Shadowhunters: "Dead Man's Party" Review

Kat McNamara and Dominic Sherwood as Clary Fray and Jace Wayland in Freeform's Shadowhunters

It’s been two weeks since we’ve gotten brand new Shadowhunters footage. And holy cow, was it worth the wait. “Dead Man’s Party” proved that “The Descent Into Hell Isn't Easy” didn’t just happen to be a hundred times better than the pilot. Shadowhunters has improved greatly over the course of just THREE episodes, and it’s not even a third of the way through its first season. Most fantasy/supernatural shows take at least half a season to start getting intense and emotionally heavy but Shadowhunters just skipped out on all the “gradually getting better” nonsense and went from 0 to 100 real quick. This is going to be a fun review to write.

This review will spoil episode three, as well as give minor spoilers for The Mortal Instruments books.

The bad comes first because I am a Negative Nancy:

• I’ve got very few problems with this episode but one thing that annoyed me (and I understand the show has to do for time restraints) is that characters infer things and the show expects the audience to do the same. For example, we could wonder why the entire Downworld seems to know that Clary is a Morgenstern, and it took me a while to realize Raphael and Lily (the girl who was dangling Simon in episode two) overheard the entire reveal with their super hearing. The show does have only 40-ish minutes to get through episode arcs so they can’t take little breaks to explain all these jumps and the show expects the viewer to be smart enough to catch onto these things. I just happen to be good at inferring stuff but some viewers need everything explained to them so I think the show needs to figure out how to fix some of these logic jumps.

• I had this same problem with episodes one and two but no one is explaining what a Shadowhunter is. Jace drops “you’re part angel” while talking to Clary and she doesn’t react to this??? It’s the first time she’s been informed that there’s angel blood in her and her reaction is nonexistent. Episode six is titled “Of Men and Angels” which will feature the flashback story of The Circle, and I predict the Shadowhunter origin story (Shadowhunters are literally the hybrids of men and angels), and both stories will include The Mortal Cup. The Mortal Cup will likely be found in episode seven, “Major Arcana”. So since the Shadowhunter origin is tied into the Cup, it makes sense for the two plot points to be paired together. But still, Clary should’ve had some sort of reaction to this news or the entire line should’ve been cut because nonreaders are probably super confused about it.

The good:

• There’s a whole lotta good in this episode! I LOVE that they’re not throwing all the Downworlders at us at once. For two episodes, we focused on warlocks, then in this episode we got the Seelies and vampires, and in a few episodes we’ll probably get the werewolves. These explanations are being spaced out nicely.

• They have spent three episodes with Alec having characterization that went beyond his Token Status because as of now in the show canon, the nonreaders don’t know that he’s gay. I like seeing his relationship with Jace starting to become messy, and their Parabatai bond was so much more believable than the books had it, where it seemed a bit tossed in and lacking.

• Kat McNamara’s acting is exactly where it needs to be. In my review of episodes one and two, I said there was room for improvement but I still couldn’t put my finger on what the actual problem with her line delivery was. Then I saw a tumblr post saying Kat, while playing Clary, enunciated everything like she was doing public speaking or an interview, basically talking like Kat the celebrity and not like Clary the regular teenager. So I rewatched scenes of her as Clary and I started realizing that where she was the best was where she was just letting the words flow naturally and wasn’t trying to say everything perfectly. That’s when she was the most believable. In “Dead Man’s Party,” that uncharacteristic enunciating is GONE and Kat sounds so natural and it’s just great. She’s always been great at showing the different sides of Clary, making her a good heroine, and she’s A+ at the emotional scenes she has and now I can finally fully enjoy Clary’s scenes. 

• Kaitlyn Leeb as Camille was a pleasant surprise. We didn’t see much of her in the previews or in clips so I was wary of how her portrayal would be. I never cared much for Camille in the novels so I wasn’t too concerned with what Camille was going to be like in the show. But from the minute Kaitlyn’s version of Camille spoke and came on screen, I was unable to take my eyes off of her. She was attention grabbing, bratty, and creepy as hell. Camille is a minor character but I wouldn’t mind if she gets a more major role as the series goes on.

• We’re getting all the technical stuff out of the way in one bullet. Hotel Dumort looks much fancier and less trashy than it did in the books. It looks like the type of place aristocratic vampires would actually live in. That vampire bar Jace takes Clary to is so seedy and ugly I wouldn’t walk within a mile of it. The CGI when vampires die is gold/orange like when demons die and that’s smart. If you haven’t read the books, Downworlders are either related to demons, or infected with demonic diseases. So it makes sense that their blood would react to angelic weapons how demons react to the weapons. This was a good detail to put in. The flying motorcycle scene looked a lot less cheesy than how the book described it and was actually cute and romantic rather than just awkward, like in the books.

• The fact that Luke is a cop who has pretty much adopted a daughter plays into the “my dad’s a cop and taught me self defense” trope so it’s not surprising that Clary knows how to take down a grown man without any weapons nearby. This can also speed up some of her training because she’s known how to fight humans for presumably years, plus there’s instinct, and the greatest Shadowhunter ever is helping train her. I’m looking forward to Clary’s badass evolution.

• The look Jace had when Clary killed that vampire. That was adorbz, right?

Guys, “Dead Man’s Party” was the best episode of Shadowhunters we’ve gotten so far and I don’t know how the show is going to keep improving. There’s gotta be a limit to how good it can get, right? I give the episode a 9.5 out of 10.

Shadowhunters: "The Mortal Cup" and "The Descent Into Hell Isn't Easy" Review

Maxim Roy and Kat McNamara as Jocelyn and Clary Fray in Freeform's Shadowhunters

I’ve been waiting for this show for a very long time. This is the first time I’ve followed the production of a series so closely and been so wrapped up in it. I was optimistic about everything, though I had a few “I don’t know about that” moments throughout production. I knew that the first few episodes would probably be lackluster but most supernatural shows are lacking at the beginning (Teen Wolf, The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural). The beginning of a series isn’t meant to be this wild, epic thing. It’s there to introduce plots, characters, and some mythology. So anyone expecting to be blown away by the first two episodes needs to bring down their expectations to a more realistic level. This review will contain spoilers for the first two episodes of Shadowhunters. That being said, let’s rip this baby apart (please don’t rip apart an actual baby, you’ll get blood everywhere).


The bad:

- “The Mortal Cup” was… not very good. There was too much confusion, even for me, someone who read the books it was based on. We open on the Pandemonium scene and knowing that Clary’s not meant to see Jace and then we jump back to earlier then we (at a really awkward placement) jump back 10 years then we jump back to now then we go to the Pandemonium scene again. And all this happens within 20 minutes. The fight in Pandemonium was a hot mess. I could see an entire foot of space between the Shadowhunters hands and legs and the demons they were hitting. The editing in the fight was all over the place, Clary was awkwardly sliding on the ground, she inexplicably picked up a Seraph Blade, her reactions to everything were odd. Then some of the dialogue is kinda… bad. Clary calling her life “mundane,” Clary saying she’s not going on an epic journey, the random “all the legends are true” that doesn’t explain a damn thing even though Jace said it would explain things simply??

- There are a few jumps and things that aren’t explained. I’ve rewatched the episodes to see if I missed anything or if there were explanations and there weren’t. If I’m two episodes in and already seeing glaring holes, that’s not a good thing. For example, I’m assuming Dot died when Valentine stabbed her in episode 2 but she was thrown, by a Shadowhunter, through a window, hit her face on a metal gate, and then smacked into the ground and she lived. But a stab kills her? And when Clary mentions that the guy had a Circle rune? She didn’t even know what the Circle rune was? Neither did the audience? We hadn’t even met Hodge yet? Even if we saw other Circle members’ runes, Clary didn’t???? How did Jace find her house?

- It’s been two episodes of Shadowhunter this and Shadowhunter that but I don’t get why they’d explain that warlocks are half demon, half human, but not say how Shadowhunters, who the show is actually about, are half human, half angel. They’re just glossing over that right now and I feel like that should really be explained, sooner rather than later.

- It’s not really a bad thing but it’s not a good thing either. One of the things I liked about the City of Bones book was that Valentine didn’t show up until the ending and he was just talked about until that point. Sometimes having a villain appear at the beginning can be good and I guess we’ll see if that’s the case here. But when you build up a character being dangerous for multiple episodes, it makes the villain that much scarier. Like on The Vampire Diaries, season 2 took between 8-10 episodes to build up Klaus’s character so when he actually showed up on the show, it was automatically frightening. Even Jessica Jones took a couple of episodes to show us Kilgrave for the first time, though by the time we actually met his character, he was built up so much and so disturbing from just what we’d heard about him that he was 10x as nasty and gross as he would’ve been if we’d met him in the beginning. I just feel like with a character as crazy and evil as Valentine, they could’ve waited until at least episode 4 or 5 to meet him, let it stay a bit of a mystery where he was holding Jocelyn.

- I still can’t stop laughing at “demonic murders”. Like, I’m not sure if it’s meant to be funny or not. What major police force is going to label a bunch of murders as “demonic”? “Hello, ma’am, I’d like to ask you a few questions. I’m investigating the demonic murders.” I didn’t think we could get a police force more campy than the Beacon Hills police. I was wrong.

The good:

- I like the idea of Shadowhunters having the younger generation not know everything about the Circle. It’s like a mysterious thing for the characters to figure out throughout the season. The show is dumping a lot of information and twists on the audience rather early on so some of the things that weren’t a big deal in the books (the characters always knew everything about the Circle in the books) can be expanded on and switched up. And I thought it was cool how they show the physical effects of Hodge’s curse by having him be hurt whenever he speaks about the Circle or Valentine. This is going to make ~something~ with Hodge that happens in the books make you feel more sympathetic towards him because one, he was being tortured, and two, you’ll wonder if he tried to prevent what he does in the end of City of Bones and tried to get some help from the other characters but he literally, physically couldn’t do it.

- In the books, I thought it was ridiculous that everyone knew Clary’s birth date and that Jocelyn would’ve had to have been married to Valentine at the point when she got pregnant and nobody thought “hey wait, this girl could be Valentine’s daughter” and in the show, I was not looking forward to a dragged out, obvious twist. But then they revealed that he was her dad in the second episode and I was so happy. This is followed up by Alec being suspicious that she’s a spy because she’s related to Valentine (not going to spoil the books but this mirrors something that happens in book 2) and Clary being like “well I just found out my dad is some psycho who’s gonna kill everybody” and I feel like everyone has a logical reaction to this.

- While reading the books (or even watching the movie *shudder*) I really couldn’t stand Alec or Jocelyn. They were just completely unlikable for me. I didn’t like Alec because he had no personality that went beyond “I hate Clary, I like Jace” and Jocelyn was just lying so much that I was like ??? Get your shit together?? In the show, Alec is an ass but he’s an ass to everyone and we can see that he’s such a rule follower and he doesn’t like deviating from plans and he always focuses on the job at hand. And he’s like this when he’s around anyone, to the point where Isabelle says he’s always so rigid so his entire characterization isn’t centered around him being jealous of Clary, much like it was in the first few books. Jocelyn tries more than once to tell Clary the truth and she feels remorse for what she did. The fact that she tried to right her wrongs actually makes you care for her and want Clary to find her.

- Episode two, “The Descent Into Hell Isn't Easy” was a lot better done than episode one. The acting was much less over the top, the dialogue wasn’t cringy and super foreshadow-y, the characters seemed more emotive, there were more intentionally funny moments. It was just better.

- If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I was really “uhhhh” about Kat McNamara as Clary. I just wasn’t a fan of her acting and the clips and peeks we got either had her being really good or reaaaally bad. And then “The Mortal Cup” was going and I kept cringing at her line delivery and I was thinking “dear God, please just let this be because the entire episode is messy because I can’t take a whole season of this” and then I got to “The Descent Into Hell Isn't Easy” and she was noticeably better. Of course, there’s still room for improvement but she’s much better than she was in “The Mortal Cup”.

The fuck?:

- I don’t get why Valentine isn’t in Idris? Or really just why, of all places he could hide, he went to Chernobyl? Who the fuck thinks to have a secret hideout in Chernobyl?? Take your ass to Hawaii. Nobody would look for you there.

- I’m not a fan of Luke’s werewolf eyes being green because he looks like an alien and it’s just weird.

- Is there something up with the Captain? She seems much too concerned with Clary. It could be she’s just a good family friend but I don’t know, she’s fishy.

- I don’t know why they’re having Jocelyn use the strength rune to turn invisible or to burn Clary's bedroom down?

- Who put out the fire in Clary's room? Shouldn’t the entire building have done down?

- If Jocelyn burned Clary's room, why were the Tarot cards still in perfect condition?

- I still don’t know if this show is called “Shadowhunters” or “Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments”.

Overall opinion:


- “The Mortal Cup” was alright, for all its messy glory, but “The Descent Into Hell Isn't Easy” fixed a lot of the issues I had with the pilot. I still have a lot of questions and I still see holes and things that need to be explained in future episodes. I rate “The Mortal Cup” a 4.5/10 and “The Descent Into Hell Isn't Easy” an 8/10.

You can watch Shadowhunters (or whatever it’s actually called) on Freeform or Netflix.

"Get Even" Book Review

Title: Get Even

Author: Gretchen McNeil

Genre: Mystery, Contemporary

Rating: 4/10

What It's About: Four girls (they're names don't matter, they're pretty interchangeable), formed a revenge group called "Don't Get Mad" (they actually thought that was a good name... wow) and they pull some pranks on these assholes at their school but then this student gets murdered (um, rude) and DGM is framed for it. Now the girls have to find out who really killed this kid before someone else tells everyone that the girls are in DGM and they go to prison.

Recommended For: Fans of Pretty Little Liars




Review: *spoilers ahead*

Get Even isn't a bad book, but it has quite a few flaws. The characters are flat and one dimensional and it is hard to remember who a chapter is about. The characters start to run together, there are characters that are over the top evil and might as well be working at Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc.

Some things make no sense about this story. How was it that the coach is able to publicly threaten multiple students, during the investigation of another student's murder, and no one does anything about it? Why does it take 100 pages to get to the actual plot of the book? Why isn't Bree's DNA all over Ronnie's (I think that was his name) room, if that was the crime scene? Why doesn't the computer geek (is it Margot or is Kitty? I don't even think the book knows which one is which) just get into the school's security cameras and see who has been taking pages from the yearbook? She's literally supposed to have top-notch technology and she can't access a school camera? Why are these characters given ridiculous names? Peanut? Kitty? Rex? You're naming human characters, not their pets!



The dialogue is laughable. I can't count how many times I literally cringed while reading this book. The only thing that saved this book from a one star rating was the mystery. While a lot of it is predictable, and it does come off as very "Pretty Little Liars-ish", it's more like the first four books of the PLL series AKA when that series was still good. There's the "A" figure, the creepy notes from "A", the dead classmate, the cute boys/potential serial killers, four annoyingly bratty girls who have to band together through all of this. But Get Even lacks the charm that the PLL series had. The Liars were all interesting characters but the girls in Get Even are bland and boring. I wish that Get Even had dialed WAY BACK in the cattiness and replaced it with actual character development beyond "the suicidal one, the tough one, the popular one, and the Asian kid." This series has a lot of potential. It just needs to get a clear idea of what it wants to be: a thriller/mystery, or the red-headed stepchild of Pretty Little Liars.

Links:

Goodreads

Book Depository