- Network: ABC
- Series Premiere Date: Jun 20, 2010
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Critic Reviews
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That's a lot of potential gothic soap, but fortunately Gates presents a surprisingly well-written, intriguing scenario with a head-swimmingly large ensemble cast.
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Scoundrels, at 9 p.m., and The Gates, at 10, may not be exactly the stuff you can't wait another week for, but both are watchable and fun, part of a big ABC effort to put something new, if not original, on the air most nights this summer.
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The Gates actually moves along at a brisk enough clip, and though it's bland around the edges, it introduces enough mysteries to keep things more or less interesting (there are allusions to a "code" residents must live by, and presumably that doesn't refer to local regulations on lawn care).
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Beyond the "Dark Shadows"-type atmosphere, The Gates is blessed with an attractive cast, many of whom have affiliations with past ABC dramas....The question is how long the show can get by on those assets before series creators Grant Scharbo and Richard Hatem shed some serious light on all these things going bump in the night.
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The Gates is a satire--a cheaply enjoyable one--of suburban lust and maternal anxiety, psycho-social forces that delivered previous generations of women to the pages of Betty Friedan (or Redbook) but that today send a certain kind of young matron to the perverse romance of vampire media.
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The Gates, on the other hand, starts off with an even greater number of well-worn characters and storylines, but writers Richard Hatem and Grant Scharbo infuse them with a lot more life and a surprisingly high incidence of poignancy.
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Oh, sure, they can pierce necks and drink blood: Big deal! Any ol' vampire can do that. With a limited repertoire of vampire moves, the Radcliffs shoulda moved to Bon Temps instead of the Gates to learn some new tricks.
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If only it felt inspired, rather than like a Desperate Weirdwives rehash of every vampire, werewolf and witch story you've ever heard and every family soap you've seen.
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It's a gathering of familiar material that never quite distinguishes itself. I'd say the show is a "mash-up'' of its many influences, but that word implies intentionality and he Gates seems more like a lazy assemblage of cliches.
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To be perfectly honest, it's a little easier to be forgiving of a series that's airing original episodes in the summer. Maybe it will settle down a bit and turn into something a little better. I'll give it a couple more episodes.
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The Gates feels like it's been pieced together from so many other shows that it resembles the one monster that's not been included: Frankenstein.
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The Gates is ultimately just another literary mashup with the undead, like Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice" tweaked with zombies, only here it's a stifling John Cheever story with bloodsuckers.
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The show just doesn't add enough fresh blood to dramas and situations we may simply have seen too often.
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Unclear and, at first glance, very uneven, but it's still a lot more inviting than ABC's DOA "Happy Town."
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As it is, The Gates doesn't even pass muster as a spooky-fun summer series; it's just another failed attempt by ABC to recreate something it couldn't wait to kill the first time around.
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New Zealand, however, cannot be blamed for The Gates, approximately the 1,712th American television show about vampires.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 60 out of 75
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Mixed: 8 out of 75
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Negative: 7 out of 75
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PeterL.Jun 21, 2010
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Sep 20, 2010
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Sep 14, 2010