Point Pleasant

Over Easter, we watched the DVD set of Point Pleasant. The story behind this was kind of interesting, in that it started showing on UK TV fairly soon after the US screenings, and then because the US viewing figures for it were abysmal, they pulled the series. Which meant that the last five episodes or so never made it onto UK TV either.

However, the DVD set included those unscreened episodes, and we wanted to know how it all ended, so we got the set through ScreenSelect before Easter.

Overall, it was a pretty good series – although quite why the makers ever thought it would be popular in the US is quite beyond me. “Beautiful” (in the American sense) girl who turns out to be the AntiChrist. Smalltown America. Teenagers having problems. And sex. To top it off, there was a healthy dose of sarcastic humour, plenty of religion – both “good” and “bad”, along with the interesting turn that the Catholic priests had blown things out of all proportion, and were actually encouraging sins in the guise of “saving the world”, and a whole load of other stuff that most of Middle America would deem “unwholesome”, it’s no shock at all that they hated it.

However, the last half of the last episode was nothing but unutterable shite – no closure, and obviously leaving things open for a second series. To me that’s disappointing – why can’t we get a series that is written with the sole goal of being a one-off? Now that’d be more fun – a story curve based over, say, 10 or 12 episodes, but that closes itself off properly. Yeah, you could still perhaps make another series, but for God’s sake, just make one that’s self-contained instead of leaving everything up in the air in case the viewers like it and the opportunity to make a second series comes up. (Take note, J.J.Abrams, you weasel)