All I can think is this:
We open at Vicki’s office, where she’s talking to the Gary Shandling you get on Wish about following his wife to prove cheating. For whatever reasons, she’s trying to talk him out of it? Vicki, how do you pay your bills?
Coreen wants it to be a fun little X-File, but Vicki says it’s not. And in the next scene, we do see that she is cheating, and her husband’s name is actually Gary. And then, of course, she’s dead, because this is a spooky cop show, after all.
Ooh, daylight’s all blue-filtered again. Are we Twilighting here? Vicki shows up to Gary Shandling’s ritzy house, swarming with cops, because Gary called her as well after finding his wife dead. 2007 TV hairdressers have gotten to Vicki, too, and it’s a tragedy of big, barrell-rolled half-waves all going the same direction and never moving. I’m glad TV people got big into braids and shit again; the aughts were a terrible time for TV hair.
Vicki goes out for drinks with Henry, who… does magic to her martini when she complains about it? Can he just… do that? WTF kind of vampire are you, Henry?
Anyway, Vicki’s complaining that Gary made a joke about hiring a hitman, and then his wife’s dead, and she doesn’t like being an alibi. Henry maintains she’s complaining because regular murder is boring, and yikes, even if it is, like, it’s murder? She really shouldn’t be complaining that someone else’s life ending horribly is “boring”, come on now. I already hate all of you people; don’t make it worse.
Henry asks if her client is afraid of the “justice” system, and she warns him not to talk bad about the cops, and what the fuck did I just ask for, Vicki? Did I ask for you to go all “back the blue” and be more of an asshole? No, I did not.
Vicki won’t say Mike is bad at his job, so Henry leaves.
Next day, Vicki’s asking the trophy wives in the neighborhood what happened. They maintain that they’re all very happy, someone broke in to kill Gary’s Wife (I missed her name, sorry, I’m not rewinding), and it couldn’t have been anyone they’ve hired, because they vet everyone before they’re allowed in the neighborhood. Also, they all share the same gardener, who was “teaching us flower arranging” last night during the murder. Sure, sounds legit.
Mike and partner have nothing, all the prints have checked out. Oh, Dave, his partner’s name is Dave! Anyway, some woman hands Cellucci a file (Kate), and Dave makes some crack about them being in love? and then she says that whoever sent the file says that next time Cellucci wants a case from 1932, he can go fuck himself. Only, you know, no swearing. Also, who the fuck is Kate? Why is Dave making cracks about them flirting? WHY DOES THIS SHOW MAKE ZERO GODDAMN SENSE?
Vicki chats up the gardener. He says he gave a class in flower arranging. Marcy didn’t go, and now I know the vic’s name is Marcy, though she was invited. The gardener is hitting on Vicki hard-core, standing way too close, giving her flowers, quoting poetry. Vicki giggles and tries to get the interview back on track, but fails, because…the guy is hot, I guess? Seems kinda gross and too familiar to me, but what do I know, turns out the A in A spec doesn’t just stand for autism, so, you know.
She then runs into one of the other husbands, who’s looking for his wife in his backyard, where Vicki’s been giggling at the gardener. He doesn’t have any real ideas, except for Gary. He has a whole collection of figurines that his anthropologist mother collected, and I assume they’re, like, erotic? because that’s how Vicki reacts, though most of them seem to be just heads. I hope this comes up again later, because I also had to sit through the line, “Women were really women back then,” and I would like my money back. (I spent no money on this DVD, it was a gift, but honestly, is my time not worth anything?)
So, so far, we have a sex-obsessed trophy-wife village, Henry doing bizarre magics that don’t seem to accomplish anything (colder? maybe he made the drink colder? the captions said “whoosh”?), a creepy gardener, Cellucci and a random extra, and anthropological statues that are sexy, despite a complete lack of phalluses. Great episode, thrilled that we still have… holy shit, more than 30 minutes to go.
Pointless scene to almost kiss Henry, and then… the gardener is in Vicki’s dreams. Ah. Got it. Gardener is a weird creature, or witch, or whatever, killed Marcy while also giving flower lessons. Excellent. Now I just have to sit through…28 more minutes. Delightful.
More pointlessness with Henry. I think it’s supposed to be banter, like they’re in a 40s movie or something, but it’s just bad. Like, very badly written, and it’s not advancing the story of the episode or the story of the characters, so why is it here? Why am I sitting through this? (I mean, I do it for you guys, but besides that?)
Vicki goes to see Mike, he dismisses the gardener. She asks him to dinner, he gets jealous about Henry, and again, I’M BORED. It’s a procedural, get back to the fucking procedure. We know Mike hates Henry. We know he’s still hung up on Vicki. WE FUCKING KNOW.
So Vicki takes Henry to the country club to unleash his “mojo” on the trophy wives, since Vicki thinks they’re lying about the flower-arranging class. Henry says he doesn’t have “mojo”, but he did weird magic to Vicki’s drinks that did apparently nothing and she was then happy with said drinks, so, like, it’s more than charm, obviously, Henry. And more weird jealousy-nonsense about Henry biting the trophy wives.
This country club looks like a 90s McMansion, so I guess none of these people is old money. Henry can’t find any evidence the trophy wives are lying, though. Coreen and Vicki are talking about Henry and Mike, of course, on their way back to the neighborhood to interview the gardener again, for some reason. Because whoever wrote this episode is not an actual human, is my guess, but maybe they’re just neurotypical, same difference.
Coreen posits that the killer is an incubus, and then they both hear screaming and Vicki busts into someone’s bedroom. There’s a hooded figure and a bright blue light coming out of the woman’s mouth, and then the figure is gone and no one’s seen anything. For some reason the anthropologist’s son is there, along with the lady’s husband? and Coreen? OK, sure.
Oh, because it’s an incubus, the episode is supposed to be sexy? Got it. Maybe have it written by someone who’s, I dunno, like, HAD SEX, tho? None of this reads as “sexy” unless you’re, like, 11 and don’t know what the word actually means yet.
Aha! The anthropological things can be used to summon incubi. At least they came back around to those, though someone should really have googled for five seconds before creating them. Apparently, the wives have a drinking – excuse me, “networking” group, where they get drunk as shit. They played with the artifacts one night and then the gardener showed up the next week, so seems like he’s the incubus and I was right.
Less than 15 minutes to go!
Arguing with Mike about whether or not incubi exist, and secondarily, whether one is at work in this case. Yawn. They need to use “sexually frustrated” Vicki as bait to trap the incubus. Vicki goes to borrow the artifact. Dude who owns it is mad about it, especially because his wife paid off the mini-mansion mortgage. Yawn. Henry and Mike are both at the trapping, with Vicki in her underwear. Jealous fighting. Yawn.
They trap the incubus, he says he didn’t kill anyone. He gets food, shelter, and sex from the gardener job, he loves the women, what’s his motive? Fair point, dude, and this actor is putting his whole ass into the work, but still. Coreen’s hair is very, very weird. They move onto another artifact, one of the Furies: Megara.
But she did, and they go to the last trophy wife’s house and save her. The fucking end.
I remembered this show being not very good, but still fun. Much like I remembered Moonlight. I don’t know what I was smoking in 2007 (not true, it was nothing, I wasn’t even on cigarettes then!), but I watched all these shows, and I did not remember them being the absolute steaming piles they have turned out to be. Is it hindsight? Is it changing social mores? I don’t know.
And I know these recaps aren’t as fun as, say, a good FK episode, but, like, WHY ARE THEY SO BAD. I know there was a writers’ strike in ’07; I had no idea they hired ten-year-olds off the street to write absolutely insane trash and then put that on the actual television.
No wonder these things only got single seasons. I wouldn’t be able to slog through more than that.
ANYWAY – I’ll be back next week, ever hoping for a half-decent 45 minutes of television, but I don’t have high hopes. If y’all have any vampire show suggestions, I’m down, because oh my god. Could something else be worse? Yes, of course, crappiness has no boundaries. But I’m getting to a point where it feels like anything could also be better, and I want to have fun! I want to make cool jokes! I don’t want to have to keep being like “why are NTs like this”, because it’s boring!
I love you guys, and I love recapping, but I dunno. Might have to start recapping the YouTubers I watch – at least they’re interesting!
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