Friday, January 27, 2017

Every Haunting Hour Ever #54: Terrible Love


Season: 3
Episode: 14
Original Airdate: February 9, 2013
Director: Ken Friss
Writer(s): Natalie Lapointe & Greg Yolen

Heerrree's Azu! Yeah I don't really have a proper intro this time so... here's the review. 

Maggie (Emma Grabinsky) is hopelessly infatuated with Brendan (Joel Semande), but he doesn't even notice her. When she messed up a chemical experiment, she meets Cupid (David DeLuise) – depicted as a man in a white suit instead of a boy or young man with wings, which he explains away as old photographs of himself. Maggie commissions him to shoot an arrow at Brendan to make him fall for her, but when Maggie worries that the love potion will wear off, she asks Cupid for another hit, which he warns against, but does at her request which drives Brendan to go into a love-induced insanity. When she tries to break with him, he gets angry and chases her. When she asks Cupid for help, he says "You wanna be alone? You got it." Cupid then pushes Brendan down the stairs. 

One of the things I liked about the episode was David DeLuise as Cupid. In this episode, Cupid is depicted as a man in a white suit as opposed to a boy or young man with wings. Not only that but instead of using arrows, he uses darts filled with chemicals (though he still uses a bow to shoot them). Honestly, I like this take on the Cupid character. It keeps true to his character while updating certain aspects of him at the same time. Not only that but like with the episode Headshot, it never goes too far with the modernizations. As for DeLuise himself, I think he does a relatively decent job at playing the character. Not only that, but I also like how he and the main character play off of each other since it leads to some really funny lines. 

The other thing I got into was the tone of the episode. For a good chunk of the episode, it gradually becomes more unnerving and tense, especially after Brenden is hit by the first love dart. However, once he's hit with the second dart, things get even more tense and horrifying and it eventually reaches its peak when Brenden chases Maggie throughout the school. You know, truth be told, I was on the edge of my seat after Brenden was hit by the second dart. After this point, he becomes a full fledged infatuated psycho, even going as far as to buying Maggie a fucking Tarantula as a Valentine's Day gift!   As you can tell, Brenden becomes ten times scarier but is also kind of funny at the same time. I think this is because the actor playing him is really having a lot of fun with the role and is just hamming it up.

One last thing I enjoyed was the ending. Without spoiling too much, the ending, in terms of the tone, is such a vast contrast from the rest of the episode, that it's just flat out hilarious! 

Overall, Terrible Love is a strange yet enjoyable episode. It's also an episode that manages to make love and Valentines Day scary, which I think is a great accomplishment for this show. 

Overall Grade: A

1 comment:

  1. This sounds this has good horror elements and shows how one extreme or another can be dangerous. I also thought it was funny to read Cupid describe typical portrayals as being old pictures.
    -Raidra

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