Your favorite summer TV binging couple is back for more! Last year, my boyfriend Frank and I tackled the first season of SyFy/Amazon’s The Expanse together – – two different perspectives on the same show, one from one person who’s seen it, the other watching it for the first time. Who just happen to be dating.
This year, we’re taking a look at the TNT adaptation of Top Cow’s Witchblade comic, which aired on the network from 2001 – 2002. And just like last year, this is a show Frank has watched, and I haven’t. Hilarity is bound to ensue (again). The series follows NYPD detective Sara “Pez” Pezzini and her adventures with the titular Witchblade, which gives her powers to fight supernatural evil and those who want the Witchblade for themselves.
Everything comes to a head, and Pez faces some painful and difficult decisions as we look a the first season finale. It should go without saying at this point given age, so for one last time: spoilers within.
Kate’s Five Thoughts
1. Empire State of Mind
I am the world’s worst person to watch TV shows set in New York City with. Growing up in the metropolitan area, working in Lower Manhattan, and spending a fair bit of social time in the city makes me rather critical of my second home whenever I see it in fiction.
Now I accept certain fictionalized aspects of New York City. And I understand filming here is expensive, so it makes sense to head elsewhere to get the look and feel of this city. However, when I see a street sign that says “Lake Shore Boulevard West,” when there are no lakes in New York City, I get rather irrationally angry.
These are simple things, blatant errors, that can be fixed in post-production.
On another note, this episode originally aired on August 21, 2001. Seeing the World Trade Center and knowing that three weeks later those towers would be gone puts a very hard lump in my throat.
2. No Man Can Serve Two Masters
“”No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” – Matthew 6:24
Ian Nottingham was getting too close to Pez. Kenneth Irons did not like that, because the only person that Ian needs to serve is Kenneth. Pez is secondary. So Ian Nottingham had to die.
Oh wait. He’s not dead. He’s gone and regenerated into Angry Young Ian because Kenneth needs to keep his toys in order.
It’s all very John the Baptist, right down to Kenneth’s request for the head (for the new and improved Ian Nottingham).
3. Who Can See The Witchblade?
There’s a very interesting reveal here on the part of Gabriel that he can see the Witchblade’s transformation, whereas no one else can. I wonder if that revelation will be explored in Season 2. (Guarantee you, Frank’s reading this and giving the computer a smug look because of what he knows.)
It also finally hit me the symbolism of Gabriel’s name, that of the angel that visited the Virgin Mary to foretell the birth of Jesus. (And, tying it to the earlier point, the birth of John the Baptist as well.) Is Gabriel in fact even mortal? Has the Witchblade sent him here as a guardian angel? Again, things I want the show to explore in the second season.
4. Be Kind, Rewind
So that’s it. The Witchblade has the power to rewind time, but only once, in sort of a “break glass in case of emergency” situation. Naturally that comes at some sort of great and painful cost, but Pez considers that cost worth it to save her friends. With that decision, and one very trippy rewind sequence later, we’re back to the very beginning with a very alive Danny and the two at the Rialto Theater watching Gallo’s men arrive.
But instead of going in, Pez gets a feeling, and tells Danny to drive away. While she does not remember exact events, there is a lingering in her subconscious, a flash, a gut feeling. A meta-knowledge.
The “Bobby in the shower and it was all a dream” tactic can come across as lazy storytelling or a way to de-legitimize story that viewers received poorly, but here it works well. If the show wasn’t going to continue for another season, it provides a level of closure. If the show would continue for another season (and according to Frank, everyone was aware at this point that there would be a second season), the door opens up to explore the ramifications of Pez’s decision to erase all this personal history. What does she remember, if anything? And what will she do with what she does remember, or that gut feeling she can’t place her finger on but cannot ignore?
Continued below5. What Comes Next?
So there’s a lot of things I would want to see in Witchblade’s second season.
More supernatural stories, for starters. The test of the Periculum bonded Pez to the Witchblade, and it certainly does have more to teach her. And these are things that cannot be taught in a case of a week with missing persons or homicides. “Legion” was my favorite episode of this season, and I want to see more episodes like that in Season 2.
Picking up further on that episode, I want to see what other players are after the Witchblade. That episode revealed the Catholic Church’s desire for it. How will those players compete with Kenneth Irons and his control freak nature? (This is presuming Kenneth will be a part of the Witchblade world now that Pez rewinded time.)
I often joke about how someone on the writing staff of this show had to have been an English or classics major in college when you consider some of the episode titles and themes. This episode introduced a fair bit of religious symbolism that I’m thinking more and more about, particularly around the character of Gabriel. It is not lost on me that he shares the name of that pivotal archangel. That has to mean something.
And finally, a post-9/11 New York City will need to be addressed, maybe not overtly as shows such as Third Watch or Law and Order did, featuring episodes dealing directly with those actual events, but perhaps in the vein of The West Wing, exploring themes and reactions to a similar albeit fictional event. (This one I know for a fact to be true; Frank told me when we started these recaps that there would be a “9/11 episode”.)
Afterthoughts:
– How did the White Bulls know Pez was in that exact warehouse? It’s not crucial to the larger story arc of this episode, but little omissions of continuity like that mean a lot.
– Why is everyone in this episode talking like Yoda?
Frank’s Five Thoughts
1. Shakespearean Tragedy
SPOILER ALERT! Everyone dies. This episode is like Hamlet where Fortinbras enters the great hall in Elsinore and sees Horatio sitting on the floor surrounded by all the dead bodies. Danny – dead (well he’s been dead for a while, but he’s still dead here). Dante – shot dead. Jake – choked dead. Gabriel – neck broken dead. Nottingham mk. I – shot dead. Nottingham mk. II – WitchBlade through the chest dead. Irons – chose poorly dead. Pez – stabbed in the back (almost) dead.
When I watched this the first time I found it impressive that the show was willing to kill off so many of its main characters through the course of the episode. I feel that we have almost become inured to this sort of fictional slaughter after shows like Game of Thrones, The Wire, and The Walking Dead. When we watch TV today, we’re no longer comfortable knowing that our favorite characters will make it to the next episode. Things were different back in 2001, though. I mean, Buffy had just died at the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5 a few months before, but that was an exception. So many TV shows played it safe with their beloved characters and made sure that they could keep breathing through the episodes. So it was refreshing to see a show take such a dark turn and throw the narrative playbook out the window. Granted, it decides to completely undo everything moments later, but more on that in a bit.
2. Loyalty of Friends
Something that became abundantly clear by the end of this season is the loyalty of the few friends that Pez has collected around herself. These are folks that walk into the jaws of death for her and with her. We see Gabriel go beyond his original mercantile relationship with Pez to becoming the person she can implicitly trust when there really is not anyone else. And he charges into Irons’ mansion after Pez, despite never showing any aptitude to being a fighter. Jake also stands by Pez, facing down a sect of corrupt cops and Nottingham, his continued nemesis, even if it results in his death. Then there is Danny, her partner, who will not pass over to the other side completely in order to keep watch over her and provide spiritual guidance. Finally we also have Ian Nottingham mk. I, who manages to break through the conditioning that Irons has placed on him to serve in Pez’s favor and even sacrifice himself for her.
Continued below3. The Cutting Edge of Biotechnology
We had evidence since episode 3, “Diplopia”, that Vorschlag Industries has had its dirty hands in biotechnology research. It was the company responsible for the research that led to the creation of the killer clones. We learn in this episode that the ultimate result of that research is to have a stable of Nottinghams in case one of them gets broken. But it goes beyond that, Nottingham is more than just a clone – he is a creation from Charlotte Bronte’s stem cells (remember Irons had her on ice last episode?). Therefore, Nottingham has blood ties to Pez and to the WitchBlade, which is the reason Pez has had such difficulty wielding it against him.
I really enjoyed the way that the show flirted with certain science fiction tropes, like cloning, stem cell research, and super soldiers amidst the supernatural dealings of the WitchBlade. The show pushes the boundaries of what was possible in biotechnology at the time and even today. I wish it had been something the show dwelt a little more on instead of some of the off-kilter case of the weeks they did.
4. Pressing the Redo Switch
Remember how we mentioned that EVERYONE DIED! earlier? Yeah, so WitchBlade then goes and does something just as astonishing. It pushes the big giant Reset button and rewinds the show aaalllll the way back to the middle of the TV movie! This comes about because Charlotte Bronte’s projection (who is totally not deus ex machina) shows up while Pez is bleeding out over the pile of bodies around her and reminds her that time is flexible and sometimes it can run backwards. It turns out that the WitchBlade grants its wielder a single opportunity to reverse time to some point and undo everything until then. So everyone gets to live again! Yay! Even Danny, because Pez goes back to the point where they were sitting in the car outside the Rialto Theatre waiting for Gallo and his gang. While she does not remember everything that happens, she has an “intuition” that going inside would be a bad idea and convinces Danny to drive off. This raises questions though: Does Pez need to go through the Periculum again? What about the White Bulls, aren’t they still stinking up the NYPD? How about Irons and his plans for immortality? Will Pez need to deal with all of these problems that she has already handled again?
This is a huge step for a show to take, basically telling its viewers that the last 13 hours of TV they’ve watched has amounted to very little. Critically, it also diminishes the effect that all the deaths in this episode had, since there were no consequences. While I was impressed with the reset when I first watched the show, now I question it more and wonder how much it lessens the narrative the show was trying to tell.
5. Retrospective
I came into watching this show through the rose tint of nostalgia. I remember watching these episodes as they aired throughout the summer of 2001. I watched the last two episodes in my sophomore dorm room off of a video cassette my mother had recorded for me. I watched those episodes two weeks after 9/11 and remember being struck when establishing shots showing the World Trade Center showed up on screen. Those episodes were very clearly a relic of the Time Before. Now 18 years later, I’m a rather different person than I was in my dorm room. Moreso, television has changed a lot in those 18 years. There are things that WitchBlade did in 2001 that probably would not fly on television today.
This train of thought brought me to wonder what WitchBlade would be like if it were made today? I believe that Pez as she is presented here could be brought forward with very little change. Her sensible clothing (as opposed to the extreme fan service of the comic series’ costumes) would definitely fit in television today. Nottingham would be different – very different. His whole aesthetic and presentation just screams early 00s too much – trying to channel the coolness of The Matrix without the budget or gravitas. The fight scenes would be better. Especially after we have had shows like Daredevil, Iron Fist (I know, I know!), and Into the Badlands, I think there is a higher expectation for action sequences on TV today. There would be more women and definitely more diversity. I believe there would be less case of the week type episodes. While there are still lots of episodic shows on today, most of what we consider “peak TV” have involved deeper extended narratives. There may be smaller cases at the start of the season as a way to warm up and ease Pez into the powers of the WitchBlade, but the greater narrative would be weightier and more connected. I think that we would have seen more of Irons interacting through Vorschlag Industries and not connected to Pez and the WitchBlade until much later in the season. Now the question comes about where this “reboot” would be aimed at. Would it be something like the CW’s Arrowverse shows, which would likely have a younger cast and be right on the edge of edgy. Or would it aim for something like we see on FX with Legion or American Horror Story, which would allow it to explore some of the darker aspects of the story? Or would it have a place on a premium network like Starz or Showtime? That would allow it to really be free with the mature themes that it flirted with in 2001 (TNT was just starting to push the boundaries of what they could do as a cable network). I think all three scenarios could work, but we’d have three very different shows and all three of them would be very different than what we have. Maybe it is time for someone to revisit this property and look at bringing it back.
Continued belowStray Thoughts
– There was a whole thing with a strange guy named Lazar (played by an actor named Lazar) that really didn’t make any sense and seems shoved in there. Apparently he was the man that delivered the infant Sara to James Pezzini and he shows up at the time rewind, but it just seems unnecessary.
– Speaking of reboots, there was an anime series that aired in 2006 based on the WitchBlade comics. I remember acquiring the first episode and being put off by what seemed like unnecessary fan service, especially since I was used to the TV series version
With this episode, we’re closing out this year’s Summer TV Binge of the series. The second season of Witchblade aired on TNT in 2002, with the final episode airing August 26, 2002. I hope you enjoyed visiting (or revisiting) this show with us, and we’ll see you next summer!
