TV Review: ‘FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, Season 1 Episode 2: BLOOD RUNS THICK’

It’s inevitable that when you take a movie and expand it into a television series, flashbacks are needed. At least with “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series” what you’re flashing back to is interesting. Or so one would hope, considering the bank robbery was brutal and daring and, well, badass.

The opening scene of “Blood Runs Thick” takes us back to just before the robbery in Abilene. The Gecko boys are burritos and Seth messes up Richie’s order. Seth, being the laid back one (of course, his tacos aren’t messed up), tells Richie to chill out and we’re treated here to the neurotic Richie we loved from the movie: “This is chicken mole. Not to mention you put pico de gallo on them. You do realize mole is the sauce, right? You don’t sauce the sauce, Seth.”

Some other tidbits in the conversation that might be important later is how Richie’s supposedly living in the woods because no one in the criminal world wants to associate with him and that knife from episode one? Richie won that in a knife throwing contest. They walk away from breakfast buddies, and enter the bank.

Cut to the Fullers riding around in their Winnebago and like in the movie, mom is still dead and the family is off on an unplanned sabbatical to find themselves. Jacob is flipping stations and starts singing. Kate comes from the back and expresses her anger and disappointment at missing her senior year and prom. She even has a boyfriend, Kyle, who’s coming after her. It’s a nice little scene that establishes the chilly relationship between the two, which was done just fine in the movie, but here it has a lot more depth.

Immediate impressions of the Fullers (as compared to their movie counterparts) aren’t favorable. Madison Davenport is playing Kate in the show. While she’s certainly cute in the way actresses are nowadays, she lacks the sleaze and ditziness of Juliette Lewis’s Kate. I simply cannot picture this girl turning to Richie and asking him to eat her pussy… please. While they’ve done a great job building more tension between father and daughter, she seems a bit too innocent for that.

As far as Jacob, let’s face it, folks, Robert Patrick is a fine actor, but he will never be Harvey Keitel. Hell, if Patrick ever reprises another Keitel character again, even in a dream, he better wake up and apologize.

The exception to the Fuller rule is Brandon Soo Hoo, who takes over as adopted son Scott. He’s much cooler than Ernest Liu, which is a good thing. In the movie, it was hard to empathize with Scott and when the vampires ripped him apart, did anyone really care? Upon our first meeting Scott in the Winnebago, he’s just finished taking a giant crap, he’s reading wrestling magazines, and giving Kate a major ration of shit. Later, he even shouts out a “What the frak?” He’s solidified as the geek, a kid you can actually like, and if he dies later in the season, we might actually care. BSG references always rock in my world.

The Fullers drive by Benny’s World of Liquor, which has smoke pouring out of it. The scene switches to Gonzalez pulling McGraw’s body out of the store and calling for help. After calling it in, he requisitions a civilian’s car and goes off in pursuit of the Geckos. He runs into a roadblock and he knows the Geckos have slipped by.

The next scene, with the Geckos driving down the road is another fun movie moment. While they’re talking, Richie holds up his hand and looks through the bullet hole at Seth before wrapping it up with a duct tape Band-Aid. We find out that Richie’s crazy seems to be fairly new, while in the movie, it was implied Richie had always been a little nuts. Richie, after hearing his voices, even tells Seth that something bad is coming and we’re all just sheep. We’re solidifying into the weird world of vampires early and I wonder how this is going to bear on his fate and how much it’s going to change it. What comes of the next few scenes with the Geckos is more sibling fighting, more of Richie’s crazy, and well, Richie really wants his knife back.

Of course, Gonzalez finds Richie’s knife in Earl’s pocket. Wouldn’t you know that the symbol on the knife is the same symbol the Cartel Killer is putting on dead bodies. It also happens to be the symbol Richie drew on the hands of the two young ladies they held captive in the liquor store. He pleads with his superior to follow up and, naturally, he’s rebuked, giving him the perfect motive to go off half-cocked.

The series is winding the characters together in ways that weren’t presented in the film. It’s coincidence the Geckos and the Fullers meet in the movie and Seth takes them for the Winnebago and that’s it. I mentioned earlier that Kate’s boyfriend, Kyle, is following the Fullers, his intention to rescue Kate from her father’s impromptu road trip. It’s very noble, very teen romance, and as it turns out, very stupid. He agrees to meet Kate on a service road behind the restaurant where her family has stopped for lunch.

While on the road, Kyle comes across Carlos. Instantly, you’re on your guard, wondering why the hell Carlos isn’t in Mexico. You’re doubly guarded when he raises his hand to stop Kyle’s truck and it starts to burn in the sunlight. That is, if you can overlook the fact his face isn’t burning, too. You’d think it would be, as all he’s wearing is a cowboy hat and his skin is surely bathing in sunlight, but we’ll not nitpick the details to death. Yet.

Carlos asks for a ride on the premise his car ran out of gas and Kyle, being the good Christian he is, agrees. As it turns out, Carlos is a blood sucking fiend from beyond the grave and he promptly sucks the blood right out of poor Kyle. The effects here are pretty good, and Carlos has some wicked sharp fangs.

I’m not sure how I feel about Carlos being a vampire. That ruins one of the best lines of the movie, in my opinion. Surely you know the one I’m talking about?

Kate is wandering around the service road while Jacob and Scott are calling for her. Kyle’s truck pulls up and you’re expect Carlos to get out, but no, it’s Kyle. Walking and talking in the sun. Head scratching for a moment. You know something’s not right, but what? Kyle beats up Jacob, casts a few racial slurs at Scott (so very unChristian of him) and Kate tells him to go away. She’s staying with her family. After they leave, Kyle walks to the truck bed and we’re treated to the desiccated corpse of the real Kyle while the fake Kyle shapeshifts into Carlos. So, the vampires are forcing the Fullers to stay together, but why? Considering the movie, you have to think they want the Geckos and the Fullers to meet. Perhaps even need it. It’ll be interesting to see how it all gels together as we go forward.

The most disappointing thing about the second episode was the eventual flashback to the Abilene robbery. I expected lots of tension, lots of blood, and it really fell flat. Maybe that’s just me, though. It seemed more of an excuse to give Gonzalez a way to track the Geckos. The bank teller they kidnap has her kid’s cell phone on her and the brothers miss it when cleaning them out.

This episode departed quite a bit from the movie, but that’s okay. I didn’t mind it and the show continued to build suspense and mystery surrounding Richie and now the Fullers as well.