The show entered the phase of giving us an in depth look into the Midnighters, who they are and how, I’m assuming, they came to Midnight, Texas.
First up is Lem, who, when he was alive, was a slave. Lem’s desperation is evident in the fact that he ran away from his master fettered. He could barely hobble, let alone run. Of course he was going to accept Zach’s offer of freedom and immortality.
There were no great surprises or insights to his character. The benefit of this cheat is that we got a couple of pretty sweet surprises in the main story.
Zach turns up in Midnight asking for a second chance. He and his nest want to move to Midnight, Texas. We meet Zach when he “threatens” to bite Creek. Guys who do that kind of thing for a little fun are never good guys. Lem is completely blind to this and I suppose I can forgive him.
No one else in Midnight is that naïve and I was really glad about that. Too frequently in stories like this, proximity makes people careless and stupid. They assume that all vampires are like their friends and leave themselves vulnerable. It was refreshing to see everyone refuse to let their guard down. In fact they went on high alert.
Too bad the same can’t be said for Lem. He chooses to give Zach a second chance and nearly pays the ultimate price. When Lem decides not to let Zach move to Midnight, Zach poisons him and leaves him staked in front of a window waiting for the sun to rise. It wasn’t surprising that the town came to his rescue.
There were a few surprises in the episode though.
But it occurred to me, her town was being ravaged by vampires; innocent people were dying.
I think she let herself be caught so that she could find a way, a weapon if you will, to save her friends and family. She found that weapon in Lem.
It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d lived in Midnight as far back as her teenaged years. It also never occurred to me that she’d be that powerful at such a young age.
I can’t imagine that a spell to change a vampire from a blood sucker to an energy sucker can be done by a novice.
If she was that powerful as a teenager and Manfred considered his great-grandmother the strongest of the line, then how powerful was she and how powerful is Manfred?
The other major surprise was discovering what a hardcore badass Olivia is. Does she spar with Lem? Wow. She took those vamps on hand to hand and not only slipped punches, but got some serious punches in.
One of the things I am really enjoying about this show is the fact that there are no wilting females. Creek is human, but in no way weak. With potentially dangerous vampires in town, she made stakes. As Manfred and her family were running, she was ready with her stake.
When Creek’s little brother wanted the truth about the goings on in town, it cleared up something about an earlier Lem speech that confused me.
Early in the episode Lem gives Zach the rules of the town. He said: “No feeding on Midnighters, or anyone in the county for that matter, and locals are off limits.” I was confused because I thought Midnighters were locals. Please let me know if I’m wrong.
Midnighters are either supernatural or humans who know about the supernaturals. Locals are humans living in the town proper who do not know about their supernatural neighbors. Do I have that right?
I’m curious to hear your theories regarding Creek & her father. During the pilot I thought Creek was 19 or 20 and hiding a boyfriend from a father who thought she was too young to know a good guy from a bad guy, but the vibe in this episode was very different than my initial assumptions.
Despite the details of Lem’s past being superficial and fairly clichéd, this episode worked really well for me because it’s purpose seemed to be to give us insight on the other Midnighters and not Lem. For me it was an extremely successful episode.
What about you guys? What did you think? Does anyone have any theories on Creek and her family?
