TV Review: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series “Let’s Get Ramblin"
By: Brandon Wolfe
‘From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series’, in its questionable gambit to take a 108-minute movie and expand it into a 10-hour season of television, has thus far vacillated between two modes with each episode. The first mode is to take a brief scene from the film and insulate it out into a full hour, bloating a kernel of an idea into an overstuffed cannoli. The second is to strike a balance between doing a slavish, inflated cover version of the film and carving out its own unique additions to the mythology to make something old new again. As recently as last week, the second, preferable mode was starting to take hold, but “Let’s Get Ramblin’” regresses frustratingly to the first mode, and is probably the worst offender in this regard since the pilot.
We reach the leg of the story where the Gecko brothers finally cross paths with the Fuller family and forcibly adopt them as a means of getting to Mexico. The Fullers arrive at the Dew Drop Inn, where Seth (in a scene that might as well function as a shot-for-shot recreation) steps in front of their RV and surveys the scene with sinister intent. Once in their room, Kate steps out for a swim and Seth and Richie accost Jacob and Scott, laying out their roles in the brothers’ plan and what will happen if the hostages don’t play their roles perfectly. Jacob protests, but the threat to his family is too great for him to withstand.
The sequence in the film where this material occurs lasts just a tensely concise handful of minutes, less than five. Again, that was the proper length. Here, things drag on and on, and people engage in repetitive, overlong, not terribly well-written conversations because director Robert Rodriguez has decided that a whole hour needs to be spent on this. To kill more time, Seth dispatches Richie to retrieve Kate from the pool, rather than her simply returning, and we are treated to an extended exchange between them that furthers a couple of the series’ iffier attempts at mythology-building. Kate and Richie actually sort of bond initially over their respective familial strives. Kate, still troubled by the recent revelation of the role Jacob’s drinking may have played in her mother’s death, has been further concerned about her father’s temper, as well as what other secrets regarding her mother he might be keeping, perhaps relating to Kate’s memory of mysterious migraines her mother had when she was alive. Richie, still some kind of psychic in this version of the tale, picks up on some of this at the touch of Kate’s arm, prompting her to demand he explain how he could know such things. But whatever bond had been taking shape between the two evaporates upon her return to the hotel room, when she is taken hostage along with her father and brother.
The one entirely new leg of the story comes from the one entirely new major character, Ranger Gonzalez. Still in obsessive pursuit of the Geckos, the ranger has flashbacks to a grisly encounter with lowlives that he once had back when he and Earl McGraw were still partners, one that left a lot of bodies on the ground. One such body now plagues Gonzalez, appearing to him as a bloody apparition. It’s unclear whether this ghost is real or merely a delusion, but in either event, it is being brought on by the knife Gonzalez found with the mysterious cult symbol carved into it, the knife once owned by Richie. Gonzalez also comes across the still-ongoing armed stand-off between Seth’s ex, Vanessa, at the Big Kahuna Burger. Gonzalez manages to use Richie’s abhorrent crimes as a means to get Vanessa to roll over on the Geckos, pointing Gonzalez in the direction of the Dew Drop Inn, where a firefight breaks out, but does not stop the Geckos from escaping with the Fullers in tow.
While the Gonzalez material offers us something new, because he and Vanessa are creations unique to this version, it doesn’t hold much impact. The scenes with the Geckos and the Fullers are old ‘Dusk’ chestnuts that play out essentially as they had before, but with a reverse-liposuction performed to insert as much fat into them as possible. The characters aren’t really doing much that is significantly new, they’re just doing it slower and with more endless discussion. And the attempts to expand their stories in new ways just seems like more padding. Do we really need a mystery of what happened with Jacob’s wife prior to her death? Do we need Kate to solve that mystery, a case she still attempts to pursue answers toward even AFTER she has been taken hostage by dangerous criminals? This seems to me to be the crucial flaw of ‘From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series’. It doesn’t want to retell this story in a way that’s fresh and makes sense as a TV series. That would require reconceptualizing everything from the ground up. The show just wants to take the movie and stuff material into every margin and corner of it, whether it belongs or not. A morbidly obese retelling of the same story is not an interesting prospect, and the ‘Dusk’ series needs to push the Geckos and Fullers into completely new terrain to make it feel like this show has a life and vision of its own.
Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJFilms, and follow author Brandon Wolfe on Twitter at @ChiusanoWolfe.
Please Leave A Comment-
Comments