so happy. I hope you die slowly and painfully, perhaps with Gavin - the only good character on the show - wrapping his paranormal fingers around your throat and giving a tight squeeze. He's already initiated then thwarted a near promotion, what's he got in store next anyway?

My least favourite storyline involves Brian and Louise, with Brian being the surely ill-fated adulterous husband who is infatuated with his wife's assistant. I honestly hope he doesn't make it past the next episode, all he does is look like a hipster and lust. That's not a character, that's barely even a sentence. He shows the kind of depth and provides the kind of story that you can get from an arty teenager's sketch of his inner feelings. Overwrought, yet deeply shallow. Go to hell, Robert Buckley, you haven't acted shit but you haven't proven yourself either. 

Let's be honest for a second; I don't hate anyone yet. Yeah, Brian, Henry, Olivia and Jane all irritate me to some level, but Gavin is awesome thanks to Terry O'Quinn, and the secondary characters like Louise and Alexis haven't made me bang my head against the wall. There is potential there. Still, the show better be heading towards some sort of big event that sets the rest of the series in motion, like the death of a major player. That always kick-starts an ailing drama. Kill Henry! Better yet, Brian! Though I don't know how big an effect that would have on anyone really; 'Oh the hunk's dead. The women will be sad.'. That's probably about it, really.

So, 'The Dead Don't Stay Dead', did you have any other tricks up your sleeve? Not really. The only remotely scary scene occurred as Jane ventures into the basement - again - after hearing bells ringing from all the way up in her bedroom. It's dark and soft, creepy music heightens the feeling of impending jump-scare, only it never arrives. Instead, she discovers a torch, showing that someone else was there. Or something. She finds the bells attached to a suitcase, the very one she brings back up to her apartment to deal with the next morning. As she goes back to sleep, a monstrous being presses itself against the leather from beneath the suitcase, and we fade to black.

I'm probably going to fade to black as well. I'm never bored, but what we get is pretty standard for this calibre of network television, with its only aim being to keep us interested, but not gripped. Often gripping us would entail doing something a little risqué, which threatens the wholesome nature of a FUCKING HORROR SHOW. Fuck the PTC, kill the children and deck the halls with their intestines. Drown fucking Jane and her boring-as-shit boyfriend in a pool of Brian's blood, and then we'll have a show. 

Well that escalated quickly.