Now I get to work three long days and get a four day weekend – lucky me! Right now, I’m working on an ‘I Would Have Done It Differently‘ for the show Dracula on NBC. I’ve watched all the current episodes and I have a lot of problems with it.

First all: it looks like the major powers were set up by asking the question: ‘what does our target audience hate the most?‘ and someone yells ‘greedy corporations!‘ (I’m going to let you contemplate the delicious irony of an arm of this corporation writing an anti-corporation screed in the first episode) and someone else yells ‘oil‘. Seriously – this was handled as subtly as a hammer blow to the head. A shadowy cabal of hidden masters running a corporation… where have I heard that before, I wonder? This is the best villain you can get? I can do a lot better than that. Way lot better.

Second: While I like some of the notions that they bring up (Van Helsing allied with Dracula), there are others that I am simply tired of seeing: one of them is Dracula as a symbol of unrestrained sexuality. Yes, I know: that’s what he was in the literature (Given everything else I’ve seen in the series, I wonder if the research into this was nothing more than a vampire movie marathon) and that’s where he is the most effective, but there are a lot of other ways that we can use the Count. Rather than rooting him in the Victorian Era – put him in the Edwardian Age in the trenches of World War One, exulting over the mechanized carnage of modern warfare? Picture it: standing in No-Man’s Land, arms wide as bullets smack into him with no effect and shouting ‘This is your modern age! Mr. Harker! No longer do you glory over the warmth of dying blood on your blade! No longer do you get to hear the coming of death in a man’s final gasp! A sterile Hell for me to weep over and for you to reign unchallenged!‘ If we really want to shake up the Count – let’s ditch the Gothic romance/obsession angle and get back to what he was supposed to do: make us fear for our souls.

I am not saying that there is nothing good about the series, but it’s just that they’ve hit all of the obvious tropes (including this one, this one, another one and this one with Lucy/Mina) in trying to please a wide base and really ignoring some really good changes to tell a story about the death of one age and the birth of another a la From Hell. Am I the only one who feels like this? Feel free to post something in the comments section.

Sadly, I must go and shower and get ready to go to work. I hope y’all have a good day and thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy