Ten Years Later

I recently purchased American Gothic: The Complete Series on dvd. Ten years ago I watched most of the episodes for the first time on CBS. The network didn't have the collective executive wisdom to do right by the series which has since become a cult hit after being re-broadcast on the scifi channel on cable as well as being seen around the world (a big hit in Great Britain and Australia).

My copy of the series has given me no problems though customers who bought it when it was first released in Autumn of 2005 found several glitches due to the poor transfer process done by the plant Universal hired in Mexico to produce the dvds. Another problem with the set, mine included, is that the episodes are recorded out of sequence. You have to go to the net, find the proper sequence, and then hop up and down to change out the discs and flip them over (did I mention Universal also chose to record the show on doublesided discs which are more prone to damage?).

411mania

The 411: It's frustrating knowing that there are only 22 episodes of this great series, but the show ended with one perfect single arc, much like a feature film. Everyone winds up very different from where they started. Alliances are made and broken. People slide back and forth from Good to Evil, many times in the course of the same episode. The acting is superb, especially from Cole and Black. I thought of Bakke as the weak link during the show's original run, but watching these now I can see she's as good as anyone on the show. Add to that the subtle and often intricate writing, and you have one of the finest series ever produced for television. Unfortunately, it was about ten years ahead of its time.

All the complaints are by the way. The show is just as wonderful as I remembered it. Gary Cole is superb as Lucas Buck, the Sheriff of Trinity, South Carolina (just down the road from Ascension), who may or may not be the devil himself. A stage trained actor, who is also a character actor par excellence experienced in television and feature films (Midnight Caller, The Brady Bunch Movie, Office Space, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, etc.) and on the short list of my favorite actors of all time, gives the devil a humor and charm that makes him seductive indeed.

A bonus is Alabama native Lucas Black (currently starring in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, ) who plays Caleb Temple, Buck's illegitimate son. Brenda Bakke plays sultry bar troller by night, prim elementary school teacher by day, gives Selena Coombs a tragic Faulknerian flavor (she played Lana Turner in L.A. Confidential so well, I didn't even recognize her as being a highlight of American Gothic). Nick Searcy is Buck's deputy Ben who is torn between his conscience and not getting on the wrong end of the Sheriff's GRAY, not RAY gun. Paige Turco plays Gail Emory, Caleb's cousin, a reporter who wants to find out how her parents were trapped in their newspaper building the night they died in the fire that gutted the building. Sarah Paulsen plays Merlyn Temple, Caleb's sister (killed by Lucas the night her father Gage Temple attempted to murder her with a shovel--Lucas uses a shovel later to knock out the man who attempts to rape Gail, saying dryly, "These things have a thousand uses."

The citizens of Trinity are mostly happy (at least for a while) with their Sheriff who has a habit of doling out favors (though he eventually comes around expecting repayment in one form or another). Corruption, ghosts, violence, passion, horror, family ties, possession, flesh eating beetles, deals gone wrong, suicide, murder--just your typical small Southern town on the gothic side of the tracks.

Another Review:

And actually, the episodes written by Cassidy are really good. But then, the writing in general is far beyond what I’d remembered. The dialog is razor-sharp - Gary Cole playing the sheriff is a stroke of genius casting - the femme fatales are slick and cunning, and the stories are not only clever (and twisted with a good amount of sheer creepiness), they’re completely engrossing, making for one addictive DVD set.