WOLF LAKE (2001)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

Before re-screening the nine episodes of this failed series, I remembered only one or two snippets from the show, which is admittedly more than I usually retain from a series I only saw once, twenty years ago. That said, when I watched the show with my reviewer's hat on, those snippets were the only good parts of the program. 

Cop John Kanin (Lou Diamond Phillips) proposes to girlfriend Ruby Wilder (Mia Kirschner) and she accepts-- only to flee to the wilds of Seattle the next day. John tracks her to the small town of Wolf Lake, ruled by the dominant Cates family, and though Ruby avoids contact with her former fiancee, John eventually learns that (a) Ruby is a scion of the Cates family, and (b) her family expects her to marry a local guy named Tyler Creed. But only the viewers, not John, learn that the town plays host to a clan of werewolves.

This might sound like a promising soap-opera, but the characters remain flat and uninvolving despite the efforts of talented actors. Sometimes a character acts precipitately for no stated reason, like Ruby's stepmother Vivian (Sharon Lawrence) sleeping with Ruby's intended ahead of nuptials. Graham Greene has many scenes as a guy who seems to know where all the bodies are buried and keeps saying cryptic things that don't engender mystery or humor. And for a show whose title and premise offer lycanthropes, there are precious few loup-garous.

The best thing about the DVD collection is that it contains both the unaired pilot episode, whose premise was reworked for the flop series, and a brief reflection from series creator John Leekley, who wrote the pilot but was not associated with the series proper. In 1996 Leekley had created and co-written a vampire series for the Fox network, KINDRED: THE EMBRACED. Although KINDRED only lasted one episode less than LAKE's run, apparently CBS asked Leekley to repeat the same act, but with werewolves in Washington (State). The pilot does create a more evocative sense of the werewolf mythology, and though Leekley utters no overt criticisms of the official series, he does say he thought the concept required strong investment. What probably happened is that CBS didn't like Leekley's pilot and went to some other showrunners to rework the concept; showrunners who didn't really like the premise and so played down the werewolves (except for a tedious arc about an adolescent Wolf Lake girl who fears that having sex will make her turn hairy). Leekley's original concept might or might not have resulted in a better series, but the LAKE we have is definitely one big drip.