Several weeks ago, ABC premiered their new Sunday night lineup, Scoundrels and The Gates. Scoundrels I didn’t get into.. but The Gates – oh, I LOVE The Gates.
Sadly, ABC chose to AGAIN pitch against its genre. I was immediately turned off last year when they premiered Defying Gravity as Grey’s Anatomy in space. I do not watch Grey’s Anatomy. Don’t care for it or its type. But I DO like scifi and guess what .. that’s what Defying Gravity was – despite the fact that once you watched it, it clearly WAS scifi down to an alien on the ship. Only toward the end did they even hint at such a thing. (And I’ve learned that it’s common for scifi fans like myself to NOT like soaps like Grey’s.)
On to The Gates – hey.. it’s Desperate Housewives with a very downplayed supernatural emphasis… that’s what they’re advertising it as, which also immediately turned me off. I admit to watching and enjoying Desperate Housewives for the first season and a half and then losing interest as it, so I gave it a try because hey, it was VERY obvious that there was at least a vampire in it from the commercials and looking at the gate, you see a very obvious wolf and a witch. The commercials are so BADLY done. They need to just say it.
First of all, you have the vampire couple, Rhona Mitra is wonderful as a vampire. 
She’s a bit more typical of the blood is an addictive drug type – and honestly, I was sold on the series after reading an interview with her that went in depth on her and her husband who turned her and does not have the same issue .. and their adopted little girl who has no idea they’re vampires.
Second, you have a pack of werewolves.. a good number of them too with a lot of them being teenagers. Oh, I LIKE the werewolves because they’re a pack and you have one who’s trying to be good and fit in more with humans while being lured to do what teenagers and apparently, teen werewolves like to do, which is run around wildly. I like him. Everything about them is very wolflike – down to their relationships.
Third, the new sheriff – I think… moves here with his son and daughter, the son immediately falls for the girl who the teen werewolf is dating and you get a nice amount of conflict without going overboard. The characters are pretty much all likeable and well thought out. Obviously .. there’s a body that pops up with a mystery about where it came from that the sheriff is investigating.
Fourth, oh.. the girl who’s a succubus who has no idea she’s a succubus. I don’t know why, but that whole storyline is really intriguing me. Her mother is dead, she has no idea she’s a succubus, but her father does. I so want to know how it’s going to play out and how exactly that all happened! She’s a danger to people who get close to her, I’m assuming a bit Rogue-style, although it hasn’t been shown yet since she’s just now coming into it.
Fifth, there’s a very nice good witch who’s a doctor and genuinely cares for people and the community vs a very bad .. bad witch who’s manipulating people (including the female vampire who so desperately wants to put a curb on her appetite for blood). Oh, she’s creepy evil.
That’s from the first two episodes, which are available for online free viewing on ABC’s website.
I enjoy it … because I REALLY enjoy vampires and werewolves .. but I really am not all that fond of the sappiness that is Twilight or the overboardness of True Blood. (I really don’t want to watch True Blood anymore. ) While Vampire Diaries is close, it also veers a bit too much into the Twilight area and isn’t on at a convenient time to watch it. So I have The Gates – which I consider PERFECT. I mean, it’d fit right in there with Supernatural – although not as dark. Give it a try. Pleeeease? I really want it to stick around and I believe I have about 10,000 of you I can show this too!
- Tiff
I’ll give this one a shot. I’ve barely been watching any TV lately, but something in the sci fi genre that is actually GOOD would be welcome.
I used to watch Gray’s Anatomy. I regret that. It’s a silly faux medical drama with main characters who should have dropped out of med school because of their flakiness. It’s like ER on aphrodisiacs and (numerous) personality disorders.
As for advertising stupidity, this is the same Hollywood that gives us movie posters that spoil a major event and it’s location for Harry Potter 7. They just don’t get that we want to see what the movie or TV show is about without being told the whole plot. There’s nothing I hate more in a trailer than getting told “hey, here’s this movie you might like, and here’s how 90% of the story goes”.
I just finished episodes one and two of The Gates. It’s really good. And very creepy too.
I’m looking forward to seeing more. Odds are, I’ll watch it on the website so that it’s easier for ABC/Hulu to track that I’m watching it.
The bar on the bottom of your page is- while nifty- considerably slowing down and even freezing your website for me. People with older computers or slower connections might have a lot of trouble viewing your sites.