I gave up the teen-centric Pretty
Little Liars last season because it was getting to be way
too much work to watch, but I thought I would give the new
supernatural spin-off a shot, and as a result, I feel
cheated by ABC Family’s Ravenswood. Without seeing the
preceding Halloween episode of PLL, I was completely lost
for the first twenty minutes of the pilot of Ravenswood and
couldn’t sort out the backstory of the two main characters,
Caleb and Miranda played by Tyler Blackburn and Nicole Gale
Anderson. In fact, I had to read an episode recap of PLL
just to I orient myself to the new storylines. That being
said, I think ABC Family knows exactly what it’s doing in
the construction and execution of Ravenswood, and even
though I am a sucker for a teen drama (especially a
supernatural one) I think this show is aiming at a pretty
narrow viewership – one that is much younger than I am.
The series picks up as Caleb and
Miranda arrive in the small, but creepy town of Ravenswood
to seek out her mortician uncle, Raymond Collins. He is
exactly what you would expect a young undertaker to look and
act like and doesn’t venture far from the cliché. Caleb is
also on a mission to seek answers about his family and seeks
out the help of the local newspaper, owned by the Beaumonts.
He is especially interested in the daughter, Remy, who tells
him the chilling history of a flood that killed hundreds of
townspeople. She tells Caleb the town is notorious for being
a different kind of ordinary.
Caleb and Miranda soon find out just
how extraordinary the town is, as they start to experience
some frightening encounters with the paranormal. Miranda is
visited by a woman in black and Caleb is almost drowned by
what he thinks is the Uncle, but we know it is something
other worldly. There are a myriad of other teen-ish looking
characters that are generically pretty and non-distinct that
have a host of drama that will inevitably take the whole
season to unpack.
While I went into this show with an
open mind, I quickly realized it was not for me. I may be
too old to suspend my disbelief long enough to buy into the
vaguely spooky and too -cryptic-for-its-own-good- melodrama.
Ravenswood is like all the most boring, terrible parts of a
mediocre scary-movie. I’m sure it will find an audience,
since it has a built in demographic, filling the vacuum that
Pretty Little Liars left on Tuesday nights. But there are so
many supernatural shows on this season that are actually
scary, and well written that I probably won’t waste my time
on this one.
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