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I don't care what you say, I actually like Harper's Island
by Jason Hughes, posted Jun 29th 2009 11:05AM
I know Harper's Island has been panned by everyone from television critics to deranged psychopathic killers with a penchant for islands, but I don't care. For eleven weeks now, I've followed along on this silly ride, and I've been enjoying the hell out of it. It's the horror-mystery aspect of it. Sure, I'm a little disappointed that the killer (so far) isn't one of the main cast members, but I'm having fun watching the cast get taken out "one by one," as creepy-little-girl says each week in the intro.I was always a huge fan of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians/And Then There Were None. Plus, I'm a sucker for a long-form story in television. I think this is one of those things television has over the movies. You can't take thirteen hours to tell a mystery in the theaters. That's one of the reasons I'm never as impressed with the done-in-one shows. You have this format that allows for these massively detailed long stories so why not use it? I don't care if you don't think Americans have the attention span for it; I do. And aren't you supposed to be programming for me?
It's a shame that Harper's Island has such terrible ratings, because I think it would be a lot of fun to have a murder mystery or horror maxi-series on the schedule every summer. After all, summertime at the movies is about popcorn, explosions (Hi, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), and having fun. Acting and writing are so ... secondary. So why not embrace the same kind of fun on the small screen? It's certainly better than inundating us with more reality.
A show like Reunion from a few years back would have probably played out nicely in the summer. Look at the success of a lot of these lighter cable series. People want to feel good and have fun when it's 110 degrees outside, and that includes a good scare now and then. Or at least it does to me. Maybe they won't judge Harper's Island too harshly this year, considering that the networks are setting new ratings lows week after week. It didn't help that the story started off really slow either.
All I know is I got a huge kick out of seeing Jim Beaver (Supernatural) outside of his Bobby role and I didn't recognize anyone else in the cast. It's fun guessing who's going to die next (hell, I'd rather do it about fictional characters than face all the deaths entertainment has given us the past week or so) and trying to figure out how the hell they're going to get out of this mess.
My wife went through four theories on the identity of the killer, and is up to three on who John Wakefield's kid might be. Give me some good tension, good clever death scenes, and a creepy little girl and I am set. If I can't have Bobby and the boys of Supernatural, I can spend some time on Harper's Island. At least I know it's not demons ... I think.
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