TV Review: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series “Mistress”
By: Brandon Wolfe
What is emerging as the most interesting part of watching ‘From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series’ is witnessing the show veer into and away from the film that inspired it. Sometimes it’s so similar that you get a Gus Van Sant ‘Psycho’ feeling of déjà vu, and other times the series parts company with the film in a wild deviation from what we are familiar with. For whatever issues the series has had thus far (and it has its share), the ebb and flow of faithfulness to ‘Dusk’ lore keeps things intriguing enough.
When we meet up with the Gecko Brothers this week, we’re most definitely in familiar territory. Seth and Richie book a room at the Dew Drop Inn and bring their hostage in so Seth can give her his menacing-yet-hopeful speech about how she will remain unharmed if she keeps quiet and does what he says (though he doesn’t get a line nearly as good as “I have six little friends and they can all run faster than you” because Tarantino is still regrettably not on the writing staff). Seth then departs to get food, leaving the woman alone with the volatile Richie, who asks her to join him on the bed to watch some cartoons. Like many scenes on this show, the blanks left by the film are filled in unnecessarily, as Richie frightens the woman with his disturbing drawings and general unhinged demeanor and rantings. However, the end result is the same, with her butchered body lying on the bed for Seth to discover later.
But when Seth arrives at Big Kahuna Burger to get lunch, the series throws us a major curve when his ex-wife Vanessa shows up and lustfully drags him into the restroom. In the film, the only mention of any such character was in a tossed off joke Seth made equating slavery to having previously been married, so this was unexpected. It turns out that she has been a silent partner in this operation all along and implores Seth to ditch Richie and run off to Mexico with her alone. Seth refuses, citing the fact that Richie saved him as a kid from both their abusive father and a house fire started by said abusive father. He tries to throw Vanessa some bearer bonds and bid her farewell, but she does not take kindly to this and smashes his windshield. Fortunately for Seth, she also sticks around the restaurant long enough to hold a gun on a cop, allowing Seth to escape.
The Fullers, meanwhile, experience some engine trouble with their RV and are stranded, with Jacob stopping into a dive bar to ask for help. While he is attempting to get them back on the road, Kate discovers a document among Jacob’s possessions that indicates he was responsible for his wife’s death due to vehicular manslaughter resulting from his intoxication. This is another move away from the film, as Jacob’s wife, we were told, had previously been killed by a non-Jacob drunk.
By chance, at that same bar sits Ranger Gonzalez, still on the trail of the Geckos. Gonzalez has noticed that a mysterious symbol keeps popping up at every Gecko crime scene, always left by Richie, so he has brought in a professor who specializes in such things to consult with him, and who is played by a buttoned-down Jake Busey. The professor tells Gonzalez that this symbol belongs not to a Mexican cartel, but to a Mayan blood cult called the Lords of the Night, fabled to have sacrificed a woman many years ago by putting her in a snake pit. This is the same woman whom Richie continually has visions of and whose voice he hears in his head, telling him to do terrible things.
Richie being in the thrall of this mysterious woman (who is clearly Santanico Pandemonium, Salma Hayek’s vampire snake-stripper from the film) from the get-go instead of just being a deviant nutjob is the aspect of the series that seems the oddest switch. I can understand the logic in making Carlos, Seth’s drug-lord contact (played by Wilmer Valderrama, of all people) into a vampire for the show. That was a relatively minor character in the film, and making this change allows the series to incorporate the vampires at an earlier stage of the story, which has a certain logic to it. But Richie beginning the series inexplicably as a Renfield for the vampires doesn’t seem a sound decision. Perhaps it will pay off eventually. At least it’s something new.
‘Dusk’ is struggling to maintain solid momentum thus far, but there’s a certain pulpy watchability to it. It has an interesting cast, for the most part, and D.J. Cotrona is making a solid enough Seth Gecko, even if he is basically still doing a George Clooney impression. Whether or not ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’s’ transformation into a television series will be successful remains to be seen, but there are just enough items of interest in play thus far to keep a modicum of hope afloat, or at least to keep watching.
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