The teaser for the premiere of The Gates [ABC, Sundays, 19/9C] seems to be saying welcome to paradise: there’s a couple jogging; kids, carefully helmeted, riding bikes; a shot of a man mowing his lawn – taken from ground level, looking up through a sprinkler! It looks so perfect…
Then we see a little girl about to go skateboarding intercut with a man – a contractor from the conversation – driving an SUV while talking on his cell phone. A woman with an English accent calls out to the girl, “Not without your helmet,” and she takes her foot of the board which then starts to roll toward the street. The woman looks up from her kitchen to see her daughter chasing the board toward the street as the SUV barrels toward the girl. She runs, surprisingly quickly and scoop up her daughter just as the driver realizes what’s happening and swerves – missing the girl and hitting a mailbox.
A car pulls up beside the SUV – the daughter, Emily’s [Georgia Cole] ride to school. Despite the scare, she goes off, leaving mom – Claire Radcliff [Rhona Mitra] and the bleeding driver. She takes him inside, ostensibly to clean up the cut… and goes full tilt vampire on him! [Apparently, the vampires in The Gates have an ultra-sunblock…]
Meanwhile, the new Chief of Police, Nick Monohan [Frank Grillo] and family are driving up to The Gates – towering 12-feet, 11-ton, hand-forged in England [it’s in the brochure]. After twitting the security guard for not checking his identification, Monohan and family drive to their new home – a rather mansion-like abode that has wife Sarah [Marisol Nichols, who reminds of Marisa Tomei] exclaiming, Are you sure this is ours?” Even their kids, Charlie [Travis Caldwell] and Dana [McKaley Miller] are impressed.
Before you know it, though, Nick begins to suspect there’s something that’s not quite right about the idyllic The Gates. Three of the hundreds of security cameras in the community [talk about Big Brother!] went down earlier – just where the near fatal accident happened. Not only that, but the SUV has vanished and it wasn’t logged out at the gates.
Things get curiouser and curiouser at the local high school [we send more student to the Ivy League than any other high school in the start], where Charlie’s incisive take on a Flanery O’Connor novel makes an impression on Andie Bates [Skyler Samuels], who invites him to join the mock trial team. A growing attraction puts Charlie in between Andie and her star football player boyfriend, Brett [Colton Haynes].
Brett takes his anger out on another player at football practice and we learn some unusual for him. And he’s not the only one – before the ep is over, we learn of others like him and of a pair of witches – one good, one… not so much.
The Monohans, who have as big a secret, if mortal, as anyone around, have moved into something other than the calm, happy second chance they were expecting. And it’s causing Nick’s instincts to get in the way of family just as they did back in Chicago.
Where the gates different than other TV series that have supernatural elements is that its got a sort of self awareness. When Claire’s husband, Dylan [Luke Mably] discovers her crime, he asks how she could do it? He gets them all the blood they require! Her response, “It’s not the blood! It’s the carpooling and the school committees and the dinner parties and the[sodding] bookclubs! [She doesn’t say sodding, but the look in her eyes is saying it loud and clear. It’s the life of a bored [dare I say desperate] housewife!
And suddenly The Gates becomes clear. It’s a satire – sometimes sharp; sometimes not so much. It’s a paean to life and the way life behind The Gates is not really life –no matter how perfect the physical the package. Between the almost omnipresent camera and the big honkin’ gates life is regulated by rules and supernatural forces. The Gate’s vampires, werewolves and witches [there are two – one good, one bad] and they’re paying a pretty penny for security – as Monohan finds out.
The supernatural forces sit in for the greedy developer, good side of going to high school and political power. They’re extensions of kinds of humanity taken to the furthest extreme. In a way, The Gates is a satire of Desperate Housewives, which was in turn, a satire of primetime soaps.
The difference here is that the fun takes place on such a level that it uses George Orwell, Joss Whedon and yes, Flanery O’Connor as filters. Writers Richard Hatem and Grant Scharbo are clearly very erudite and their intelligence and wit are applied in such a manner as to bump up to the myth of the perfect community in ways that are very effective and very appropriate.
Even the very The Prisoner-like slamming shut of The Gates at the end of the episode adds to the creepiness that rests just below the service of the episode. These guys know their stuff and I expect that The Gates – even if it isn’t as inspired as the best seasons of Desperate Housewives – is going to be a fun run. Especially after the premiere’s last scene! Sign me up.
Final Grade: B+