Horror 666 Park Avenue

[superintelligentone]

http://www.backstage.com/review/tv-recap/6...pisode-1-pilot/

'666 Park Avenue' Recap: Episode 1, ‘Pilot’

By Mark Peikert
Posted Sept. 30, 2012, 11 a.m.

In case you were wondering, no, nobody in their right minds would live at a 666 address. The denizens of ABC’s “666 Park Avenue” actually live at 999 Park Ave. But when the light hits the raised numbers on the building exterior just so, the shadow reads “666.”

That out of the way, ABC’s latest serialized drama is pretty much what you wanted FX’s “American Horror Story” to be before you remembered that it’s a Ryan Murphy show, and as such, incapable of restraint. After a violist plays his fingers to bloody pulp, he returns to his apartment in The Drake and hastily packs a bag. Running out the main door and into a storm, he turns around at a noise…and gets sucked through a tiny panel in the front door and into oblivion. Creepy!

Also creepy are the overly confident Jane (Rachael Taylor) and Henry (Ben Annable), an earnest, lovey couple who have driven in from Queens about a job as building manager of The Drake. Henry was handpicked by the mayor to work in the mayor’s office, Jane smugs, while she has a degree in architecture that is currently gathering dust. Building owner Gavin Doran (Terry Quinn) doesn’t seem interested, until Jane rattles off some allegedly impressive questions about retrofitting the old building. Duly impressed, since he apparently knows nothing about how buildings, you know, don’t fall apart, Gavin offers her the job on the spot.

Success! Things are really starting to happen for this young couple! They have great jobs, a giant new apartment (the doorman is only slightly miffed at them for taking the job he’d been angling for), and lots of new neighbors they’re bound to be fast friends with! Like Brian (Robert Buckley), the playwright who may have the chiseled features of a male model (and we know from previous work, an equally chiseled torso to match), but who wears glasses and so is obviously, as his wife Lu says, “geeky cute.” Maybe Brian is a little too into spying on his sexy blonde neighbor across the way, but hey, his computer just happens to face the window. What’s he supposed to do, ignore her? Even when she takes a job as an assistant to his photographer wife? Not this geek!

Or how about Jane and Henry’s other new neighbor, overly accessorized Nona (Samantha Logan)? She helpfully tells new manager Jane about a leaky washer, and warns her about a petty thief roaming the halls. But twist! Nona is the thief! Shocking.

And then, of course, there are Gavin and his lovely wife Olivia (Vanessa Williams, freed from the freefall of late-season “Desperate Housewives”). They invite Jane and Henry to a gala at the symphony! And yeah, maybe Gavin spends a little too much time creepily eyeing the nape of Jane’s neck, and yes, it is slightly inappropriate for Olivia to secretly buy Jane a $4,000 Alexander McQueen gown, but they sure seem nice! Except when Olivia suddenly starts talking about her dead daughter over champagne and shopping, or when Gavin forces a grieving widower in the building to kill people to keep his zombie wife alive. But still! What’s a little necromancy or blackmail compared to the gift of an Alexander McQueen dress?

More importantly, what’s living over the gateway to hell compared with the chance to preserve a piece of genuine historical archirtecture like The Drake? Doing some research in the library (her Wi-Fi wasn’t set up yet, I guess), Jane discovers that the basement has a beautiful dragon mosaic and a door that is now blocked by cement. What could it all mean? I’m sure it’s nothing scary, like the vision Jane has of a former tenant flinging herself over the side of the building, whispering, “They’ll never let you leave.”

That tenant turns out to be the dead wife of the widower. When he’s unable to kill more than once—I thought it got easier with practice?—he loses first his wife and then is flung by Supernatural Forces into the wall of his bedroom, where it seems he’s plant food for the wallpaper vines. Is his apartment on the market yet?

And though Brian may be unable to bring his wife to orgasm (which is just absurd if you look at Buckley with your eyes), he’s not yet ready for the “temperamental” elevators to bash his wife’s head in. She’s hospitalized but it’s only a matter of time before he seeks some younger comfort, right? He just wants to be happy! As happy as Jane and Henry.

The longevity of their happiness is in doubt, however, especially when Nona fingers a necklace of Jane’s that was complimented by every single woman she encountered while wearing it, and has a sudden psychic flash of Jane tied up in the basement, wearing that McQueen, and screaming through a gag. Uh-oh!

 

[superintelligentone]

http://www.backstage.com/review/tv-recap/666-park-avenue-recap-episode-2-murmurations/

'666 Park Avenue' Recap: Episode 2, 'Murmurations'

By Mark Peikert
Posted Oct. 8, 2012, 11:01 a.m.

Oh, Jane! She (and her roots) are starting to suspect that the Drake may not be the start of a magical new life for her and her boyfriend—not fiancé, everyone, so stop asking!—Henry. Maybe it was the cardboard wall in the apartment of the man who killed to keep his zombie wife alive, the one that Jane blithely punched a hole in only to find hundreds of starlings fly at her head and then out the (closed) window. Maybe her dreams about that mysterious door behind a concrete wall are finally starting to get to her. But before she can start thinking about what the Drake is trying to tell her, she has to get passive aggressive with doorman Tony.

“I didn’t steal your job,” she tells him in a huff. “Mr. Doran hired me.” Yeah, well, Tony doesn’t really care, which is why he makes Jane call an exterminator for all those birds. That exterminator also seems to keep late hours, because everyone’s having dinner when he finally makes his way to the basement to demo the concrete wall blocking the secret door, like Jane asked him to. An exterminator who also doubles as a contractor? Sounds like a Groupon deal to me.

Alas, the starlings and the Drake don’t care for his pushiness. After Nona tells him to leave the birds alone (and steals his lucky rabbit’s foot), she has a Vision of him being attacked by birds on the street. And as Jessica Lange said in her Emmy acceptance speech, the vision “came to pass.”

Meanwhile, Robert Buckley (pictured here fully clothed; I refuse to use his character name because he and I have a history) is still tormented by that hot blonde. To be fair, Lu seems a little too brittle to be much fun in the sack, and that blonde is rarin’ to go. Why else would she make a copy of Lu’s keys, come into Robert Buckley’s apartment while he’s clad only in a towel, and kiss him?

At a soirée thrown by Gavin and Olivia (to which Tony was pointedly not invited, but hey, it’s cool, he had other doorman-y plans), Jane and Henry field questions from neighbor Danielle Tyler (Mili Avital) about their marital status. Danielle is lookin’ for love with a desperation that seems endemic to any 30-something New Yorker on television. When a date stands her up, Gavin introduces her to a friend of his (played by Mike Doyle, in one of two guest starring roles last night; he was also on “The Good Wife”). They end up in bed together on their next date—“Do you want me?” Danielle asks, needily—but then he has to leave. His wife, y’know? Danielle, needless to say, does not take the news well. In fact, she stabs him to death.

Gavin rather abruptly appears on the scene and leads Danielle down memory lane. Turns out, she’s been here before: Over the last few decades she’s killed many a man, including one who appeared to Jane in one of her many dreams. This one, at least, was an enemy of Gavin’s. Looks like that bird-pecked man isn’t the only exterminator at the Drake! Zing!

After Gavin kindly tells Jane that the starlings remain where they are—which Nona already told her, but nobody’s gonna listen to that still-undetected petty thief—he also reminds her to clean up the mess in the basement. Before starring in an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, the exterminator had actually broken down that pesky wall, and now the door is open for Jane to step through. But then it slams shut and seems to lock her in! Oh no!

Next week, a hand grabs Jane’s ankle. Hopefully, it yanks her down and touches up her roots. Only Heather Locklear can make roots that dark work.

 

[superintelligentone]

http://www.backstage.com/review/tv-recap/666-park-avenue-recap-episode-3-dead-dont-stay-dead/

'666 Park Avenue' Recap: Episode 3, 'The Dead Don't Stay Dead'

By Mark Peikert
Posted Oct. 14, 2012, 11:34 p.m.

I could spend all day debating just what the deal is with Aubrey Dollar’s obituary writer on last night’s episode of “666 Park Avenue.” Inspired by Gavin to let her imagination soar, Dollar’s Anne writes a fanciful obit claiming the deceased was a CIA agent, and lo and behold! The very next day he’s given a funeral that literally stops traffic. Pleased with herself and missing her dead mother (whose framed photo keeps her company in her cubicle), Anne writes a retraction to her mother’s recent obit. No, she’s not claiming it was all a mistake. Instead she randomly claims that her mother was a best-selling children’s book writer. Snap! She instantly has better hair and nicer clothes. Still a crummy job writing obituaries though. Which can’t be all bad, since she can afford an apartment in the Drake. (The writers of “666” are going for atmosphere, not logic, m’kay?) Impressed by her pluck, her editor gives her a plum assignment to dig deep into the mysterious KGB operative Kandinsky, whom she created for her first fictional obit. Guess what? He appears at her door, complete with the bag of torture tools she had given him in print.

I’d like to talk about how much I’ve always liked Aubrey Dollar, and how her guest star plot seems vaguely reminiscent of Sylvia Plath’s villanelle “Mad Girl’s Long Song” (“I think I made you up inside my head”), but ostensible star Jane insists that we talk about her. Oh, Jane. You and your roots are so boring, even Vanessa Williams can’t resist driving like a maniac just to frighten you. That car trip comes at the end of a sympathy lunch suggested by Gavin, who wanted Jane to distract Williams’ Olivia from the 10 anniversary of the death of their daughter Sasha. Olivia is gamely trying to have girl talk with Jane, asking about her sex life with Henry, but Jane is such a pill. “It’s… healthy,” she says. No wonder Olivia is shotgunning scotch.

Jane doesn’t take too long before she’s spilling out her fears about the Drake and her sanity. To be fair, the episode opened with her ankle being grabbed by ghost hands in that secret basement room, but Henry came and rescued her (far too quickly, for my tastes). “Sometimes I feel like the dead just won’t stay dead,” she mutters to Olivia. Then, realizing what she’s said, she jams her sensibly clad foot deeper into her mouth. “Oh, Olivia! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean Sasha.” Is it any wonder that Olivia almost kills them both on the way home?

Equally deadly is Henry’s political storyline, especially an hour after the machinations on “The Good Wife.” He’s a nice guy, see, and just doesn’t dream big enough! But Gavin knows all about dreams, and after a Masters of the Universe-style pep talk, he presses Henry to accost a council member at a club. Being pushy seems to agree with Henry, who lands a job from the encounter! He also has huge circle under his eyes, so maybe Jane’s night terrors are starting to interfere with his REM, too.

That job isn’t around too long, though, because after the council member rejects Gavin’s requests for assistant in acquiring a building project in Greenpoint (theory: it’s also a portal to hell, and Gavin wants to play Monopoly), Gavin shoves him down the elevator shaft. He makes up for it by requesting Henry’s presence on the penthouse terrace at three a.m., telling Henry he still needs to dream bigger. Why work on a campaign when you can have a campaign? A campaign to help Gavin realize his evil dreams!

Evil is the right word for Gavin, at least according to poor dead Sasha, That rainy day wreck wasn’t an accident, it turns out; she killed herself, and left Olivia a note calling her father “evil.” Olivia has never told Gavin, because it might hurt his feelings. Although that’s the thing about evil men: They don’t really mind if people notice too often they’re evil.

Oh, and Robert Buckley and his wife? They try to have sex before coitus interruptus happens courtesy of the hot blonde he’s been Rear Windowing. And later, when they take Henry and Jane out dancing, there she is again! Even Henry notices how hot she is from across the way. Well, Jane told us he’s healthy. We shouldn’t be surprised that he uses his eyes. For Jane’s sake, let’s hope his big dreams don’t include trading up in terms of arm candy.

 

[superintelligentone]

http://www.backstage.com/review/tv-recap/6...4-hero-complex/

'666 Park Avenue' Recap: Episode 4, 'Hero Complex'

By Mark Peikert
Posted Oct. 22, 2012, 12:01 a.m.

Know what we love about supernatural drama “666 Park Avenue”? How sometimes, the supernatural takes a backseat to a tedious local government drama for an entire episode. Why watch the ghosts of pale little girls whisper dire warnings when you can see clumsily executed political machinations instead?

This week belonged to Henry. Sweet, dull Henry, who just doesn’t know who to trust: his boss in the mayor’s office, or his wife’s boss at the Drake. Who is dirtier? After some quick writing by the Drake’s resident journalist, Aubrey Dollar, it turns out Henry’s boss is dirty—but only because she has the ability to make her stories come true. Under Gavin’s direction, she writes an exposé of Henry’s boss linking him to the mob. Why she should do that instead of writing an obituary for the KBG agent who has been torturing her was never explained this week. Instead, she called Gavin for help. Because why waste your time making anything come true just by publishing it in the New York Informer when you can call the owner of your apartment building?

The few moments spent away from Henry found Jane working on that locked suitcase she hauled out of the basement last week, her tongue sticking out of her mouth. And when wasn’t trying to pry open the lock (she can’t just cut it open?), she was seeing that dead little girl or returning sunglasses to the shrink of petty thief Nona. What, exactly, does she do all day? Every exterior shot of the Drake makes it seem enormous; shouldn’t she be busier?

Regardless, the entire episode builds to yet another fancy dress party. This time, unable to count on Vanessa Williams’ largesse, Jane buys a Dolce & Gabbana dress at a consignment shop for 90 percent off. She’s poor, you know? And she and Henry aren’t from New York. They’re simple Midwestern folk, who won’t let their different original zip code force them to bow down to the wealthy of Manhattan just because they happen to work for them. That’s why Henry, who has made a point of his morals ever since we met him, refrains from reading the files he stole from Gavin’s computer. Yeah, yeah, he stole them. But he didn’t read them, so he’s still a good guy.

In fact, Henry’s a hero. Nona stumbled out of the elevator with Henry and Jane and accidentally grabbed hold of Henry’s watch in a clumsily choreographed scene and saw Henry being shot by a man with a compass tattoo. She wisely warns Jane, and even more wisely refuses to explain. So when Jane sees a man with a compass tattoo at a party at the mayor’s house, she waits a beat or three and then bellows Henry’s name. That’s all it took for Henry to rescue his boss and save the day! Well, almost. Poor Aubrey Dollar takes a bullet to the head. Bye, Aubrey!

And that suitcase? It was filled with an ominous black dust that sometimes takes the shape of a reasonably attractive man. Looks like next week he’ll try to kill Jane. Better grab the DustBuster, girl.

 

[superintelligentone]

http://www.backstage.com/review/tv-recap/6...5-crowd-demons/

'666 Park Avenue' Recap: Episode 5: 'A Crowd of Demons'

By Mark Peikert
Posted Oct. 28, 2012, 7:27 p.m.

Oh, “666 Park Avenue,” you lover of wasted opportunities. Halloween seems tailor made for you to find your groove, and yet all you did was let Jane survive peril, render Vanessa Williams unconscious for most of the episode, and find new ways for Gavin to glower. You put Robert Buckley in a gladiator costume but let him keep his glasses? Thanks.

The episode opens with a flashback to 1929. Men in suits are discussing their brotherhood, before one of them peels off to kill his wife with a hatchet. She’s not terribly wounded, it seems, since she manages to walk into her daughter’s bedroom, crouch down to where the little girl—the same little girl whose ghost keeps chitchatting with Jane—to give her a necklace and tell her to keep it in the family.

Present day! Vanessa Williams is decorating the lobby for the Halloween party, and asks Jane to help. You know, the building’s manager? But Jane’s can’t help, because Henry has a television interview and she wants to support him. Vanessa Williams seems oddly unsurprised by this, but that might be because she has already chosen costumes for the Midwestern couple: Tippi Hedren in “The Birds” and a cowboy sheriff. Too on the nose, Vanessa!

At the studio, Henry and Jane meet Laurel, a fast-talking PR executive who wants to guide Henry to greatness. She’s as mystified by his aw-shucks attitude as we all are, and advises him to get over it if he wants to succeed. Jane is too busy pretending to be perkily amused by the interviewer’s on-air declaration of Henry as an eligible bachelor to care much.

To dispense with Robert Buckley’s wife Louise, she has an addiction to pain pills and flirts with a doctor resident of the Drake in the hopes of getting some. Pills, that is, though her devilish assistant convinces Robert Buckley that Lu is after the good doctor’s stethoscope, too. You are now caught up on a good 15 (dull) minutes of the episode.

The recipient of anonymous texts from someone threatening Vanessa Williams, Gavin enlists the aide of the doorman, who is carrying heat. Not that it does Vanessa Williams any good; escorting a friend into the apartment of the 1929 hatchet murder, Vanessa Williams is gassed by a mysterious man in a scary gas mask and whisked away. Oh no!

Jane, meanwhile, is so distracted by that dead girl that she takes time out of the swinging party to do some online research about the hatchet man…who’s in the apartment! With a hatchet! Alas, she is repeatedly rescued in the nick of time, possibly because the dead move slowly. She doesn’t do much to help herself, after all, since she comes to a dead halt as soon as she’s put a few yards between them. Maybe she keeps thinking the ghost will just teleport to her planned destination?

After dragging in an unidentified reveler as collateral damage and dragging herself up five flights in a dumbwaiter, Jane ends up in the hatchet apartment…where the dead man hacks a hole in the wall and is attacked by a murmur of starlings. I don’t recall any such help for poor Tippi, do you?

As for Vanessa Williams, she’s found tucked away and slumbering peacefully on her own terrace, just feet away from where the doorman was being hanged by the mysterious gas mask man. Gavin saves him, then orders him back to work. He didn’t die, right? Unfortunately, Gavin discovers that a large wooden box has been taken from his safe, replaced by the gas mask! What can it mean?

Of course, Jane doesn’t know about any of that. Nor does she have any inclination to tell Henry about all of the ghosts chasing her around their new apartment. Why should she? What would Henry do, suggest they move? In this real estate market? Better by far to just stay quick on her feet and rely on the kindness of strangers.

 

[superintelligentone]

http://www.backstage.com/review/tv-recap/666-park-avenue-recap-episode-6-diabolic/

'666 Park Avenue' Recap: Episode 6: 'Diabolic'

By Mark Peikert
Posted Nov. 4, 2012, 11:29 p.m.

Poor Jane. For some reason, people—even her beloved Henry—are having a difficult time believing that a ghost chased her around the Drake waving a hatchet. Even that dumbwaiter she used to drag herself up five flights testifies against her; when the cops (including Teddy Sears as a detective with steely eyes and a melting smile) open the door, it’s pretty clear that no one has disturbed the cobwebs in it for decades. And Henry flatly tells Jane that she should go and talk to someone; after all, her grandmother went insane. It’s called genetics. He’s not being mean!

Then again, Henry may just be looking for a reason to get Jane out of the picture. That publicist he picked up last week during his interview gets him into a room with some New York City political kingmakers, and reminds him that Jane is sweet, but she’ll never understand his political ambitions.

Gavin would probably agree, if he weren’t busy trying to figure out who gassed Olivia and stole the Red Box from his safe during the Halloween party. He doesn’t have to look too hard; while inching toward torturing the man hired to put a scare into Olivia with a speeding van, he sees his lawyer’s face blanch. It was him! So Gavin does what any powerful businessman with a flair for the occult would do: he condemns his attorney to an infinity spent wandering the empty, unending halls of the Drake in a parallel dimension, until the attorney proves useful. At least, his head proves useful.

Olivia still can’t shake her headache from what she thinks was just too many cocktails at the party. The in-house doctor assures he she’s fine, though chloroform showed up in her blood work. In exchange for keeping it quiet, Gavin loans him $50,000. Ostensibly, the money is for his student loans, but the doctor actually has quite a gambling problem. And when the money is all gambled away, an invisible brand leaves marks on his chest. Look who’s in Gavin’s power now!

For a man desperate to get an ornately carved wooden box back, Gavin never flinches. Even when he’s having drinks with the man who paid to have the box stolen, he acts as if he holds all the cards. That’s all the more shocking given that the man accosted Olivia at lunch and told her to try getting blood work done by a doctor who doesn’t live in the Drake. She does, and confronts Gavin with her newfound knowledge. He comes somewhat clean, and the series’ biggest surprise thus far is that Olivia doesn’t seem to be as innocent as we thought.

But back to those drinks. Maybe Gavin is cool because he has a gift for the thief. A beautifully wrapped box! (Between “666 Park Avenue” and “Revenge,” ABC has a monopoly on terrifying gifts.) After he leaves, the box is opened to reveal…the head of Gavin’s lawyer. Gavin found a use for him after all!

After a massive fight with Henry, in which Jane basically says she’s moving back to Indiana with or without him, he storms out and she angrily shoves everything off of a desk. That’s when she discovers that the hatchet man was one of the Brotherhood responsible for the elaborate dragon mosaic in the basement. And how she realizes that his murdered wife was her…grandmother? Or the little girl was he grandmother? But then why does the ghost take the form of the little girl? Regardless, Jane has family ties to the Drake—ties that will be more fully explored next week.

 

[superintelligentone]

http://www.backstage.com/review/tv-recap/6...ownward-spiral/

'666 Park Avenue' Recap: Episode 7: 'Downward Spiral'
By Mark Peikert
Posted Nov. 11, 2012, 11:29 p.m.

“666 Park Avenue” really needs to up its game. There were moments in the seventh episode, “Downward Spiral,” that belied its title, but then there were seriously airless subplots (paging Robert Buckley and his wife’s sexy assistant and their adulterous affair!) that threatened to derail the proceedings. Of course, regardless of content, Vanessa Williams’ Olivia always remains an impeccably unreadable cipher, this week demolishing the entire state of Indiana with one affectless comment.

This week was at its strongest with the surprisingly potent team of Jane and Nona, who got all “Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors” sharing dreams. Nona, as it turns out, was born right there in the Drake, in one of its infamous elevators. And as an old photo reveals, Jane was running around the Drake’s lobby at the age of 8, though she has no memory of it. Where the photo came from wasn’t regarded as important enough to mention, of course.

There was a lot of talk talk talk about Jane’s desire to return to Indiana and what that means for Henry’s political career, as well. Since Jane is the star of the show, her retreat would never work (alas), so most of that plot was mere filler. Though it did finally prompt Henry to try to put a ring on it. Most of the tab was picked up by Vanessa Williams, of course, since neither Henry nor Jane seem to have the funds to pay for their caviar tastes.

The Not So Good Doctor also popped up again, horrified that the scalpel he sewed into KGB agent Kandinsky’s stomach was then used to kill two men. The scene in which Kandinsky pushed the scalpel out of his abs was easily the most gruesome thing “666” has yet shown, including Jane’s various unflattering hairstyles. Frustrated that he’s being forced to work off the $50,000 that Gavin loaned him, the Not So Good Doctor showed up at one of the Durand’s many soirees with a gun, pressing it into Gavin’s back. Just then, Mr. Shaw, the man who stole the red box from Gavin’s safe, collapsed on the floor in convulsions from (and I’m not making this up) a kiss administered by Vanessa Williams with poisoned lipgloss.

Episode’s end found Henry waiting in his apartment, candles glowing romantically on the floor amid scattered rose petals, while Jane and Nona wandered around the draft basement. Thanks to Nona’s near-comatose grandmother, Jane realized that her precious locket is actually the eye of the mosaic dragon decorating the floor. When she presses it in, gears start whirring and the floor opens up to reveal a surprisingly dust free red carpet-lined staircase leading…somewhere. Despite spending the entire episode telling everyone who would listen that the Drake scares her, Jane began a slow descent—as the floor closed over her head, trapping her. Did the writers get my emails? Will we know have a Jane free “666 Park Avenue”? According to the preview for the next episode in two weeks, no. She’ll just be hanging around by her lonesome while Henry sadly staples Missing posters around town.