First of all, guess when the movie 'The Serpent and the Rainbow' was released. If you figured out it was eight months before this episode premiered, kudos to you.
'The Voodoo Mambo" has atmosphere in shades. Shadowy basements, voodoo mask-wearing killers emerging from the fog and the water, and film of what I assume are "authentic" voodoo ceremonies in black-and-white. Lots of film of voodoo ceremonies. Why we get to see them, who knows? They seem to be a combination of characters' memories, and flashbacks, and new shots of Laotia being drowned mixed in with them. That footage is noticeably different.
The episode also continues the unfortunate trend started in last season's "Tattoo", where we get an old wise man steeped in the episode's culture. And Jack is the contact point, and also spouts a lot of exposition to Micki and Ryan. We'll get more of this later in "The Shaman's Apprentice".
The voodoo itself is treated respectfully enough. Although it's still somewhat mangled. For instance, the four guardian priests are referred to as "Legbas". But while "Papa Legba" is one of the major loas, "Legba" isn't used as a priest title as far as I can tell. It'd be like calling every Catholic priest "Peter John", and "Peter Paul", and Peter Peter".
The production staff seem to have given up on all the cursed antique angle. Yes, the mask came from Lewis and the store. But there's some weird retconning here. Jack says that the shop made the antiques evil. But it was Lewis, not the shop. And the mask doesn't look like or is ever described as an antique. The show will eventually go back to making the cursed items antiques as of the next episode. I can only assume that writer Agy Polly (in his or her only script for the series, or for anything) either didn't know the show's concept besides a series bible, or didn't care.
Also, the item is defeated by the simple expedient of... Ryan knocking it out of Laotia's hands. Oh, that was easy.
On the good side, Joe Seneca is a class act as always. Sadly, he died in 1996. The good news is he kept working in TV after this episode. I liked the chemistry between Jack and Seneca's character, Hedley. We don't get anything on how they met or why they're friends. Or why Hedley is such a skeptic of the supernatural despite the fact he's a voodoo priest and has dominion over fire. Hedley doesn't merely refuse to believe that Laotia could have come back, but seems down on the whole idea of the supernatural. But it's a nice friendship, nonetheless.
And Rachael Crawford as Stacy is okay. Why the production staff hints at a relationship between Ryan and Stacy, I have no idea. Nothing comes of it. In fact, this whole episode disappears down the memory hole, and we never see Hedley and Stacy again. A pity about that: I would have liked to have seen both of them return.
Micki and Ryan don't do much. They prowl around Carl's house and find Jennifer's body. And Ryan gets attacked by a crow. But I guess it just... stopped attacking him and he escaped. So what was the point of the crow attack? David Matheson as Carl is pretty much a stringy-haired psycho non-presence, and if you wanted to be offended, Laotia continually calling him "master" is something to be offended about. Do we really need a spoiled white dude calling the shots? Yes, it's eventually revealed that he's a pawn and is killed via some CGI effects.
And where the heck are they, anyway? Many sources claim that the series is set in Chicago. The signage we see is clearly American, even if the show was filmed in Canada. So Chicago has street parties celebrating the solstice? And what appears to be a burgeoning voodoo community? Three of the four Legbas have residence in "the city", and Stacy comes there to be initiated: wouldn't Haiti make a better place for Haitian voodoo believers? And why does Carl and his dead father have a house there, when the father had a plantation in Haiti. It seems like Polly was just trying to do a voodoo story and was going to set it in wherever the show was set.
So overall, the episode is one of many "okay" episodes of the series. It's not good, with their mangling of voodoo. The guest performances are okay to excellent. It just seems... off, what with the lack of an antique, the slapped-on voodoo element, and the weird geography.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
'The Voodoo Mambo" has atmosphere in shades. Shadowy basements, voodoo mask-wearing killers emerging from the fog and the water, and film of what I assume are "authentic" voodoo ceremonies in black-and-white. Lots of film of voodoo ceremonies. Why we get to see them, who knows? They seem to be a combination of characters' memories, and flashbacks, and new shots of Laotia being drowned mixed in with them. That footage is noticeably different.
The episode also continues the unfortunate trend started in last season's "Tattoo", where we get an old wise man steeped in the episode's culture. And Jack is the contact point, and also spouts a lot of exposition to Micki and Ryan. We'll get more of this later in "The Shaman's Apprentice".
The voodoo itself is treated respectfully enough. Although it's still somewhat mangled. For instance, the four guardian priests are referred to as "Legbas". But while "Papa Legba" is one of the major loas, "Legba" isn't used as a priest title as far as I can tell. It'd be like calling every Catholic priest "Peter John", and "Peter Paul", and Peter Peter".
The production staff seem to have given up on all the cursed antique angle. Yes, the mask came from Lewis and the store. But there's some weird retconning here. Jack says that the shop made the antiques evil. But it was Lewis, not the shop. And the mask doesn't look like or is ever described as an antique. The show will eventually go back to making the cursed items antiques as of the next episode. I can only assume that writer Agy Polly (in his or her only script for the series, or for anything) either didn't know the show's concept besides a series bible, or didn't care.
Also, the item is defeated by the simple expedient of... Ryan knocking it out of Laotia's hands. Oh, that was easy.
On the good side, Joe Seneca is a class act as always. Sadly, he died in 1996. The good news is he kept working in TV after this episode. I liked the chemistry between Jack and Seneca's character, Hedley. We don't get anything on how they met or why they're friends. Or why Hedley is such a skeptic of the supernatural despite the fact he's a voodoo priest and has dominion over fire. Hedley doesn't merely refuse to believe that Laotia could have come back, but seems down on the whole idea of the supernatural. But it's a nice friendship, nonetheless.
And Rachael Crawford as Stacy is okay. Why the production staff hints at a relationship between Ryan and Stacy, I have no idea. Nothing comes of it. In fact, this whole episode disappears down the memory hole, and we never see Hedley and Stacy again. A pity about that: I would have liked to have seen both of them return.
Micki and Ryan don't do much. They prowl around Carl's house and find Jennifer's body. And Ryan gets attacked by a crow. But I guess it just... stopped attacking him and he escaped. So what was the point of the crow attack? David Matheson as Carl is pretty much a stringy-haired psycho non-presence, and if you wanted to be offended, Laotia continually calling him "master" is something to be offended about. Do we really need a spoiled white dude calling the shots? Yes, it's eventually revealed that he's a pawn and is killed via some CGI effects.
And where the heck are they, anyway? Many sources claim that the series is set in Chicago. The signage we see is clearly American, even if the show was filmed in Canada. So Chicago has street parties celebrating the solstice? And what appears to be a burgeoning voodoo community? Three of the four Legbas have residence in "the city", and Stacy comes there to be initiated: wouldn't Haiti make a better place for Haitian voodoo believers? And why does Carl and his dead father have a house there, when the father had a plantation in Haiti. It seems like Polly was just trying to do a voodoo story and was going to set it in wherever the show was set.
So overall, the episode is one of many "okay" episodes of the series. It's not good, with their mangling of voodoo. The guest performances are okay to excellent. It just seems... off, what with the lack of an antique, the slapped-on voodoo element, and the weird geography.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
