This was a pretty fun monster of the week episode. A strange man who loves very old Italian poetry, who knows it may have been pretty new when he first heard it, seduces lonely, overweight women, except to eat them. He knows just what to say, because he isn't human and he just wants to eat them.
This episodes features a weird killer, a sexist Cleveland cop, some nice ladies you hope don't get eaten, and a gripping yarn. It is a somewhat mean spirited episode, not thematically, just literally in terms of what happens. It falls down a little in quality from not really fleshing out the villain, he seems like he's some kind of insectoid space monster wearing fake skin, but they also want to play it ambiguously, like maybe he is human or something? Emphasis on the ?
I think that wastes the actor, he does a great job rotating between being alien, charming, and menacing. Perhaps it is strange that a man who seduces women so readily comes across like an annoyed Conehead when his smitten neighbor lady comes knocking on his door, you'd think he'd just operate with general social skills. Then again, maybe he just knows what he needs to know for dates with desperate women trying online dating so he can eat, and the rest is pretty obscure to him.
Also funny is that it features "online dating" and "weirdos who use the internet" (they don't actually say that). It's so Boomer. Watching something removed from its time lets you in on its strange elements, in past episodes they've acted like it's weird to go home with somebody after meeting them in a club, among other things, and you remember this was the AIDS scare and probably no shortage of serial murderer hysteria too. John Walsh was convincing a generation of parents to keep their children out of the yard for fear they may be the 1/100,000 who get abducted, though I think he painted the number more like 1/2. That was the 90s.
Anyway, my point is, it would have been better if they did more with the "monster" aspect for this monster of the week, though I suspect they just couldn't come up with anything, so didn't bother.
This episodes features a weird killer, a sexist Cleveland cop, some nice ladies you hope don't get eaten, and a gripping yarn. It is a somewhat mean spirited episode, not thematically, just literally in terms of what happens. It falls down a little in quality from not really fleshing out the villain, he seems like he's some kind of insectoid space monster wearing fake skin, but they also want to play it ambiguously, like maybe he is human or something? Emphasis on the ?
I think that wastes the actor, he does a great job rotating between being alien, charming, and menacing. Perhaps it is strange that a man who seduces women so readily comes across like an annoyed Conehead when his smitten neighbor lady comes knocking on his door, you'd think he'd just operate with general social skills. Then again, maybe he just knows what he needs to know for dates with desperate women trying online dating so he can eat, and the rest is pretty obscure to him.
Also funny is that it features "online dating" and "weirdos who use the internet" (they don't actually say that). It's so Boomer. Watching something removed from its time lets you in on its strange elements, in past episodes they've acted like it's weird to go home with somebody after meeting them in a club, among other things, and you remember this was the AIDS scare and probably no shortage of serial murderer hysteria too. John Walsh was convincing a generation of parents to keep their children out of the yard for fear they may be the 1/100,000 who get abducted, though I think he painted the number more like 1/2. That was the 90s.
Anyway, my point is, it would have been better if they did more with the "monster" aspect for this monster of the week, though I suspect they just couldn't come up with anything, so didn't bother.