Fortunately and unfortunately for everyone, I have no nostalgic story to share when it comes to watching the show. Truth be told, I was kind of burned out on Tremors when this hit the airwaves. Not enjoying Tremors 3 in the least bit on that first viewing didn't help, either, and I more or less wrote this show off as a cheap cash-in. Having bought this series for something like the cost of a BK Veggie recently, I think I made a mistake. The series isn't a masterpiece or anything, but it's definitely got its fair share of fun characters and moments going for it. Thus, if you watched every movie in the franchise up until this point, this is a logical, funny and occasionally pretty damn entertaining extension with some new Graboid/Shrieker/Ass-Blaster action for everyone to enjoy. Or maybe not.
Your basic premise: The conclusion of Tremors 3 saw the city of Perfection essentially deemed nonlivable due to the presence of a lone Graboid, dubbed "El Blanco" by the locals. Led by master of kickass Burt Gummer, the townsfolk decide to stay and coexist with El Blanco, taking pride that their town is known as Graboid Central and facing daily attacks from the Graboid and occasional surprises from Shriekers, Ass Blasters, and a whole assortment of random human villains looking to either exploit the Perfection situation in some way or get Burt and his merry band to pick up their stakes and move away. Cool idea, but the execution is hit and miss - more hit than miss, mind you.
For starters, the characters in the series are much more likable than they were in the third movie. As for holdovers, Gross is the only one, but he really is indispensable when it comes to anything connected to this story. He's lost none of his charm or ability to get you on his side. We do, however, have a couple of the same characters, albeit played by new actors - Jodi Chang, Walter's niece who runs the general store, and Nancy, the former hippie who sells pottery stuff (and also the mother of Mindy, who also shows up in an episode). Although we DO get the return of Melvin, now a weasely real estate mogul hoping to turn Perfection into a strip mall, so there is that, in addition to the new character of the red-hot former Vegas showgirl Rosalita, Miguel's niece who has come to take over his farmland. 'Cus when you think smooth transitions, that's a good one to make. At any rate, Jodi and Rosalita provide lots of good comic relief, with the latter also being a potential love interest for Tyler.
Wait, Tyler? The new character that sets the season in motion is Tyler Reed, former NASCAR driver and new owner of Desert Jack's Graboid Tours. After being saved by Burt in the prologue of the first episode, he becomes Burt's partner of sorts, traveling all around Perfection Valley as they exterminate the worm- and non-worm connected creatures that pop up in the area. The pilot episode itself consists of some very good stuff, as Melvin is revealed as the mastermind behind a scheme to get the locals to kill a newly batshit El Blanco and render the valley as his new personal Lex Luthor-esque Austrailia. In fact, the episodes that focus more on the traditional monsters of the series tend to be the strongest ones, as the one where the Ass Blaster that Nancy sold to a Las Vegas magic duo in the third movie returns in one of them while another one involves Shriekers invading a nearby town festival. Very good stuff involved here, with plenty of government bureaucrats to be made fun of and lots of monster shredding action.
Unfortunately, it's the episodes that consist of an over-arching plot that aren't as strong. Christopher Lloyd (yes, that Christopher Lloyd) materializes out of thin air in one episode as kinda mad scientist with a pet monster that needs to be taken out. Through some miracle, there's a decades-old government research lab buried in the Perfection countryside that invented a compound called Mixmaster with the power to blend the DNA of animals. I suppose this plot convention existed so that every episode wouldn't be the same, but surely there were other ways to get around this, as instead there's a stretch where we get Burt and Tyler hunting down rhyno creatures, giant brine shrimp...stuff like that. And while Christopher Lloyd is always game for any role he's in, I just think that this plot convention was just a little too convenient for convenient sake. Cliche statement time: call it glandular.
For mysterious reasons, this series only lasted half a season despite some pretty strong ratings on the Sci-Fi Channel. Anybody out there have an inkling as to the exact reason why this was? Wikipedia is pretty vague on it - something about how the demographics weren't quite up to snuff with Farscape. But man, ratings are ratings. Or was the show just too expensive? While the CGI is about as laughable as it was in the third movie, it WAS CGI, combined with the usual puppetry that the [i]Tremors[/i] flicks were known for. Who knows. Provided that they wrapped up the Mixmaster storyline, I would've been more than game for this series continuing. It's got all of that same tongue-in-cheek charm and monster movie convention that we've come to know and love. In addition, the new characters of Tyler and Rosalita are very likable, and Jodi and Nancy get much better showings than they did in Tremors 3. And if you like Christopher Lloyd, he gets yet another chance to play a trademark nutbag.
*** out of ****. I'd say that the quality-to-crap episode ratio is somewhere around 2-1, and that's pretty decent for a Sci-Fi/SyFy series. Pick this one up for five bucks if you're even a casual fan of Tremors, it's worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment