Brimstone

The Review

Humans have no proof where they go after death. Perhaps Charon, the ancient Greek ferryman, will require a coin for passage across the River Styx. Maybe the Vikings got it right, and mead and merriment await at Odin's table in Valhalla. We might open our eyes to discover that Anubis of the Egyptian pantheon already has our heart on the scale, ready to weigh against the feather of Truth.

Human afterlife might be a mystery, but we do know what happens when a television program bites the dust. The good ones get replicated on disk [a far more effective preservation than formaldehyde-filled veins] and encased in a box more lovely than a high-end casket. The cast and crew provide commentaries as heartfelt as funeral eulogies, and the series gains an immortality every time one of its disks is loaded in a DVD drive. The demise of a well-loved show can even inspire dedicated fans to flock to annual conventions where they worship story and cast.

Not so lucky are the series that fail to meet expectations. We do not mourn their passing, and their hereafter consists of an occasional marathon on a niche network that only insomniacs or the unemployed are likely to catch.

Brimstone [1998-99] is one such show. The series hoped to follow Det. Ezekiel Stone [Peter Horton] as he retrieved 113 escapees from Hell—five years of work!—but met its demise after half a season. The short life of this program mirrors that of its main character. Before his death, Stone was a decorated New York City detective, but then he killed his wife's rapist and for this transgression finds himself sentenced to Hell and now in the Devil's employ. Like Stone, Brimstone has some praiseworthy characteristics, but the series also sins in ways that have earned it an inglorious afterlife of reruns on the horror network Chiller.

One factor in the plus column is a distinctive look. In the pilot, director/cinematographer Felix Enriquez Alcalá reduces the glitz and glow of modern life to a grainy blue-gray, meant, perhaps, to capture how the now-dead Stone experiences the world of the still-living. In later episodes, when a strong color does make an appearance—a green pear or flowing red fabric—it emphasizes the symbol—a fresh start, for example, or a propensity for violence. The desaturation works well for New York City, where the series begins, but is less effective when Stone arrives in Los Angeles. We imagine that we are still in the cold, dreary Northeast [an idea reinforced by Stone's layered clothing] until we experience the disconnect of palm trees waving in the breeze.

Also to the series' credit is excellent casting. John Glover, for example, makes an especially good Devil. His hawk-like nose and swept-back hair evoke a bird of prey. These avian features—as well as the Devil's distaste for swearing and his use of angelic script in marking Stone's skin—are a nice homage to fallen angels Gabriel [Christopher Walken] and Lucifer [Viggo Mortensen] of The Prophecy [1995], a brilliant study of celestial beings gone bad. We enjoy the Devil's appearances, for he is witty and quick to share insight into the afterlife, but Glover tinges his character with just enough malice that we know better than to trust one word out of his mouth.

The Devil is, however, the wrong character for the series. Creative team Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris have diminished what should be a frightening figure by emphasizing his lack of power. The Devil should not be an incompetent unable to secure his own gates. We expect stupid humans like Pandora or the arrogant EPA agent in Ghostbusters to unleash evil on the world. When the Devil does choose to loose the damned, as Lucifer does in the "Season of Mists" storyline in Neil Gaiman's Sandman, his decision is well motivated, not a security lapse.

Better would have been a minor demon whose ineptitude had allowed the 113 sinners to escape. The audience could relate to an underling who, fearing his boss's punishment once the mistake is discovered, is scrambling to rectify the situation. And Stone should be smart enough to realize that regaining his life as a reward for the bounty hunting has no precedent in Christian mythology and likely not within the Devil's power.

At first, Horton seems a bad choice for the main character. He is too pretty. A man motivated to murder his wife's rapist should be pudgy and pockmarked, like Det. Andy Sipowicz [Dennis Franz] of NYPD Blue. We expect that level of rage and revenge from someone who won't tolerate harm to the beautiful woman who saw past his physical imperfections. But Horton sells his character, and we soon believe that Stone did love his wife more than the attention he got for his good looks and would go to extreme measures to avenge her violation.

The real problem with Stone's character is that he needs a partner—not necessarily another detective—to force viewers to consider different attitudes and perspectives. The series provides a number of contenders. Max [Lori Petty], the tech-savvy front desk clerk, would work, but the writers limit her contributions to wisecracks about Stone's shortcomings. Det. Sgt. Delilah Ash [Teri Polo] would have made an excellent Scully to Stone's Mulder, but the writers have other plans for her character [and expect the audience to swallow that Hell's denizens don't make a blip on one another's "damned-dar"]. Assistant DA Julia Trent [Michelle Forbes] could have provided a nice Law & Order cop-prosecutor balance to the program, especially if she had insisted on applying what she considered superior human justice as Stone caught his bounties. In "Executioner," when she and Det. Ash are sizing each other up in the courthouse hallway, we imagine an intriguing triangle developing as the two women compete to save an already damned dead man, blind to the fact that mistakes in their own lives might send them down his same path.

If Stone had a partner who was an atheist or non-Christian, the collision of cosmologies would have given the audience moments to consider the validity of each. Perhaps Horton, whose series work included ensemble dramas like thirtysomething, wanted the full focus on himself, but his lone perspective doesn't get viewers to question their assumptions or flirt with other world views, what should be a goal when a show deals with matters of religious faith.

Despite the lack of partner, some episodes do allow viewers to grapple with moral tangles. In "Repentance," a Dutch SS officer responsible for Jewish deaths, tries to make amends protecting the homeless in present-day LA. Stone must still return this soul to Hell, even though he [and the audience] cry foul. Most episodes, however, have underdeveloped, simplistic plots: 1) The Devil appears with a cryptic clue about Stone's new quarry, 2) Stone investigates, surprising a suspect who flees, usually by shattering a window, 3) When Stone catches up, the two fight, but Stone manages to destroy the escapee's eyes, and 4) The soul, spinning and wailing, resembles a toilet flush of fireflies as it returns to Hell. The repetitive nature of the episodes make us feel we are watching Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Stone does have Shaggy's scruffiness, but again, where's his Scooby?

Good television should create worlds that challenge us in ways our real lives do not. No one willingly wants to experience the desperation, violence, and poverty of Baltimore as it appears in The Wire or the unpredictability and primitive island conditions in Lost, but those shows ask us to imagine surviving—even succeeding—in harsh circumstances, and as we picture ourselves there, as we watch characters with our same qualities grow or fail, we gain insight into our own strengths and weaknesses.

Brimstone, however, creates a world no one wants to visit, not even from the living room couch. If people really do get sent to Hell as punishment for their behavior in life, then God exists, but in "Encore," we watch the Divine Father allow a serial rapist to violate one woman after another—first in life and then after his return from death—but then reward the man who finally puts a stop to the abuse with eternal damnation. The Devil has pointed out that "God's universe doesn't work like the American legal system," but where is our feel-good moment in that story? We conclude that this God must hate women, and there's enough misogyny in real life that we don't need to see it practiced by the Supreme Being on television. Better to watch The Wire or Lost where we can denounce the human failings of a corrupt government or secret society.

I can imagine FOX executives interested when the idea for this show was pitched. I can imagine those executives pleased by the look and unfolding events of the pilot and green-lighting the project. I can imagine them thinking that here, finally, was the new supernatural thriller to replace the exhausted story in The X-Files. And Brimstone could have been that series. But, as so many of us do, it squandered its gifts—an intriguing idea, beautiful cinematography, and an excellent cast—on thoughtless development of character and story.

To View the Season

At YouTube, "Executioner," the story featuring Michelle Forbes, is now available, along with these other episodes: "Pilot," "Poem," "Heat," "Encore," and "Slayer."

In my market, Brimstone airs in 5-6 episode blocks every 2-3 weeks on Chiller. If you have a DVR, do a search and choose "Record Series." You'll have all 13 episodes in no time.

Cross Post

This review exists at Amazon US.