Blood Ties - A Review

So after Dresden Files the other night, I sat down to watch Lifetime's new vampire/cop show, Blood Ties with a critical eye. I'd caught most of the second episode and it really wasn't bad - a bit mundane, but not bad. I felt like they were intentionally being tame to appeal to their core audience (the wimminfolk), but the special effects really weren't bad and the story was at least semi-interesting, if not cliched.

So now that I've seen two full episodes, I'll give you The Rundown:

I don't know from girly books. That's not a slam, it's just the truth. I once had a girlfriend who read romance novels and she could go through them at a pace of about two a day. I don't know if that's fast reading or not because it's not like it's heady fare. Still, I tried to read one back then and I literally couldn't stomach it. It was somewhere between softcore porn and hardcore stupid. At any rate, it's a big field and certainly has its following.

Blood Ties views like one of those sappy "alternative" horror/romance novels. It's not too horrific and not too tame - just middle-of-the-road with a lot of sexual tension and general drama. There's a love triangle, the protagonist is not exactly an angel, and she's swooning over the bad boy - who's not exactly a protagonist but not exactly an antagonist - an anti-hero. If this sounds like you've seen it all before, you have.

But Lifetime does manage to bring it to the screen fairly deftly. They aren't bothering to try and break new ground or anything, just giving viewers something a little different and that's commendable at least. At some point, if the show stays on long enough, it may even break through its own cliches and become interesting in its own right.

The plots aren't bad, but the dialogue is stilted and, frankly, total shit. The acting is good, even though the characters are so cardboard that if you turn them over, they'll have part of a brand name on the back. The SFX are actually good and pretty effective - they don't overshadow the show, but they definitely add to it. My real biggest problem is with the camerawork: they use a steadi-cam to shoot things, but they move back and forth and pan in and out for no reason. I know it's supposed to make it seem like there's "action" and "mystery" and "tensi0n," but it looks to me like there was "drinking" and "late night partying"by the cameramen. Just saying.

All in all, Blood Ties is good enough to check out on occasion, but it's not something I'm personally going to TiVo.