Bitten - Summons - Review : "You Can't Pick Your Family"

    The first episode of Bitten, “Summons,” was written by showrunner Daegan Fryklind and directed by Brad Turner. The series is based on the book series Women of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong. This first episode has me hooked with some terrific special effects, a strong female lead character, excellent acting, and strong writing.

    Fryklind formerly produced and wrote on Motive, The Dark Corner, The Listener, and Being Erica. Turner has an even longer resume of such action shows as 24 and genre television including The Vampire Diaries, Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, Smallville, Battlestar Gallactica, and The Outer Limits. In fact, the show has a decidedly Canadian element even apart from Fryklind, Turner, and Armstrong. All of the lead actors are also Canadian and the series is shot and partially set in Toronto as evidenced by a TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) sign in an early shot.

    Laura Vandervoort stars as Elena Michaels the only female werewolf – though we don’t learn that she’s the only one in this episode. Vandervoort should be known to most people as Supergirl from Smallville or Lisa on V. Greyston Holt (Alcatraz, Durham County) plays Clayton Danvers, Greg Bryk (ReGenesis, Aaron Stone, XIII: The Series) plays Jeremy Danvers, Paul Greene (Wicked Wicked Games) plays Philip McAdams, Michael Xavier (The Best Years) plays Logan Jonsen, and Natalie Brown (Cracked, Being Human, Sophie) plays Diane McAdams.

    What really sets this series apart from the other werewolf shows currently on the air is that it is a more dramatic and mature look at the genre. The warning on Space before the show airs pretty much sums it up: “This program contains scenes of violence, sexuality, nudity, coarse language and mature subject matter.” The werewolves themselves are more akin to real wolves than the werewolves of the Wolfman legacy. The humans transform into wolves that share hair and eye color but no other “super” powers. The humans do have “super” hearing, however, and I expect we will learn they have other heightened senses as well. One of the running gags is how much Elena has to eat to fuel her heightened metabolism.

    I was hooked right from the opening scenes which completely play with your expectations. Because Elena has put off turning because she doesn’t embrace her wolf side, she almost loses control and turns while having sex with her boyfriend. Our expectation is that she can’t control her turning – as we’ve come to expect from werewolves: they turn at the full moon with no control over it. It’s a nice touch that she gets in the elevator with a woman wearing what looks to be a wolf fur coat. The special effects were excellent, and I wasn’t sure if I was looking at a real wolf or a CGI one at first. The opening scene nicely juxtaposes Elena with Scott (Marc Bendavid). We see him rebuff a girl in a bar as Elena undergoes her transformation then we cut back and forth between a wolf hunting and a rabbit and the girl being killed. The explanation is spun out over the course of the episode.

    Television doesn’t have a lot of strong female characters, so Elena is a breath of fresh air. We see her as the top in the first love scene and then the instigator when she returns in the morning. She has broken away from the pack and struck out on her own and is the last holdout when the pack is called home. She can also hold her own in a fight, coming to Logan’s rescue when they are out running together. I also loved the scene in the bar when the jackass tries to pick her up and she puts him fully in his place. She also holds an important place in the pack as their tracker. I’m really looking forward to them fleshing out her back story. We do learn that she’s had to use martial arts to “prevent bad things from happening again.” The few brief scenes that I’ve seen suggest that she wasn’t always the strong woman we see in this episode.

    One of the major themes in the show is family. The pack, of course, personifies this. Further, the show focuses on how one reconciles the different sides to themselves and to their family. Clayton is an Anthropology professor, and in his first scene, he’s teaching a class about fully actualizing the self. He tells the class “we have to acknowledge who we are” and draws a distinction between the animus/anima and the persona. The persona is the mask that we hide behind. That lecture is nicely juxtaposed with Elena and Logan discussing Elena’s change. Both Elena and Logan are hiding behind personas that they’ve constructed in Toronto. Logan works as a psychologist and Elena as a photographer. It’s interesting that both Logan and Clay seem to have exceptional insight into the human condition. Elena is currently having trouble fitting in with her new human family – at least her boyfriend’s very creepy mother.

    I loved that we see Philip win an advertising award for an insurance campaign built around the zombie apocalypse – the other hot supernatural trend right now! Of course, even this humorous moment is nicely folded into the theme of family – “all we’re selling is what people already want: family, and to protect the ones we love.” This scene is also brilliantly blocked as even though Elena is sitting at a small table with Philip’s mother and sisters, they are squeezed together on one side while she is alone with a wide gap between them and her. Elena hasn’t told Philip anything about her own “family.” She calls the pack her “extended” family, but she was raised in the foster system. I loved Elena telling Philip that Logan is her cousin and that her family tree is like a forest – very appropriate!

    The action in Toronto is also juxtaposed with the action back in Bear Valley in upstate New York. The discovery of a dead woman (the woman from the bar, so we know that Elena killed the rabbit not the woman) precipitates Jeremy calling everyone home to deal with the “mutt” who killed her. They have to keep the rest of the world from learning about werewolves. Elena and Logan are taped by a mysterious person in the forest while they are wolves and Elena kills the coyote. It will be interesting if this is someone who is hunting werewolves or simply someone surprised to see wolves in Toronto. I can attest to the fact that there are coyotes in suburban Toronto.

    Elena and Clay clearly have a troubled history, and he is one of the reasons she left in the first place. Elena tells Logan she feels like they’re soldiers. Logan gives Elena advice on how to walk the tightrope between their worlds. Logan reiterates that she can’t undo being a werewolf, it is something she is now whether she wants to be or not. She can’t hide from the anima within her. Ultimately, Elena heeds the call and the episode concludes with her arriving back at Stone Haven.

    I’m intrigued to learn more about this unusual pack of werewolves. Laura Vandervoort has already won me over as Elena. Combined with good effects, strong writing and performances, this show is definitely going on my must watch list this winter. What did you think of the first episode? Were you a fan of the books? Are you buying into this “new” kind of werewolf? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!