Premiering on June 20th, 2010, The Gates is a new show on ABC. The show is set in an ultra exclusive gated community and centers on a new family moving in. It is revealed to the viewer – AND THIS IS THE TWIST – that the community is home to vampires, werewolves, witches and other creatures that go bump in the night. INSERT DRAMATIC MUSIC HERE
So first is what exactly do you need to know about?
The focus of the show is on a regular family that is moving from Chicago to The Gates. The father, Nick Monohan (played by Frank Grillo), is a former homicide detective from Chicago that resigned and moved his family to The Gates after scandal. Nick hopes that the move will allow them to start over, free of the drama that he brought into their lives. However, this does not go according to plan. Nick is unfamiliar with the fact that residents of The Gates badly want their privacy protected, and Nick’s detective background ruffles some feathers early on.
Nick’s wife, Sarah, appears to be a stereotypical housewife. However, it seems that her character is being positioned to be a nexus point between two competing witches and Claire Radcliff – a vampire played by Rhona Mitra. Additionally, she seems as though she’s being set up to be the character least likely to investigate the mysterious nature of The Gates.
Nick and Sarah also have two teenage children; Charlie and Dana. Dana seems to be the overachieving younger child that is trying to be optimistic about the move in an attempt to relieve her parents of some stress. Charlie seems to be introduced as a typical outsider, yet intelligent and attractive enough to gain the attention of a star football player’s girlfriend. While this is a cliché plot, it works as a means to introduce werewolves to the viewer and how they will be depicted in the show; which is that werewolves for this show will be humans that can transform into animal wolves, not humanoid version.
The ongoing tension of the series is whether or not Nick or his family will discover that monsters walk among them. Adding to this tension is that the previous sheriff was found murdered. The twist with this death is that instead of being killed by an “animal” attack, the former sheriff was shot in the head.
The murder mystery and the family drama within the Monohan clan seem to be the most straight forward elements of this series; or in other words, the most non-fantasy orientated. However, even the rest of the series isn’t too hard to grasp. Like Whedon’s Buffy and Angel, this series will use the person’s mystical aspects as a metaphor for a problem normal people deal with. Rhona Mitra’s character, Claire Radcliff, has to deal with her addiction to blood, but her desire to live a “normal” life. Andie Bates’ (played by Skyler Samuels) slow transformation into a succubus is a clear parallel to confusion teens feel as they discover and deal with their sexuality.
Beyond examining the entertainment factor, The Gates provides an interesting example of how entertainment producers are desperately trying to keep the monster genre from going stale. Consider this, SciFiWire recently reported that Neil Gaiman had given up on a book about vampires because he felt that there was so much vampire related stuff out there.
If Gaiman feels that there are too many vampire franchises that present an original concept to be heard is impossible, I have to wonder how less talented people are approaching the genre then. And while I have not been blown away by the quality, I do find the idea of humans and monsters living in an elitist and exclusive community to be an original twist.
Overall, this isn’t a terrible show. It’s nothing that will change your life, but it will keep you entertained for an hour. After all, if you’re not watching TV, what are you going to do…read?
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