By: Brandon Wolfe
“La Conquista” is a very talky episode, which is a dangerous thing for a show so poor at dialogue to attempt. It is about building bonds and attempting to understand one’s enemy, which sounds well and good, but I don’t think the show has the character development necessary to pull off something quieter and chattier like this. Though I suppose it earns a few points for even trying.
A wounded Richie is wooed by Santanico into embracing vampirism and being at her side for eternity, supplanting the role Carlos has long played in her afterlife. She also relates to Richie her origin, which is that she was sacrificed many years ago as part of a snake cult and made into a vampire (which we had already learned in the pilot episode, but I guess it needed to be hammered home). For reasons not made clear, she psychically became fixated on Richie and drew him to her. This thread of the story is the most tedious this week, as we’re given backstory we already largely had while Richie spends the entire episode continually resisting her sales pitch until the very end, when he finally succumbs. It’s rendered even shakier by the fact that Eiza Gonzalez is a pretty terrible actress, trying to sell seductive by doing a lot of overly elaborate mouth-acting. I suppose the logic here was that she’s gorgeous and almost naked, so what does it matter?
Carlos engages with the wounded Ranger Gonzalez this week, dueling at first, but eventually settling into a tense conversation, wherein Carlos lays out HIS backstory, that he was a conquistador who arrived in the new world seeking riches and came across Santanico in the temple that would eventually become the Titty Twister. She transformed him and made him her servant, but not her lover, a point of fact that Carlos remains bitter about, especially upon learning that Richie is in line to get the golden ticket that was always denied to him. This segment, in contrast to the Santanico one, is livened up by bouts of fighting, but also by the somewhat surprising fact that Wilmer Valderrama is oddly good in this role. It’s not much of a character on paper, but he sells the menace and the charisma quite well, far better than I would have thought him capable.
Retreating into the catacombs beneath the bar to find Scott, the rest of the group instead finds a munitions room filled with years’ worth of supplies. They also find Frost, the character played memorably by Fred Williamson in the film. In this incarnation, Frost is a straggler who has been hiding out in the room, rather ludicrously, for about a month (shades of the Laurence Fishburne character in Rodriguez’s ‘Predators’). He provides some advice to the group, but has no desire to help them fight their way out. He just wants to continue living in this room forever, I guess. Of course, when Kate later is nabbed by the vampires, Frost pops up and saves the day with some grenades, but we aren’t left with the sense that the series needed to add him at all, save for the fact that he was in the movie and the show is determined to use every part of the animal.
For as many ways as this show is lacking, one aspect where I think praise is merited is its appearance. This is a show with almost certainly a very low budget, airing on a network that many don’t even know exists, yet it looks pretty good. The vampire effects have always looked better than their budget should allow. There is some dodgy CGI here and there, but Rodriguez, true to form, delivers some nifty visuals out of the pesos he has to work with. I also find it interesting how the show has tweaked some of its characters. I rather enjoy Jake Busey’s interpretation of the Sex Machine character. Reinventing him as a nerdy archaeology professor who moonlights as a crotch-rocketed badass is a pretty fun shakeup, and Busey is clearly having a great time with the role. We also learn this week that Scott has been made into a vampire, which is surprising since this did not happen in the film. And the show has, very peculiarly, made a conscious effort to absolve Richie of any wrongdoing. Santanico reveals that he has never stolen purely for money and never killed before she got into his head. Considering that Richie was easily the most despicable character in the film, this is a significant deviation.
But a key issue with the ‘Dusk’ series is that it continues to overcomplicate what should be, and once was, a pretty straightforward premise. The show keeps padding out its mythology to the point of becoming nonsense, evidenced most significantly this week when Sex Machine informs the group that the vampires have achieved a higher level of consciousness that transcends space and time, and suggests that they can communicate with aliens. This doesn’t seem to be presented in a way designed to make Sex Machine appear to be a kook; it sounds like exposition. I get that a TV show needs more meat than what the ‘Dusk’ film provided (which resurfaces the question of why it needed to be adapted for television at all), but this is getting a little out there. Although if aliens show up in the season finale, I might have to tip my hat toward that degree of insanity.
As the show winds down, one aspect that I especially feel they need to work on, one that was absolutely crucial to the film, is the bond that develops between Seth and the Fullers. In the film, they gained a grudging yet genuine camaraderie during their ordeal, yet that dynamic does not yet exist in the series, even though they’ve had so much more time to develop it. Seth does go out of his way to save Jacob and Kate this week, but it comes out of nowhere and does not feel earned given how their relationship has played out thus far. The characters putting aside their differences and forging an alliance, even actual concern, was the big thing that made ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ the film more than just a gory slamdance. Let’s get a little of that on the small screen as well so this show doesn’t go out entirely without a point.
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