Welcome back for the second instalment of our biweekly October Faction review. Today we’re looking at “No Country For Old Vamps,” which is one of the most puzzlingly titled TV episodes I’ve ever come across, to my memory we don’t meet any vampires in the episode, we don’t get any homages to No Country For Old Men, there’s not an oxygen tank in site! It’s not even pun! Anyway, this is called five thoughts and I’m verging dangerously close on a sixth one here. So with that enjoy and be wary, spoilers ahead.
1. Siblings take the stage
While episode one was all about Fred Allen, this episode was firmly planted in the teenage world of Geoff and Viv, which works to varying success. Neither of them come off as particularly likeable, mainly because they don’t have clear motivations; they seem to just trundle through the world that’s assigned to them and react or complain along the way. They’re annoyingly passive protagonists in a show that’s already annoyingly passive and without clear direction. It doesn’t help that Viv and Geoff won’t stop spouting their family history even though they’ve lived in the mansion for less than a week.
Gabriel Darku’s performance is particularly muddled this episode, he has these weird pieces of dialogue where he seems fake angry and over-verbalizes as if he’s verbally sparring with someone, but then one line later he turns out to be actually angry and will storm off. I don’t know if this is a product of the script or the performance but it feels like there are two different personas reacting at once and neither is compelling when the other is there to stifle it. The closest the show comes to making these polarising reactions meld is when Geoff’s met with genuine homophobia that finally pierces his layers over sarcastic formality and snarky aloofness. It’s a great moment of acting, but it feels like it only works because the show points out how cliche its own plot is. It’s like they’re trying to write teen drama but only find succeed when they tear their genre apart.
Also I’m not really sure why the costumers saw Viv, the most shy and antisocial character on the show, and decided her costume should be a rainbow jumper on her first day at a new school, but that’s a whole different can of worms.
2. Kids cut loose
Get excited guys, because the spectacular teen slang is BACK and I’m going to make the cautious guess that this could be a recurring thing for us here. Viv managed to say “Major Ew-ness” with a straight face and Laurie Murdoch’s Mr. Eriksen got to deliver the line “Hashtag Truthbomb” which gave me genuine shudders. I think that YA drama rides a fine line between sincere and schlocky, mostly because all audiences instinctively know if the dialogue sounds right and wrong. Films can get away with fake science-y lines because only about 2% of people will pick up on a mistake, but everyone’s been to high school so everyone can rip bad high school dialogue to shreds.
Paired with this, “No Country For Old Vamps” is peppered with annoying, Netflix, teen tropes. There are kids bragging about how quirky they are, piles of surface level Game Of Thrones quotes, a kid who’s too cool for social media, Geoff getting cyberbullied with youtube videos and piles of insubstantial pop culture namedrops. This is epitomised by Viv’s friend Cathy, who is such an obvious sidekick that she even labels herself as the Samwise of the two. this doesn’t feel like a growth on the character or a quirk, seeing as we’ve only had two scenes with her, so it just comes across as more lazy role-coding. She’s also burdened with the worst line in the whole episode: “You know how powerful us gals would be if we just Avengers Assembled?” It’s a toothless rally, that doesn’t have any real feminist coding to it and seems to state that the reason women are inequal with society is because they bully one another. But the show’s happy to gloss over all that because it reminds audiences of the biggest film on Earth.
Continued belowAlso, as someone who had to do three years of Latin in high school can I just say, if you show off by quoting stuff in Latin then you need to rethink your life choices. Learning Latin to help you read the bible is about as useful as learning Klingon so you can understand Worf on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The catholic church had an entire reformation so that you didn’t have to deal with stupid latin nominalisations; go learn Spanish or Chinese or some common fucking decency.
3. Harlow hits the road
She’s here people, we officially have a villain! Maxim Roy’s Alice Harlow is here and she’s stolen the show. She’s a little tropey but Roy’s understated, hazy acting clashes perfectly with her malicious, sadistic actions, thereby giving her stock-standard revenge motivation a level of engaging ambiguity. She only gets three scenes but every one of them is a tentpole for the episode, elevating it and giving it structure. Her first scene in the bookstore might be her most by-the-numbers, but I can appreciate any scene that gets us out of Barrington-On-Hudson. But when she pops up for the second time we get almost a full minute of nature documentary-esque scenery shots followed by blood-riddled grand theft auto. I don’t know if October Faction just has a particularly sadistic cinematographer, but it seems like the editing and camerawork finally gets some substance whenever people start losing intestines.
Overall, Alice Harlow is a boon for October Faction, she brings creative camerawork, supernatural creativity, plot-drive and a looming threat with her wherever she goes. I’m curious to see if we’ll get any thematic ties to Harry Harlow in Alice’s character. Harry Harlow is famous for his experiments on monkeys in the 1930s where he investigated surrogacy and contact comfort, so maybe Alice will separate Geoff and Viv from their parents (sorry, I just had to find a way to brag about knowing psychology). Coupled with the end of episode stinger, “No Country For Old Vamps” is giving a great roadmap for the rest of the season.
4. A nosedive into melodrama
But, with the arrival of one great source of conflict, we seemingly lose another. Some of the interesting topical elements from the first episode are seemingly getting washed over with rote soap opera. The writers go out of their way to state that the mechanic isn’t racist, he just has his own tragic backstory intertwined with Deloris, which shifts the whole dynamic of last episode’s most compelling scene into a muddled introduction that wipes away any social themes the scene had before.
This sense of tactlessness isn’t helped by Geoff and Viv’s subplot of “the school bullies them because their family’s rich.” It feels contrived and tone-deaf, like the writers need the easiest route to a bullying story. It tosses away the racial tension set up in the first issue for a far less compelling socioeconomic disparity that’s asking audiences to sympathise with the affluent rich because normal people won’t trust them. It’s not that Viv and Geoff can’t be empathised with, but it’s just a puzzling creative choice. For example, Geoff tries quoting a french revolutionary to attack Mr. Eriksen, but his teacher actually uses the proletarian/bourgeoisie relationship between the two of them to put Geoff in his place. However the show is such a muddled mess that it tries to flip the dynamic and make Geoff the sympathetic character, hoping it can get by on the engrained idea of “teacher bad, teen good”.
5. Daddy issues abound
The episode has some great bookends; the opening gives a proper glimpse into the monster-hunting childhood of young Fred and Deloris. We get a glimpse into how entrapped Fred was in the “family business,” having been a part of Presidio since he was still in high school, it’s fine thought because he got to use a fucking laser crossbow. You can tell he takes his job seriously too, since he sticks his hand straight into a monster’s corpse without even rolling up his sleeve, he’s wearing such a nice jacket as well.
Meanwhile at the end of the episode we get a great cliffhanger that I didn’t see coming at all. Grouchy dad Samuel Allen is still alive! The reveal is sure to unleash all manner of daddy issues on Fred as he slowly unravels the mystery before him. I think this is a real smart and distinctive choice, introducing Fred and Samuel’s relationship after his “death” allows for a revealing mix of grief and relief that can make way for more nuanced interactions after Samuel’s “resurrection.” Also I’m excited to see what the motivation is behind graverobber Deloris, why’s she digging up her dad? Was he buried with something? Is he a vampire? Was he buried with a vampire? We need answers!
“No Country For Old Vamps.” is a very rocky second episode that fails to improve the high school plotline dragging it all down. But with the promise of better things to come, it puts the show on a much better trajectory. I will be back next week for episode three, “The Horror Out of Time.”
