on Blu-ray.
Iâd originally bought and watched this back when it was released here many moons ago (in fact, I think I mightâve bought both this
and the second season at the same time). Looking back, yes, it was probably a bit presumptuous to think Iâd want to watch Season 2 without having watched Season 1
first...but, hey, it was a show with Famke Janssen, Penelope Mitchell (who Iâd recently seen in
The Vampire Diaries at the time) and werewolves/supernatural stuff which sounded like the sort of show Iâd enjoy. However, after watching the first season...I found this
not to be the case. I knew it was going to be gruesome, I was prepared for the nasty werewolf transformation of Peter Rumancek (I think I may have watched a clip online prior to watching it in the actual episode) and, really, it wasnât *too* bad. After all, Iâd seen the nasty werewolf transformation in the 1984 movie
The Company of Wolves and this was just like a more polished version of that. Hell, not even the human eyeballs popping out of werewolf Peterâs head to make space for the wolfâs eyes bothered me
that much (and usually eye violence/gore is one thing Iâll avoid at all costs), nor was I too grossed out by the fact that once transformation happened, the wolf then
eats the human flesh/skin that it's just shed.
So if not the violence, then WHAT was my problem with this show? Well, for starters I was very much confused throughout the entire first season when I originally watched it. I felt like the show either left out important information...or if it *was* included, they didnât make it
clear. This was probably the first show Iâd ever watched where, after I finished the season, I had to go online to find out WTF Iâd just watched/get an explanation for what had happened. Even
after knowing and doing this rewatch, I *still* thought some things werenât made clear enough and my reaction pretty much remained, âYeeeeah...that doesnât make sense.â like itâd originally been. So WHY subject myself to this all over again? Well, weâre moving house and the first thing I did was pack up my massive collection of DVDs/Blu-rays and tape up the boxes they were in. It just so happened that one of the last shows I packed up was this one, and since it
wasn't one Iâd already taped up (like all the other boxes), I had easy access to it, so I decided WTH and gave it another try. To my surprise, I didnât hate this first season as much as I originally had - which was quite the turnaround for me considering this and another show I bought two seasons of on Blu-ray without having seen any of it (
Dominion - which I just watched the first episode of last night, trying to do a rewatch like I did with this show...which went far less successfully than my rewatch of this one did, as I was almost falling asleep during it) were two of the *only* things Iâve ever regretted âblind-buyingâ.
I think what helped this time around was knowing just how weird the show would get. Iâd remembered that one of the first main characters we met was Bill SkarsgĂ„rdâs Roman Godfrey who was holding a big-ass ice cream (Iâd remembered this slightly different, though, as I thought it was a smaller ice cream, it was pink instead of white and he was creepily licking it as he ogled someone...quite possibly his cousin, Letha, played by Penelope Mitchell), but it was bizarre to me that all we got was a sudden shot of him awkwardly holding this ice cream like weâd cut into the middle of a scene, as it then cut to something else just as quickly as weâd cut to it. This was the first in a long line of bizarre editing choices I noticed throughout the season. It really was strange where theyâd choose to cut from one scene to another, as oftentimes itâd feel like a hatchet job/as though they cut away too early, or like with the ice cream scene it felt as if weâd come into it partway through and had missed the beginning. Episodes also ended in the weirdest of places/abruptly, like they just ran out of airtime and had to cut it off
right there (even though episodes seemed to vary in length, so I assumed they were allowed to make them as long or as short as they wanted to). Youâd get to the end of an episode and itâd just suddenly cut off, leaving you thinking âThat was a strange place to endâ. It also felt like scenes were missing in various places. The editing in this show - it was truly bizarre.
But getting back to the characters, before Bill SkarsgÄrd was creeping everyone out as a killer clown (and desecrating the memory of the original
The Crow with a totally unnecessary remake that it pleases me to hear is bombing spectacularly), he was in this being a creepy cousin to Penelope Mitchellâs Letha Godfrey, and seemed to have an unhealthy fixation on her. Although his taking her to a carnival (it was funny in retrospect seeing pre-Pennywise Bill SkarsgĂ„rd hanging around carnivals. And this wasn't the only instance of amusing foreshadowing - albeit unintentionally - of his most known role to date, as there were also instances of him later rubbing blood over his mouth to create a creepy clownish smile and eventually he'd start munching on people from the end of Season 1 onwards, even opening his mouth unnaturally wide like Pennywise did. I guess this role could almost be seen as like an audition for Pennywise in a lot of ways. Can he play creepy? Check. Does he mind munching on people and getting blood all over his face? No probs. Can he give evil smiles? Soitenly), which being part of a rich family meant they could have all to themselves, might've
seemed like a nice gesture, it just felt like a way for him to get his creep on with her. On the one hand, youâd question any girl who would want to leave a carnival that was only open to her and the guy she was with (you get all the perks - games! Rides! Cotton candy! - but none of the downsides like waiting in lines, crowds, etc), but on the other hand...when youâre stuck with a creeper like Roman, itâs probably smart to
not wanna be left alone with him.
It wasnât long before Letha found herself impregnated by what she
thought had been an âangelâ (which we saw appear before her in silhouette during what seemed like a dream sequence) but we later learned was in fact Roman who'd raped her. This is one example of where I was thoroughly confused, since the only time we actually
saw him rape anyone was when he did it to a girl he went to initially have consensual sex with (after heâd seen Letha hooking up with werewolf Peter, who Roman had thought was his friend, and got pissed at them for this) which then turned nasty. Considering this was the only rape weâd ever actually
seen, I was left wondering when exactly heâd raped Letha. We didnât learn this happened until the season final, and only after reading comments online did I understand that apparently he'd been
made to rape Letha against his will by his mother, Olivia Godfrey (played by Famke Janssen, who really
shouldnât have bothered attempting a British accent since it was really not very good, and clearly even the
showrunners realised this since by the end of the season they wrote in a way to have her lose it...which made about as much sense as the
rest of this series. Wouldâve been easier if theyâd just said right from the start, âUh, Famke? Maybe drop the accentâ...that is unless they were the ones who insisted on her doing it even though she obviously wasnât capable of doing a convincing one, which baffles me considering I never had a problem with her Russian accent as Xenia Onatopp in 1995's
GoldenEye. Of course, maybe that wasn't up to snuff either and actual Russians were offended by it, but to my ears it sounded fine, whereas her British accent...did not).
Letha was a sweet girl who never did anyone any harm, was kind to pretty much
everyone (including Romanâs gentle giant mute sister, Shelley, who had facial deformities, would glow blue at times and was only able to communicate with others via some electronic gizmo she typed what she wanted to say into which then said it in a computerized voice) and, sadly, seemed to just be a âthingâ to be used/treated as property by others. As previously mentioned, she started up a relationship with werewolf Peter and Roman seemed to have the âall women are whoresâ mentality after learning of it, every person in her life seemed to want to control her in some way and do with her what
they wanted and she didnât even get to be her own person, she was just there to bring an unnatural spawn into the world and then promptly
die. The shot of her dead bloodied body post-birthing was pretty horrible. I just felt so sorry for her and thought she deserved better. Penelope Mitchellâs absence from Season 2 was one of the main reasons I didnât like it half as much as Season 1 (and considering how little I thought of the first season...thatâs
really saying something). I was glad when her father, Norman Godfrey (who was married himself, and whose brother was married to Olivia, but the two of them were getting it on together behind their significant others' backs before
and after Olivia's husband committed suicide, Iâm pretty sure), said âfuck the babyâ after the Dr. Frankenstein of this show, Johann Pryce, refused to bring Letha back to life but said heâd have better luck with her offspring. Itâs not very often you hear a father of a pregnant girl not give a flying fuck about her kid and all that matters is his daughter/the mother of the child. Usually itâs the girl whoâs treated like they matter less than the child, so I found her father saying the
opposite of that to be refreshing.
Speaking of Norman, this is the second show in recent memory that Iâve watched with Dougray Scott in it - the other being the first season of
Batwoman. Like in that show, he didnât particularly impress me here, though he did seem to get a little more life in his character as the season went on and he started being a bit snarky (especially with Olivia). I totally bought that Letha was his entire world/what he cared about most and I was glad to see him so devastated at losing her - after all, SOMEONE had to be. Sure, both Roman and werewolf Peter looked upset once they learned of her passing, but I never felt either of them had her best interests at heart. Yes, werewolf Peter was a jerk to her in that way characters typically do to keep someone âsafeâ by pushing them away, but Iâm not sure I ever truly bought his feelings for her which seemed to be rather sudden. As for Roman, it was clear his feelings for her were...well...not exactly
healthy/normal. It wasnât long after her death that werewolf Peter decided to shave off all his hair (on his
head, which was one of the only places hair seemed to exist on him when he was in human form. It was weird that everyone seemed to act like he had an excessively hairy body, when in fact he barely had any hair on his torso at all, but this non-existent hairy torso of his was what seemed to get the rumours started of him being a werewolf - which werenât based on anything but this totally made-up hairy bod of his, as the only people who ever knew he was a werewolf
for reals were those who watched him transform like his mum and Roman - who he chose to let watch after being asked if he could), leaving Hemlock Grove behind and Roman with it - which Roman didnât take too kindly to. He seemed FAR more upset about werewolf Peter ditching him than he did about Letha dying. A lot of the time I roll my eyes at people making up a âshipâ between two guy characters when all weâve ever seen them be interested in/have sex with is
women, but here I could
kinda see where the âshipping' came from with them as the sorts of things they did together/said to each other could be viewed as more than just âfriendshipâ.
In the Season 1 final, it was kind of jolting to suddenly hear Famke Janssen providing a random voiceover of her origin story during the middle of the episode. We flashed back to her as a child where she thought some gypsy boy cared about her, but he ditched her and took everything she had (the horses theyâd been riding, her jewels, etc) while she was asleep and this led to her...cutting off her vestigial tail. I guess the blood loss from this wound âkilledâ her, and somehow killing oneâs self turns you into a vampire? Though werewolf Peter had already worked out after meeting Roman in the first episode (back when they didnât exactly get along) that he was an âUpirâ (âWTF IS AN UPIR?!â was my initial reaction after having to look up what in the hell was going on in the show during my first viewing of it). So, for all intents and purposes theyâre vampires...but something as small as cutting off a human tail (or in the case of what Roman did to his mum, after she revealed her dastardly plan sheâd had all along, biting/ripping her tongue out) will
kill them? At least it made
some sense how Roman âkilledâ himself (ie. slitting his own wrists) and thereby turned into one. The nastiest part of the whole flashback thing? The revelation that Roman was "born with the caul (a skin membrane covering the head and face)" which his mum hungrily DEVOURED since apparently "in Roman mythology the caul indicates that a child will be destined for greatness" and Olivia was so very proud to finally be the mother of a male baby Upir (after previous failed attempts). I really had NO IDEA what any of this was about when watching (both times) and itâs only thanks to the internet that I found this out after reading that explanation (thanks, Wikipedia!). Yes, this is a show where mothers eat their newbornâs face skin membrane.
For realsies.
Itâs also a show where the season-long mystery serial killer Vargulf turned out to be...a kid named Christina. Which sounds lame, but it actually kinda worked since she was weird (she seemed to have a weird kissing habit. First, she kissed werewolf Peter whilst he was asleep in a hammock, then she also kissed the upper half torso of a dead girl she found in the forest, thinking it was a a prank by her two âfriendsâ (the Sheriffâs twin girls who most of the time acted like they were in
Pretty Little Liars, seemingly just being mean girls towards Christina and
pretending to be her friend...but then on occasion would appear to actually
genuinely care about her. It was weird behavior, especially considering the only time they ever really felt like they acted their apparent age was right before their gruesome demises - dancing around their room playing dress-up), but was just a lonely girl who tried to befriend werewolf Peter, looking to him for inspiration for her book she was planning to write, automatically assuming he was a werewolf (again, because of his non-existent âexcessive hairinessâ) and jumping to that conclusion, then suddenly turning against him and being the one who started the rumours of his being a werewolf, getting the town riled up/turning against him, thinking *he* was the serial killer when all the while it was
her. It turned out she was really
method about her researching for her book and she'd decided to become a Vargulf after learning that drinking from the paw print of a werewolf could turn you into one (she actually had a thermos of water she tipped into one of werewolf Peterâs wolfy paw prints which she then took a sip from).
The motivation for her going on a killing spree wasnât the most clear it couldâve been (I think she was targeting girls she found guilty of promiscuity because she wasnât experienced in that way...or something). I guess it shouldâve become clear something was seriously up with her after her hair started turning white-blonde, especially after those twin girl âfriendsâ of hers were massacred in their bedroom and next thing we saw Christina in a psych ward (which Norman had taken her to because she'd freaked the fuck out on the boy she liked, clawing up his face with her nails because she was seeing visions of torso girl and other grisly images - which were obviously buried memories of her victims) looking catatonic with her hair full-on Targaryen. Anyway, werewolf Peter wanted to be proactive in hunting down/killing the Vargulf, and in the process committed an unforgivable crime (in my eyes) to gain knowledge on how to do that: he killed Casper, his poor innocent pet cat he supposedly âlovedâ. After that, werewolf Peter was DEAD to me (as dead as his cat now was). He broke its neck, cut it open and did some nasty shit with its heart just to ask his dead ancestor how he could turn on a âwrong moonâ (ie. not the full moon) or whatever in an effort to fight the Vargulf. It turned out the price for this knowledge was to have his face become vittles for the Vargulf (which he prepared himself for by getting Roman to cook up some bacon and pour the oil from the pan into a jar which he then smeared on his face to, I guess, entice/make it seem extra tasty to the Vargulf). While I HATE facial violence and certainly didnât
watch the actual act itself or the result of it/aftermath (at least not on
rewatch, anyway. First time I watched the show, though, I wasnât expecting it/was caught unawares and my eyes were subjected to the nastiness of a faceless Peter), I admittedly took delight in werewolf Peter having his face chewed off by white wolfy Christina since that was the LEAST he deserved after what he did to his poor pussycat.
Of course, Peterâs facelessness was short-lived/totally undone by him becoming his wolfy self soon thereafter, but even
then he was no match for wolfy Christina and she seemingly killed him by biting his neck, causing him to let out a yelp (I HATE the sounds of dogs/wolves/ANY kind of canine either yelping or whimpering - to me there are very few, if any, sounds in existence as upsetting as those). However, not even THAT was enough to kill him (he was just 'mostly dead' for a little while). Shelley turned up (in a ridiculous bit of slow-mo, as her lumbering was not as effective in slow-motion visually as running typically is), choked/broke wolfy Christinaâs neck (after learning that among her victims was the only real friend Shelley had ever had), then the Sheriff - thinking Shelley was the serial killer - shot her and she ran (well...lumbered) off, Roman ran off after her and totally forgot about/didn't care about Letha (because leaving a traumatised pregnant girl in a room with two corpses - one of them a naked girl - seemed like a good idea to him, apparently), then the Sheriff carried away dead naked Christina (whoâd been like a daughter to him) and poor Letha was left alone after having just witnessed werewolf Peter get his face eaten and seemingly DIE. It was almost comedic how neither Roman nor the Sheriff seemed to give two shits about Letha and the trauma sheâd just suffered. Iâm surprised she didnât just collapse and lose her mind/child right there. Instead, she crawled over to seemingly-dead werewolf Peter and lay with him until he miraculously wasnât âdeadâ anymore and they snogged. Never mind the fact that sheâd just seen him
without a face and had only just learned he was a werewolf moments after that. I actually thought Christina made an effective villain, as she was complex and not completely in control of her faculties (apparently becoming a Vargulf sends you insane - whoâda thunk it?).
Another character I liked was that of Peterâs cousin, Destiny, who pretended to be psychic to get money out of easily-duped customers (though she went all-in with the ruse, vomiting up goo and such) but was in fact capable of *real* magic-y stuff (not the sort with glow-y hands or any of that shit, but actually seeing visions of things - which always seemed to come with a nasty price). She was the voice of reason when werewolf Peter was acting like a fool and she provided some good snark. I enjoyed her attitude. Someone I
didnât enjoy, however, was an annoying monster hunter posing as a âdoctorâ of some sort whoâd been sent by the Church to solve the mystery of the supernatural serial killer and take them out. Other than the actressâs eyes having an unnatural look to them (almost like they glowed at times or had that effect you see on people's eyes in photographs unless you change the setting on your camera), I just found her a complete bore and was counting the episodes until she carked it - which took FAR too long, but I was thankful once Olivia
finally flayed her alive (the one who put her out of her misery, surffocating her to death, was Dr. Pryce). Then dead monster hunter's bro (played by Demore Barnes, who seems to be EVERYWHERE/in a LOT of shows I watch) learned of her demise and was headed to town to solve her death/punish her killer. I'm probably forgetting various thoughts I had whilst rewatching this first season of the show, but I was just so surprised to find I didn't loathe it as much as I had during my first watch - so much so that I went straight onto Season 2 after finishing Season 1.
on Blu-ray.
I'd remembered from my first viewing of this second season that I didn't like it as much as Season 1...and my opinion didn't really change upon rewatch. It was kinda annoying (continuity-wise) how they had a new way of doing werewolf Peter's transformation, as we no longer saw his human eyes falling out of his head (they just changed into wolf eyes) and rather than his wolf snout busting right out the front of his face as it had before, it now poked out of his human mouth (which was very
The Company of Wolves-like). It seemed like they wanted to 'hurry up' the transformation, as I don't think they even stuck to the rule of him having to eat the human flesh he'd just shed. Not only this, but at the start of this season he was easily able to change back after sort of half-transforming (which he did in front of a couple of goons who came to collect drugs he was selling to them which were FAKE drugs but by having them test the product and then transforming himself
in front of them, this led to them being fooled into believing they were tripping out and therefore the fake drugs were legit - which they paid Peter for and he was going to use the money to bail out his mum who was in jail for reasons I forgot). The one really nifty part about werewolf Peter's new style of transforming in the Season 2 premiere was how the wolf snout protruded from his human mouth...and then his bloody gore-covered human hand reached out of the wolf mouth and touched the face of one of the guys just for extra-trippy effect (of course, eventually these fools' boss realised they'd bought fake drugs and punished them by forcing them to strip naked while he held a shotgun, tied them up naked together and proceeded to use some fancy ball-snipping device on them...which seemed to be his go-to method for punishing those who'd 'wronged' him, as he later went after werewolf Peter in the same way but was shot in the head by the new b/f of werewolf Peter's cousin, Destiny, before he could fully wolf-out on the guy).
Meanwhile, Roman (who was
still pissed at being ditched by werewolf Peter at the end of last season) was picking up random chicks (including hookers), and just as they were gonna screw and he was going to feed off them, he stopped himself and sent âem packing (which pissed them off...but, hey, at least they were still
alive). He suddenly realised that becoming an 'Upir' at the end of last season wasn't all it was cracked up to be as he was constantly fighting the urge to feed on girls and instead just ate pimps and bums, as well as gross raw meat which he demanded at the 'White Tower' (which has never looked that white to me...at least not on the
outside, so I guess it was named that after its
interior with all the white rooms in the lab area) which he now officially owned since his mum 'died' and he took over the company (where he didn't run it too well, insulting his employees and sending them away just so he could snack on nasty bloodied meat and get angry at those who brought it to him
cooked when he'd wanted it RAW) until eventually he stumbled upon Dr.
Frankenstein's Pryce's big secret lab box of failed human cloning experiment body parts. I'd remembered this gross goo tap which Roman turned on to release the gore and found myself strangely eager to see if my memory had served me well/I'd remembered it correctly (I was anxiously awaiting seeing it again - which even weirded
myself out). It was more watery than I'd remembered when it came out of the tap, as I'd recalled it being thicker/gooier - but there were definitely no shortage of body parts floating in the box (which had a handy see-through window to watch them floating past like viewing underwater creatures at Sea World).
It was funny that at one point Olivia tried the goo tap herself and one of those body parts got lodged/stuck in the end of it, blocking any further gore from coming out and she fell off a chair whilst trying to get up high enough that she could reach into the top of the box. She had been taken to Pryce's lab after her mostly-deadness in the Season 1 final where he sewed her tongue back on that Roman had bitten off/ripped out and this miraculously cured her of her dodgy British accent and Famke Janssen was now able to talk like her normal-accented self (thankfully). I couldn't remember how she'd gotten her leg injury (I guess Roman must've done something to it too, but I had no memory of that) and she was walking with a cane for a while (insulting any disabled people in the process by saying she'd rather be DEAD), sitting around reading books and even singing love songs in public via karaoke (speaking of, I was sort of amused that we were treated to 'special' end credits during the Season 2 final which were basically just the usual end credits but this time they appeared over the screen while footage of her from her karaoke night played on her TV - which she'd been rewatching
herself earlier because apparently she was just SO fascinated by/infatuated with her singing self. This singing took on a slightly eerie effect when it was used in this way as the very end/last thing we saw of the season).
What finally snapped her out of her new lame/toothless wimpy lovelorn self was that when she declared to Norman she was turning over a new leaf, actually *cared* about her kids (ie. she gave up trying to force Roman to accept his Upir self and treating Shelley like crap, etc) and wanted to get back with him, he rejected her in the harshest way possible (after discovering that not only was she an Upir, but that she'd also killed his wife, Marie, when she came to Olivia extending an olive branch by saying she forgave her for trying to steal her hubby, but Olivia was just her typical bitchy self and Marie made the fatal mistake of not leaving, instead sticking around to have it out with Olivia which then got her munched on) by basically detailing how she would die horribly from cancer (which she learned she had from Pryce) and admitted to originally wanting to kill her (he had a syringe of stuff to do it and everything supplied by the bro of the monster-hunter lady Olivia had flayed alive last season, as he too wanted revenge against her), making the stupid mistake of TELLING her this, before he decided that instead letting her slowly die of this horrible disease he'd just described to her in grisly detail was 'better' revenge. Norman would soon come to regret this, as after his rejection of her, we basically saw a flip switch behind her eyes where she decided to go back to embracing her evil self.
The first stop on her bloody rampage was munching on the ONE successful human clone Pryce had managed to create named Prycilla (who had been floating in a tank for the majority of the season that I'd mistakenly thought was a full-scale body replica of Penelope Mitchell/Letha for the longest time until it was revealed that was in fact
not the case) which he'd cooked up as a replacement body for Shelley's mind to be transferred into so she no longer had to live as her deformed self. Of course, Olivia royally screwed that up by ripping the chest out of Prycilla whose life as Shelley was short-lived (that whole mind-transfer thing was very confusing to me, as Pryce had made Shelley believe that the new body had no mind of its own and he tricked her with a test, but we soon learned it very much
did have a mind of its own and then he shut down/switched off its mind or whatever, and Shelley was still in her old body whilst at the same time the new body
also had her mind after it was uploaded to it. They even talked and interacted with each other/finished each other's sentences. Apparently the last step was shutting off Shelley's mind in her old body, but that's when Norman and Pryce realised at the same time that Olivia was going to cure her cancer by making nom-noms of this healthy human clone (stupid Pryce for allowing Prycilla to just freely roam the halls of the lab with no security protecting her whatsoever which led to her walking into where Olivia was waiting - this was after she'd amusingly fooled security who'd peered into a room, took one glance at the life-sized picture of all the people in charge of the company, and then left the room and the shot of Olivia was in fact just her
actual self standing still in a pose to match the picture). Naturally, Shelley was devastated at not getting her new hot body, and Norman went after Olivia (once he'd successfully resuscitated Shelley's old dead body using defibrillators) to stab her with that syringe, but made his umpteenth dumb mistake by going for an
overhead stabbing motion with his arm which she was able to block and then she turned around, punched her fist into his chest and ripped his heart right out of his body (making it crystal-clear that Dougray Scott
wanted the hell out of this fucking show) before dropping it onto the floor beside his corpse, now completely over him.
The most disappointing part about this development was that I'd been wanting to see more of Shelley's new 'pretty' form. Especially since most of the season she'd spent on the run because she was believed by the Sheriff (who was written out of the show with a casual/passing mention that he'd blown himself up with a bomb) to be the serial killer from last season, then she found a house which she hid in the basement of and was kept company there by a disturbed kid who didn't think her odd. They bonded over their respective deformities (he had a messed up toe that was like two toes fused together), she taught him to read, and then something happened with the kid's family where I forget exactly how, but they all got injured or dead. I was shocked to learn that his abusive dad, who'd been belting the kid, was still ALIVE after we'd gotten a good close gruesome look at his face having been impaled on what I think was a piece of broken furniture - which I had
not been expecting and consequently got a full view of - and only the woman who'd accidentally received a shotgun blast to the chest was the one
actually dead person. I'd thought for sure that World's Worst Daddio was kaput...but every time they referred to the kid's family, they made it sound like he'd
survived. I'm not sure HOW. And as if it wasn't clear enough how not-normal the kid was
already, he then just went about playing his video game in amongst all the bloodied aftermath like it was no big thang. This whole storyline felt like a pretty big waste of time and I got bored of it rather quickly. Things only seemed to pick up with Shelley once she returned to Norman after he located her. I'm not sure why the role of Shelley was recast, but a new actress took over from the first one this season. I didn't have a problem with the new actress, but I thought the first one did a better job when we'd hear her talk completely perfect English in voiceover as we heard her thoughts expressed while she was typing away at the computer which she sent to Norman, as they had regularly conversed electronically before her running away. The new actress did bring it, though, when she had to convey Shelley's thoughts about getting a new body and then after losing the opportunity of a new life when Olivia killed that new body of hers.
I was happy to see the actress who played werewolf Peter's cousin, Destiny (Kaniehtiio Horn - though she was credited in this show as 'Tho Horn') was bumped up to 'regular' status/included in the show's opening credits this season (speaking of, it was in Season 2 that I finally 'got' the style they were going for with the opening credits after seeing in one episode some blood flowing through water and making shapes like we see in the credits. As for the show's theme music, it really struck me from the very first episode that the beginning of the theme music sounds suspiciously like the music that played over the end credits of the TV series
Dexter - but *only* the beginning, whereas the rest of the theme music didn't sound that much like it). She was still hustling customers by faking visions, but then experiencing *real* visions when it concerned her cousin and other characters in his life, complete with snakes appearing under her skin, vomiting black goo, and having people (including Peter and Roman) hold her submerged in a bathtub of water even when she was struggling/seemingly drowning. Once again she was the voice of reason when werewolf Peter kept finding excuses to turn on a 'wrong moon' which she kept warning him would lead to his becoming a Vargulf like Christina last season. It eventually got to the stage where he'd seemingly turned one too many times when he shouldn't have and his wolfy form (which, disappointingly, was CGI'd this season instead of being an
actual wolf like they'd had in Season 1 - I guess it became too expensive/too much hard work to maintain?) looked ready to attack Destiny and the others, but then Roman pulled open the wolf's jaw (actually
breaking it in the process, if the wolf's yelp was any indicator) and proceeded to continue
ripping it open until he literally pulled Peter's human form out of the fully torn-apart wolf body.
I guess this was in part to show that their 'bromance' was back in full swing after Roman had been holding onto his grudge against Peter upon his return to town after having left him behind without word in last season's final. Something else that bonded them was their sharing visions of random families being targeted by lame-masked cultists (seriously, what BORING masks they wore. They were just overall lame as baddies, whereas the Vagulf last season was far more effective/scary), specifically the kids. This whole storyline was pretty sucky because I DON'T GIVE TWO FIGS about kids in shows (at one point Peter saved one dumbass little shit whose mum had
told him not to ride his trike on the road but then as soon as her back was turned and she went inside the house, he did
exactly that and one of the cultists drove straight at him, but Peter knocked the dumbass out of the way in time and at first the mother who came running back outside was thankful to Peter...until he got way too intense about warning her of the danger of these cultists and freaked her out, then her ungrateful arse was treating him like he hadn't just saved her little turd and she was abusing him and got him arrested by the new Sheriff in town AKA monster-hunter lady's bro). Too much of this season revolved around little turds including the resulting offspring of Letha's rape-by-Roman last season (who I kept getting mixed up with the human clone Pryce was growing in his lab until it became quite clear to me that they were two separate entities) which was born with unnaturally blue eyes and it could make the eyes/noses of people it didn't like bleed profusely and result in their deaths (which it did with various people who tried to kidnap it/take it away) and even made a monkey EXPLODE (poor monkey, who Roman had said it would enjoy looking at in the lab - how wrong he was). In the middle of all this was yet another blonde girl who got between Peter and Roman named Miranda (who I kept blanking on the name of, as she was pretty forgettable/certainly no substitute for Letha) and seemed to exist mainly to have sex with them both (in this case during a threesome. It's funny that despite this show not holding back on the gore factor and other nasty stuff, it seemed that actually
showing a threesome between them was going 'too far'/it shied away from) and lactate from her boobs (despite not being preggers herself), thereby providing nourishment for the spawn by first producing milk, then blood.
There was also a doctor character involved who I HATED with his anti-Norwegian attitude (evidently someone on the writing stuff hated Norwegians, since this character was regularly bitching about them as a country/people) who'd been acting like a friend to Miranda when in actual fact he was manipulating her (even causing her car accident which sent her to Roman's door in the Season 2 premiere that kickstarted everything) just so he could take the supernatural spawn away from her for his own nefarious purposes. The worst (and most laughable) part was near the end of the Season 2 final where he showed up in the form of a giant flying stingray-looking thing (but still with his human face - which simply looked STOOPID) to catch her and the spawn after she tried to commit suicide with the kid in her arms by letting them fall off the top of the White Tower as Roman, Peter and Destiny all watched on in horror. Personally, I thought it would've been more ballsy if the show had let her
succeed in ridding the world of the supernaturally-powered spawn (as well as her annoying self), but alas annoying Doctor Stingray Man didn't allow this to happen (one MORE reason to hate him). I was worried that his stupid-looking self flying off with them both was going to be the last shot I'd ever get to see of this show (since I'd kept putting off buying the third season back when I couldn't even imagine myself wanting to rewatch this show and now it's probably too late, as I think it's no longer available anywhere here - which is disappointing to me, because although this season was definitely a step down from last season, I'm now morbidly curious to see what happens in the third season. Though I *do* know of at least one thing which happens at the end of the third/final season which I was pissed off to discover after reading about it online...so, in a way, never getting to watch the final season is perhaps a blessing in disguise as that would be a really depressing 'official' ending of the show), but luckily we had the Famke-Janssen-singing-karaoke-end-credits left to go and so that helped wash the sour taste out of my mouth/lessen the impact of that supremely shithouse ending to the second season.