MEMORY LANE: REMEMBERING "KINDRED: THE EMBRACED"

In the immortal words of Thomas Magnum, I know what you're thinking. I've already mentioned this show somewhere in my "Gone Too Soon" subseries here on Stone Cold Prose, and am now treading over already-trodden, if unhallowed, ground. This is half true. KINDRED: THE EMBRACED was indeed among the first-season cancellations I have listed and discussed in previous blogs: however, I only lightly touched upon the series, and felt the subject worthy of a fuller examination. With Halloween slowly creeping up on us, I also thought it fitting that "Memory Lane" continues to walk down the path of horror television, a surprisingly rare genre of the medium.

And now, to cases.

KINDRED: THE EMBRACED came and went so quickly in 1996 that if you blinked, you missed it. And it turned out most people did, since it was cancelled after only eight episodes. I myself remember the TV trailers and publicity stills very vividly, but I too must have "blinked" because I never saw any of the shows before they were consigned to the dustbin of TV history. In a sense, I am glad of this, because I believe I would have mourned its demise. Produced by the legendary Aaron Spelling and his less legendary, but no less important partner, E. Duke Vincent, this toothly prime-time soap opera concerned the doings of five vampire clans based in San Fransisco, who were ruled over with some difficulty by a prince named Julian Luna (Mark Frankel). In addition to contending with all sorts of grief from the clans (collectively known as "the Kindred"), Luna makes the mistake of falling for a beautiful human reporter (Kelly Rutherford) who obviously can't be let in on his secret identity, while at the same time, fending off the attentions of a revenge-obsessed cop (C. Thomas Howell), who wants to dust Julian for ordering the death of his (vampire) girlfriend.

The world of KINDRED is a very complex one, based in part off the role-playing game "Vampire: The Masquerade." The city is ruled by its prince, who keeps a counsel of "primogen," or vampire clan leaders, as his counsel. The vampires, though generally at cross-purposes with each other, are generally united in maintaining "the masquerade," i.e. the policy of hiding their existence from humans. They do this by infiltrating human agencies, such as the police, and by spreading their considerable wealth around to shut people up. (Violating the masquerade is punishable by death.) The powers of the vampires are somewhat different than in traditional vampire lore (for one, they can walk around in daylight, provided they've recently fed), and in fact each clan's vamps have somewhat different characteristics (including physical differences in the case of the monstrous Nosferatu). Stand-alone episodes aside, most of the show's drama comes from tension between Luna and his chief rival, Eddie Fiori (the ubiquitous Brian Thompson), who leads the gangsterish Brujah clan and isn't content with his role as second vampiric banana. In addition, there is a Romeo and Juliet storyline between the leader of a biker clan Gangrels, Cash (Channon Roe) and Julian's snarky neice Sasha (Brigid Brannagh) which is terribly overplayed but nevertheless adds depth to the show.

Fans of Spelling's shows will recognize all of his trademarks here – period fashion, gallons of hair gel, extraordinarily beautiful actors who nevertheless look slightly freakish, and lots and lots of soapy melodrama At its worst, this show was embarrassingly bad: the writing, and therefore the acting, were all over the place, Howell was dreadfully miscast, and the vampire makeup on the “Nosferatu” clan looked like something you'd find at the discount bin at Party City the day after Halloween. Nonetheless, I mourned the cancellation of this show: it had such a fabulous premise that it couldn't help but improve from week to week, and indeed, its eight episodes tell a nearly complete story that resolves most of the plot lines, making it satisfying to watch as a kind of unofficial mini-series. Never mind a second season: I'd have been content if this one had simply been allowed to complete its first. Unfortunately, the series' too-handsome-to-be-human star, Mark Frankel, was killed in a motorcycle accident shortly after its cancellation, preventing any possible reunion, and in any case “Kindred” died such a quick death that it has only a small cult following and is somewhat unlikely to be tapped for a reboot. Interestingly, Spelling was to try another supernaturally-themed show set in San Fransisco just two years later, and scored a big hit with CHARMED. Fans of "Kindred" will recognize that some of the shots used in the opening season of "Charmed" were actually taken from "Kindred," including the iconic "park bench overlooking the bridge." What's more, just about every (surviving) actor in the cast later appeared on "Charmed" in some capacity or other, including Stacey Haiduk, Brigid Brannagh, Channon Roe, Jeff Kober, Brian Thompson, etc. Many appeared on BUFFY (or ANGEL) as well. It must have been a bitter pill for Spelling to watch BUFFY take off like a rocket not even a full year after this show went off the air, but in fairness, BUFFY was much the superior product in every way. I just wish KINDRED had had time to mature. It was in most ways an objectively bad television show, but was already improving when it disappeared, and its world was a rich, sexy and aesthetically beautiful one. Episodes like "Nightstalker," "Live Hard, Die Young and Leave A Good-Looking Corpse," and the finale, "Cabin the Woods" showed the enormous potential it possessed. The intersection of the supernatural world and the world of cops, reporters and other ordinary people is one which has rarely been explored on television, and that brings me to the deeper end of this particular pool.

At the time of this writing, I cannot think of too many prime-time television shows which fully embraced horror thematically even if they were not striving for scares at every point, and if we set aside anthologies of the HITCHHIKER, FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES, NIGHT GALLERY, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, CHANNEL ZERO, AMERICAN HORROR STORY, etc., etc.) we immediately reduce the smallish total figure. Off the top of my head, I think of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE OUTER LIMITS, KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER, WEREWOLF, FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES, FOREVER KNIGHT, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, ANGEL, CHARMED, THE X-FILES, SUPERNATURAL, FRINGE and STRANGER THINGS. The various WALKING DEAD shows can be tossed in there as well along with various others, but when we compare however many the final number would be to, say cop shows, doctor shows, lawyer shows, etc., the outcome is a total massacre. What's more, many of these series have come along post X-FILES and BUFFY, making them much less risky prospects. KINDRED was a brave attempt to revive a genre of storytelling which wasn't anywhere near as popular at the time as it is today, and which was therefore a much bigger risk than, say, 90210 or MELROSE PLACE. It was rather a mess, due to various issues the producers could not or did not overcome before the pilot was shot, but its boldness should not be dismissed out of hand. Horror, as a rule, suffers more than any other genre from good ideas gone wrong: i.e. from bold conceptions which are poorly executed. A lot of this comes from the fact it is not a respected art form and therefore gets little of the time, attention, money and craft your average, generic law-firm or detective show would recieve as a matter of course. Paramount Pictures has made almost a fetish of shitting on fans of the FRIDAY THE 13TH series in part because the suits consider the franchise itself an embarrassment. The stark fact is that horror is often considered to be only a step above pornography no matter the medium by which it is disseminated, be it print or celluloid. Stephen King has railed most eloquently about this, but it hasn't changed the underlying feelings and prejudices regarding horror television.

So where does that leave us? What is the legacy of this failed and forgotten series, a quarter century down the road? And is there anything to be learned from its demise?

The most obvious bequest of KINDRED is that Spelling was undaunted enough by its failure to produce CHARMED a few years down the road, which by then had had BUFFY to blaze a trail for it. CHARMED was an enormous success and had a huge influence over a whole generation of young women, very few of whom probably knew how many of its guest stars had themselves starred on KINDRED. They were, of course, very different shows: KINDRED took itself with great seriousness, while CHARMED rarely took itself seriously at all. But it seems unlikely to me that you would have had the one without the other. Indeed, setting CHARMED in San Fransisco seems to have been a little bit of a fuck-you from Spelling, and if it was, well, more power to him.

More directly, I look at KINDRED not as a might-have-been or a cautionary tale, but an inspiration and a reminder all at once. It is an inspiration in that it was a long shot to begin with, yet enough people in the notoriously cynical and cowardly citadels of Hollywood chanced it might succeed that it actually saw -- so to speak -- the light of day. It's an inspiration in that its creators, when they knew it was going to be canceled, had the integrity to wind up the story in such as way as to leave its meager audience satisfied rather that simply dangling. And it is a reminder that those who work in the bloody medium of horror need do more than come up with interesting and intriguing concepts: they have to execute them properly. The idea of rival vampire clans secretly holding power in a major American city is a fascinating one: it should have yielded better results. Enthusiasm for an idea is all well and good, but you are judged by how you finish the race, not by how you start it. KINDRED suffered principally from a confusion over whether it was a vampire show or a soap opera with vampire themes, and that was an avoidable pitfall. The time to shake out the bugs is before you finish the pilot, not three or four episodes -- or seasons -- into a series. Some of this, of course, is impossible, but because something is impossible doesn't mean you shouldn't try: the very act will go a long way toward improving you.

Someday, I believe KINDRED will get another bite -- ha ha! -- at the throat of television via the inevitable reboot. And unlike most reboots, this prospect doesn't leave me shivering.