Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Tuesday TV Touchbase: Interview With The Vampire


So a few weeks back, I watched the season finale of Interview With The Vampire.  

Wait! The season finale... already? After... hold on let, me count?

Seven? Really? Seven episodes counts as a season? 

SEVEN?!?!?

Uh oh! Time for 

OLD GUY RANT ALERT! 

Seven episodes for a season of a TV show? Why in my day, dagnabbit, a TV show would make 26 episodes for a season!  Well, some of them episodes may have been CRAP but jumpin' jehosaphat, them 26 episodes got made, by gum! 

Now some young whippersnappers make all of seven episodes and they call that a season?

Why these kids today!  

<and it kind of goes on for a bit from there>

And that was your....

OLD GUY RANT ALERT! 

OK, where were we? Oh yeah....

So the first season of Interview With The Vampire ends on a powerful and dangerous note. Claudia is well into her third decade of her vampire existence but trapped in the pre-pubescent body of a 14 year old and she is angry, frustrated and most of all has had it with Lestat's shit. 

Louis is also at his wit's end with Lestat's behavior but their romantic and sexual bond still exerts a strong control over Louis. So Claudia proposes to be done with Lestat once and for all.

She's gonna kill him. 

The elaborate plan to kill Lestat seems to go awry when it's revealed that Antoinette, Lestat's human female lover turned vampire, has been following Claudia and knows the plan. 

But not all of it and Lestat dies. 

Instead of dumping his body in the incinerator, Louis deposits Lestat's body into a old trunk which is taken to the city dump.  

Nearly 90 years in the future in the year 2022 during the interview with Louis, Daniel Malloy accuses Louis of still be enthralled by Lestat, leaving his body in a pile of garbage swarming with rats is a chance for Lestat to recover. 

In the present, Malloy gets a surprise revelation. Louis' familiar, Rashid, is in fact a vampire named Armand, a vampire over 500 years old with the power of flight and to resist the light of the sun. 

And that is where we leave things at the end of season 1.

Jacob Anderson as Louis and Sam Reid as Lestat are providing some first rate performances but a shout to Eric Bogosian as Daniel Molloy. As the interviewer in 2022, there's not a lot for Molloy to do with most of the action occuring in the early 20th century but Bogosian more than holds his own with his brief moments on screen, calling Louis on his bullshit and his efforts to gloss over certain uncomfortable facts.   

And enough can't be said about Bailey Bass as Claudia, a vampire trapped in the body of a pre-adolescent 14 year old girl. Bass navigates the complex currents of Claudia's character, her early girlish enthusiasm at being a vampire (she's absolutely giddy over picking out her own coffin) to the evolving rage at her tormented state, growing in intelligence and wisdom but confined to a body that will forever mark her as a child. 

The dark malevolence on display as Claudia plots Lestat's downfall and destruction is a wonder to behold.  

By the way, I recently caught some of the Interview With The Vampire  movie and although I did not see all of it, I feel comfortable making the assessment that this new TV series is the superior production.  

And that is that for the Tuesday TV Touchbase this week.

Next week we touchbase on the latest season of The Crown

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here. 

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