Why "Night Stalker" Failed: A Viewer's Experience

by Shannon Nolley, Sci-Fi Fodder Editor

Ok. Failed is harsh. How about "was cancelled after airing only 6 of 9 episodes shot because no one was watching." That's accurate at least.

Why do I think it was cancelled? Well... I hate to boil it down to the obvious, but ... it was bad. Not bad as in the remake of "Bewitched" bad, just.... not good. I'm mitigating my harshest phrases here because, as a die-hard fan of all things sci-fi/horror/creepy/scary/suspenseful/etc., I craaaave this stuff on network television. Since Joss left me all alone in the dark (or light, I should say) without my beloved "Buffy" or "Angel," I've been willing to give just about any new series a chance. I even resorted to watching "Surface" on two occasions - I'm still bitter about that. So, I feel grateful for even the smallest attempt from a network to speak to me and my kind. I'd rather they try and fail than not try at all. But..... the tease of a good, juicy new show that, in the end, doesn't fulfill is more than a little disappointing. That's the word here. Disappointed. You know, that word your mother would say when she "wasn't mad at you" - she was just "disappointed."

Like perhaps many sci-fi/horror junkies, I was very excited when I heard about the new "Night Stalker." I brushed up on some of the classic episodes as the SciFi Channel aired them in anticipation of the new series' launch. I soaked in Frank Spotnitz's own chronicles of his efforts to resurrect the show in Entertainment Weekly (the Sept 30th issue). I rewatched "Queen of the Damned" to revel in the dark allure of Stuart Townsend. It was Spotnitz (with Chris Carter and the "X-Files" team), after all, who convinced me during the 1990s that network television COULD speak to an audience like me. It COULD creepify on a regular basis and then hit you over the head with a gore hammer as in the cult favorite episode "Home." It was Townsend who finally made the screen version of Lestat sexy (Cruise never did it for me ... then again, maybe it was those leather pants that Townsend wore that "clinched" it). The mix of Spotnitz, a series of more things preternatural, and the ever-so-easy on the eyes Townsend sounded like the perfect thing to fill the void in my TV lineup.

So after much anticipation, the first episode aired September 29th. It was.... OK. Initial reactions - the Perri Reed character, played by Gabrielle Union, was annoying. We get it. She's a skeptic. Another Scully type? Not even close. Who the heck is this Jimmy Olsen-type character? He even looks the part. He's like some kid trying to make the parents stop fighting. Then there was the house. Kolchak's house. What the?!?!? Does he have some mega trust-fund that I missed? Do roving reporters make that much money? How could he afford that super swank house in the LA hills? Trust me, real estate in California ain't cheap - or even affordable by average humans. He must be in league with the devil or something. Finally-- there was the clip. That clip! I know some people appreciated the nod, but I found it offensive. (I had a similar reaction to the recent episode of "Medium" where they used a digitally altered Rod Serling to introduce the episode) It was a 3-second digitally-inserted clip of Darren McGavin - the original Carl Kolchak - from the TV movie "The Night Stalker." Dear god. LAME! Why?? It didn't even look good. I half expected him to pick up a vacuum and start dancing around like Fred Astaire in that Dirt Devil commercial a few years back.

Ok. So what did I like about the episode? Hmm. I liked the creepy monster things (though was a bit confused as to whether they were just dobermans gone mad or what). I liked the humanity given to Kolchak over the loss of his wife. I thought the idea of the mysterious "mark" on the bodies thing had potential. All elements I could work with. No matter what, I'd tune in for the next episode. Never judge a series by its premiere episode (unless you're talking about "Lost" where the premiere was the best opening to a series ever). Of note, the new series is "inspired" by the old one. It's not supposed to be a carbon copy. Fine. There are still going to be comparisons, though. You can't name it the same thing, have the lead with the same name and same profession without some serious comparisons. (The new "Battlestar Galactica" is an example of another "reimagined" series - one that works.)

The second episode. "The Five People You Meet in Hell." Better. Seemingly normal folks going nutty and brutally knocking off their significant others. Perri is less annoying because she's actually kind of in trouble in this episode. Kolchak dealing more with his wife's death. Good, good. It's a bit reminiscent of the "X-Files" episode "Pusher," where a murderer possesses a psychic ability to force his will onto people and eventually puts the lead characters at dangerous odds with each other... but that's ok. The "X-Files" was influenced by the original "Night Stalker" series so it's gonna have a similar feel. Right?

My husband was less forgiving. He was pretty much convinced that the show was a flop. I had to make him watch the second episode with me - he was done after the first. I told him that the series just needed to find its legs. Growing pains. That sort of thing. By the third or fourth episode it'd be great! Denial is not just a river in Egypt. Really.

The third episode. "Three" (titled for the three college kids in the episode, not its number in the series) Nothing particularly bad about the episode. The beginning is good. Girl drowns in stand-up shower. Neat. But... it ... just all feels like old themes being rehashed. We've seen this all before. Stupid teens doing a forbidden ritual in a spooky house. Things gone awry. Angry spirts stemming from the botched ritual. Blah. It's just not "scary." It's just not Kolchak.

The original "Night Stalker" was gritty. It was creepy. It had mysterious deaths, evil folks and this gum-shoe-like reporter who was always sticking his nose in where it didn't belong. He didn't have any other motive than to find the truth and maybe someday have his editor print the story (sure, ok, maybe fame and glory too but I think even he knew that would never really happen). Kolchak always had this sad and strange affability to him. The audience thought he was an annoying little man in a stupid suit and hokey hat, but we just had to keep watching as he fell into the bizarre. Here, Townsend's Kolchak was supposedly searching for answers to his wife's death and the mysterious markings on certain victims - including himself. His search wasn't just about being the curious cat that almost gets killed every episode (as it was for McGavin's man), it was about saving himself and finding his wife's killer - but in a half-hearted way. If he was "marked" (as we learned in the first episode), then why wouldn't he be trying to figure out what it meant every day? I think your "average" marked husband of a murdered wife would be a bit more obsessed.

One of the things that bored me with the "X-Files" was the conspiracy theories. (Gasp! I know! Blasphemy!) Early on it was good, but after several seasons it was less and less interesting. It became contrived and more of a plot device to keep us watching because they didn't seem to have anything new to say. The writers/producers knew the show's demographic, though. They knew that they needed to pepper in the conspiracy episodes with creepy/weird/supernatural stuff - the truly unexplainable - to keep viewers glued to their sets. So we watched.

Here, that same peppering didn't work. Maybe it was because we started off with the big conspiracy thing too early. We weren't hooked yet. Maybe because the "conspiracy" was too amorphous to make us really care about it. Maybe it was because we were never waiting on the edge of our seats to see if the two main characters were going to make out because they didn't have a palpable chemistry - of course Kolchak also had the whole dead wife hang-up thing to hinder hook-ups.

It also lacked the "style" of the old series. The original "Night Stalker" had cheesy special effects, lots of zoom, and spotty sound editing. Kolchak was always spouting off these terribly cliched phrases that - while painful - were reminiscent of classic private-eye movies where all the heros had a thousand rounds in their revolvers and their suits never got wrinkled during a fight. One of my favorite examples is a quote from the classic episode "The Devil's Platform," where a devil dog is running around nibbling on people. Kolchak in a typical voice-over narrative says "The local real estate scam had it that the Palmer house once belonged to a defrocked minister, but it looked like the house in Gone with the Wind... only this one had gone to the dogs." Now THAT's dialog. Or something. At least it's funny. At least it's a style. The narratives at the intro and the closing credits of the new series just didn't cut it.

I skipped the fourth episode. The show conflicted with my beloved "CSI." (My kingdom for a dual tuner TiVo!) I had been willing to take a shot at the new show because SpikeTV plays "CSI" reruns all the time and eventually my missed episode would air. But, by this fourth week I was feeling a bit robbed. So, I watched "CSI" instead. I think it was around that time that Apple and ABC were pairing up to allow individual episodes to be downloaded from the iTunes music store. I figured if I really wanted the "Night Stalker" episode, I could get it there. Maybe I would get future episodes there too. It was increasingly difficult to rationalize missing a show that I knew I liked for this new show that was losing my interest and ... yes... disappointing me each week. I didn't buy/download it. I figured I'd wait until after the next episode to see if I felt I'd missed something.

The fifth episode I watched. I think "CSI" was in reruns that week. I don't know. For whatever reason, my TiVo taped it so I watched. Actually, I watched the first 5 minutes then decided to watch something else. I watched the full thing a few days later. This is the episode where I knew I was done. The only redeeming thing about this one was the appearance of the Candyman (Tony Todd who played Candyman in the movie series). When in doubt, bring in a big horror cult fav as a guest star to appease fans. Todd's character, a detective out to get Kolchak, was a bit forced, but that was the least of the problems with the episode. The rest.... was... more derivative crap. Everyone suspects a former priest turned adoptive father as being abusive. Actually the bad seed is the evil/possessed kid the former priest is trying to protect us all from. You definitely got the feel early on that the Naomi Watts' son from "The Ring" was going to pop up somewhere and say "You let [him] out? Who told you to do that?" I guess that's what Kolchak was for. Only less convincingly.

The kicker for me was when Kolchak decides to snoop around the kid's house before he suspected him of being evil. The kid was alone in a dark room of the house. The room was littered with junk food wrappers, toys, games, etc. He was watching a disturbing cartoon at a very loud decibel (it was the Happy Tree Friends... parents don't let kids watch that show. Heck, sometimes I can't watch that.) If you grew up in the 80's you'll remember a similar scene from a little movie called "The Twilight Zone" and its segment "It’s a Good Life." The kid - maybe possessed, but definitely supernatural - is given everything he wants by a "family" that's afraid of him. The segment is very effective because its dizzying madness is emphasized by the loud violent cartoons the kid is watching - at one point, alone in a dark room.

Sigh. Too much. Not enough. Too much derivation from other well-loved things and not enough new/interesting/thrilling material. I'd had my fill.

The sixth episode aired without me. It looked to be about that conspiracy thing. If I wasn't hooked by the "scary" episodes, I wouldn't be hooked by the "ooh, this episode could shed light on some running plot point."

Then early the next week, word came down. ABC announced that it was canceling the series. It even pulled the airing of the seventh episode slated for that week. Wow. Now that's serious. The station had paid for and filmed nine episodes. The seventh was all ready to go. They had had their fill too, I guess. (The 7th episode is currently available for purchase/download from the Apple iTunes store for $1.99 - you can buy episodes 1-7 for $13.93.)

Well... looks like the hubby was right (not that I'd ever tell him that to his face or anything), the series was a flop. Not for one particular reason. Many factors were involved: a tough time-slot (against CSI), annoying supporting characters (the skeptical non-Scully & the Jimmy Olsen), lack of an appealing style or feel, lack of suspenseful or scary moments, and the most damaging - derivative plots.

During his chronology in EW, Spotnitz said he knew that the show might get killed going up against "CSI" (what he called a "death slot") but hoped that the network would keep it around if it made "a showing." It didn't show. Spotnitz also said that during the original series, McGavin had begged to be released from his contract and to let the series die (the original series also lasted only one season ... but back then, that was 20 episodes). It seems that McGavin knew something about the show - it's just not sustainable as a series. The occasional movie or mini-series, maybe. Just not something on a weekly basis.

Ah well. Spotnitz tried. Like I said before, I appreciate any attempt to speak to an audience like me. God knows I hope they keep trying.

If the network ever decides to take on a smaller dose of "Night Stalker" AND they're lucky enough to convince Townsend to do it again, I say they should put him in those leather pants from "Queen of the Damned." Dump the heavy suede jacket in temperate Los Angeles. No shirt. Leather pants. That's key. Maybe that's what sunk this series. You can't hire an actor with Townsend's "assets" without throwing the audience a shot or two of him in those pants once in a while. Now THAT's disappointing.

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