coles_notes

Created for Fox by John Leekley (Spawn animated) along with producer Aaron Spelling (Melrose Place, Charmed) and based on the tabletop roleplaying game Vampire: The Masquerade. With its original creator Mark Rein-Hagen on board co-producing, we have Kindred, a fairly drama heavy soap following multiple vampire crime families in modern day California, as they rule in mobster-style over the city. They all are led under their Prince, Julian Luna (Mark Frankel), as cracks begin to appear in the long running peace between the clans that has held for hundreds of years. Airing only a year before Buffy re-invigorated the 90s vampire craze and described as Melrose Place meets The Godfather; there's a lot of characters, as with most higher profile dramas and long running soaps, both things this series clearly wanted to emulate. The main thread follows detective Frank Kohanek (C. Thomas Howell) as he investigates these families and their on-goings throughout the city, getting quickly tangled into their inner workings. There's also a lot of romance, particularly the expected vampire adjacent side with lots of blood sucking, although even as the more edgy network at the time Fox, it was still network tv so most of it is fairly tame and leans more melodramatic to modern standards. It also isn't the best written, and none is particularly nuanced, but we do get some fun dark, brooding acting throughout. The cops all have gravelly voices, there's a city journalist and love interest to Luna always snooping into his activity, and of course an untrustworthy partner to Frank on the force, played by a young Erik King. You could tell much of the plot was built first around its world building from its RPG foundation, with all the factions with different traits and motives, warring against each other over control of the city, and each with their own industries and subplots. It was clear the show had aspirations to explore all these out, but even the little we did get wasn't anything particularly special. Cancelled after only 8 episodes had been produced, we never did get to see that future, but honestly I don't know how much we missed out on. If you're looking for the og vampire soap check out Dark Shadows, for something more modern cheesy try Vampire Diaries, if you want a moody detective vampire procedurals Kolchak the Night Stalker and Forever Knight are personal favs. But if you've seen all the above, yeah this ones around too, I had fun.

Based on the manga of the same name written by Tsugumi Ohba and produced by Madhouse, we follow Light Yagami, a brilliant high schooler who comes upon a Death Note, a mystical notebook sent down by a shinigami which allows the owner to write names in the book and subsequently have them killed. We follow Light as he comes to grips with this new found power, and starts down a path to become a god and kill any in his way. A fan of series told from the perspective of the antagonist, I had started this one years earlier and was never able to finish it. Restarting it again lately, I remembered why I was drawn to the premise, as most probably were, its a genuinely interesting idea and the directions it starts to go with it were unexpected to say the least. Until about a third or so into the 37 episode series, when in my opinion its plots begin to spiral, it introduces multiple new characters out of nowhere, has a bunch of time jumps, and becomes a bit of an angsty, frustrating, sloggy mess. Without spoilers, a series whose main premise is two geniuses going up against each other to out the other first; the decisions they make are just not rational from an objective perspective, but they try to justify them all with clever twists or just very forced exposition. The series obviously thinks itself very cool, and will often remind us how cool and smart it was in ways that are just eye rolling, and the world building tries to seem grand, but they never really spend time justifying or explaining anything in what I felt was a satisfying way. There's definitely hints at rules or frameworks to how the world is set up, not to mentioned the sometimes multi-paragraph title card explaining literal "rules" of the notebook (which appear on the screen for way too short a time and you always have to pause to read), but again half of them never seem to come up in the plot itself or get fleshed out meaningfully, so like what was the point. Pretty much all the characters a superficial tropes, and some of the side characters I really did not like how they were written, its a lot of teenage edgelord drama. I'm very surprised this series is often ranked so highly, I feel like there's so many other gritty anime in this vein that are so much better. Maybe controversial but probably wouldn't recommend.

Created originally as a pilot for Fox, created and written by Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon, directed by a young Ben Stiller, and starring (the voice of) Owen Wilson and Jack Black as the leads Heat Vision and Jack respectively. What was in hindsight the set up of a powerhouse of a series, we never got more than the single original episode after Fox passed on the series. Following Jack Austin (Black), a former astronaut who is exposed to solar energy giving him extreme intelligence (but only in the day), and his best friend and talking motorcycle Heat Vision, who was an old roommate shot by a raygun, merging is mind with the bike. Obviously a ridiculous and over-the-top series from the get-go, it reminds me much of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace or Danger 5, in its campy, schlocky style. The jokes are pretty funny for what it was, and Jack Black of course gives a fantastic performance. With Harmon and Schrab behind the writer's room I'm sure this could have turned into a pretty fun ride, and its unfortunately we never got to see it. If you like any of these people, sure, was a fun thing to flip on for as short as it is.