Even this could not stop me from fast-forwarding through the Cryptkeeper’s segment.
Oh, come on! TFTC already did Came the Dawn! I was disappointed that Dawn was not the insatiable female lead in that one. Predictably, TFTC did not learn from that mistake. On the other hand, this episode starts off with a nice tracking shot along a bar with a few bits of business along the way. So all is forgiven. Although, I always wonder if shots like this were in the script or the work of the director.
The shot ends with a, er, rather severe looking blonde with short hair, a bandana, and a biker jacket putting on lipstick like she was driving down a bumpy road. She is surprised when a couple of hunters show up to the bar. Burrows and Parker stumble in, bundled up against the cold Alaskan weather and order schnapps.
Burrows says the night is “colder than a witch’s left one” so I guess there will be no nudity in tonight’s tame episode. Parker says they are looking for a guide that ignores the Endangered Species List, which rules out that bleeding heart Michelin Guide with their snooty no Bengal Tiger Tartare rule. She suggests her ex, Jeri (the gender ambiguity is lost in print) who was busted for dynamite-fishing. But the bartender doesn’t care for poachers and picks up the phone to call the game warden. So Burrows shoots her.
In an edit more jarring than the bone-to-satellite in 2001, the boys are suddenly offering Jeri $100 to help them bag a grizzly bear.[1] Where they are or how they found her is a mystery. And, by the way, shooting the bartender was pretty gratuitous. I mean, it would have made sense if it had been Michael Ironside, but it was the other guy. Anyhoo, she is no longer in that business. Parker sees her name on a Purple Heart citation and plays the Colonel-card. She jumps at attention and accepts the mission to find that bear.
They go to an abandoned government weather station which Jeri says the bears love. Parker agrees, “It is a perfect place for Winter hibernation.” Wait, are they going to shoot them while they’re hibernating? No, they find some fresh tracks and set up camp. But someone been hunting there already.
Just when I feared the episode was going to play out as a straight monster-fest, a couple of pretty ingenious curves are thrown into the story. It is not giving away much to say this is a nest of vampires — that isn’t the twist. The story beat 30 Days of Night to the Alaskan Vampire scene by 5 years. That might have been dazzling in 1995, but is still appreciated here — and not the twist.
The twists both have to do with Jeri’s role in this society and with one of these two men. It is not mind-blowing, but is just a nice bit of storytelling.
Other Stuff:
- [1] By the way, Jeri is a hot Chinese woman. OK, maybe the bartender dug Asian chicks. Or was TFTC trying to pass her off as Inuit?
- Minor nitpick: In the first scene, shown above, the vampire bartender was looking in a mirror to apply her lipstick. What the heck — there is nothing for her there. Yeah, vampires don’t have reflections, but mostly I mean because she is really unattractive.