Export thread

Anyone seen this tv show? It's from 1995, available on hulu. It's officially a horror/suspense show (not really that scary with slightly cheesy effects, but a really good story). It's the sort of show Stephen King might have written. It's set in a small southern town, run by a sheriff who appears to be an upstanding charismatic citizen but who basically is the devil (or at least 'a' devil). Each episode he manipulates someone's life into ruin, occasionally using supernatural powers but mostly relying on clever smooth talking. There's a few characters who slowly figure out what his deal is and try to stop him. At first I assumed they were the protagonists. And they sort of are, but what's interesting is that the sheriff, despite being pure unadulterated evil, is essentially the main character.

The only good guy who comes close is the ghost of a girl he killed, who starts out as a minor character who can briefly materialize to offer advice. Gradually she acquires more supernatural powers and becomes pretty badass. There's an episode where she gets pissed off at how everyone in town seems to give into the sheriff's corruption, so she turns the river to blood and makes all the sinners bleed out of their eyes. (that doesn't end up accomplishing much but was still pretty cool to see her character evolve to a point where she'd try it).

The first half of the season introduces all the characters, the second half is essentially a chess match between the ghost girl and the sheriff, after they realize the pointlessness of trying to directly harm each other. What's really weird is that although the story is a very straightforwardly Christian good vs evil, it came across to me as very original because those stories are rarely done well, and the show does not fit neatly into any of the boxes that most shows fit into.

Man, i never did get to watch this from start to finish, and i always said i would...

And how could you forget about Caleb...

Summarizing that show is incredibly hard. There's so many individual characters who all look important at one point or another, and part of the fun is watching from the beginning and figuring out who matters and who doesn't. Caleb is one of the pivotal characters but it's hard to explain why without giving away large swaths of story.

If this is the show with Gary Cole in it, then I remember watching it a bit when I was a kid. My mom really liked it.

It really suffered from it's very limited budget.

Yeah, Gary Cole plays the "main character." The effects are definitely cheesy at times, but I never felt like it ruined the show for me. Whenever one of the kinda lame cross dissolve "scary" scenes happened I just mentally substituted a cooler version of whatever was supposed to be happening.

Too bad it never made it past 1 season...

Also, Gary Cole rocks...

I was into this show to a scary degree. I had an AG news website where I posted sound bites and for fun, started seeing if I could get the makers of the show to do interviews with me. Pretty much everyone I asked agreed to an interview, so my site became the unofficial official website for the show. Couldn't happen the same way today as there'd be 100 identical sites, especially once the campaign to get it back on the air started, but it was a lot of fun at the time. I wrote the history of the show and an episode guide for one of those Fangoria ripoffs.

The show has a lot of problems, some of which are just weird choices by the producers but the overall lack of cohesion is really CBS's fault. It's still one of my favorites. Sheriff Buck is my hero.

Last I checked it was also available to watch instantly on Netflix.

Satanist...

Hey Zen, I haven't watched the last three episodes yet, and one thing I was wondering, does it have what you'd consider to be a satisfying ending or is it a season cliffhanger with the assumption that they'd have more time? (No details, I just want to be prepared for whatever comes)

Look up the right viewing order also. The network scrambled the airing order worse than the Dresden Files.

Tiger Tsang said:

Look up the right viewing order also. The network scrambled the airing order worse than the Dresden Files.

Click to expand...

lets...not talk about those. :blue:

Raemon777 said:

Hey Zen, I haven't watched the last three episodes yet, and one thing I was wondering, does it have what you'd consider to be a satisfying ending or is it a season cliffhanger with the assumption that they'd have more time? (No details, I just want to be prepared for whatever comes)

Click to expand...

Sam Raimi said they knew at the time they would not be renewed, so they did write it with that in mind, but I'd say the show still waffles on a really satisfying ending. Probably they were still hoping to keep it open just in case.

It's kinda weird - at first glance the story seems very self contained. Evil sheriff. Good ghost. Boy whose fate hangs in the balance, and a single season is plenty of time to resolve all those plot elements. But while I'm not sure exactly where they're going yet, I could see some seriously awesome potential if the series was allowed to progress. Part of what made the show awesome to me was halfway through the season when Merlyn (sp?), Buck and Caleb all suddenly started developing and showing off the full extent of their capabilities in a way that the early episodes didn't really foreshadow, so "developing superpowers" suddenly became one of the subthemes of the show.

So if they had plans for future seasons in which Caleb developed powers along the lines of Buck and used them for good in a conflict that went beyond small power struggles within Trinity, that could have been really cool and I wouldn't blame them for trying to keep it open.

Tonight I'll hopefully get to watch the last three and get a better sense of where they were going.

Part of the problem is the show never recovered from CBS making them replace the doctor with the I AM CHISELED-JAW HERO ARCHETYPE guy. That really fucked with the dynamic of all the characters.

I did notice that but it didn't bother me too much because the other "good guys" were constantly phasing in an out anyway. There was never a strong dynamic of "these are the good guys and this is their dynamic and chemistry together." Part of what I liked was when I realized that the procedure of of the show was inverted from the traditional "bunch of good guys are the main characters and each episode they must deal with one of the villains doing some bad." Instead, Buck is the main character, and each episode he interacts with one of the other people.

I agree, but there was something potentially interesting brewing among the doc and the cousin (been so long I've forgotten the character names) versus Buck over Caleb. And then that sort of got dropped so they could focus on how the new guy pisses off Buck. Whatever cohesive ideas Cassidy and Raimi had got steamrolled by CBS to make it more palatable to people whose favorite show is Everybody Loves Raymond. The earlier episodes were definitely my favorites, like Buck dealing with the bunch of yahoo wannabe gangsters who try to take over the town.

Same season AG was on CBS, Brisco County was on Fox. Each only lasted a season. Each should really have been on the other network. (At the time CBS was still the old folks' network while X-Files was exploding Fox's popularity in the exact demo that would have liked AG.)

My first "favorite" episode was the Buck dealing with the wannabe gangsters episode (not just because we finally got to be rooting for Buck, but we also saw Merlyn showing off some badass ghost powers for the first time when she possesses Caleb and has him scream at the ruffians.)

[spoiler:3ihn4nqz]But my second "favorite" (to clarify, this is currently my favorite episode) was when Merlyn tries to kill Buck, only to find out she can't without risking Caleb's soul.[/spoiler:3ihn4nqz] And that was fairly late in the season. Do you know when the meddling starting happening?

Raemon777 said:

Do you know when the meddling starting happening?

Click to expand...

Very early on. I'm sorry to say I haven't watched it recently enough and I forget a lot of the details. I should do a marathon and then continue this conversation. (Since I haven't had someone to dish about AG with in forever! Maybe you get my Sam Raimi interview transcript...)

Woah.

[spoiler:uz56r05t]Just saw the episode where Buck hires the ghost of a serial killer to destroy Merlyn, and then Caleb goes all demonfire on his ass.[/spoiler:uz56r05t]

AmorousEyes said:

I remembered him from the Midnight Caller which I also loved watching a few years before American Gothic.

Click to expand...

Yes! I knew that series was cheesy but I loved it anyway.

Good night America...wherever you are.