Monday, October 7, 2013

{TV Series Review} Witches of East End, Season 1 Episode 1: "Pilot"

Based on the novel by Melissa de la Cruz
Series Written By: Maggie Friedman
Starring: Julia Ormond, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, and Rachel Boston
Executive Producers: Maggie Friedman, Jonathan Kaplan, Erwin Stoff, Josh Reims
Production Companies: 3 Arts Entertainment & Fox 21
Channel: Lifetime


Mandy's Summary/Review:

The series/season premiere opens on Freya and Dash's engagement party. Freya is running late, as per usual, partly due to trying to find the right outfit and partly due to her having a conversation with her older sister, Ingrid. Freya's telling Ingrid about a dream she had of the perfect man, a soul mate. Ingrid chalks up Freya's dream to pre-wedding jitters instead of a premonition.

At the engagement party, Freya and Dash's mother are having a discussion. Dash's mother does the societal nice/nasty speech basically telling Freya she's not good enough for Dash, but that she would love to teach Freya all about how to dress, manners, and becoming the perfect lady. Freya, rightfully so, gets a little pissed about how Dash's mother is speaking to her and wishes for her to choke on an appetizer she recently stuck in her mouth ... and it happens. As Freya finds Ingrid to tell her about her wish coming true, she is stopped mid-sentence by her dream-man walking through the front door. Freya is introduced to her dream-man later by Dash. The dream-man turns out to be Dash's younger brother, Killian.

During the party Ingrid runs into Adam, a local law enforcement officer. While they do the small-talk thing, Adam admits he was serious about his dinner-date invitation he extended to Ingrid a few months back. Ingrid is stunned because she thought that he wasn't serious. (I wasn't expecting this part to happen so soon in the television series. It was near the end of the first book when Adam and Ingrid finally came around to this conversation.) Adam receives a phone call as he's talking to Ingrid and has to leave because of a murder that's taken place in a local park. The man and wife last spoke with (whom they thought to be) Joanna Beauchamp, Freya and Ingrid's mother, which the wife tells Adam upon awakening from her unconsciousness leading to Joanna's arrest at the end of the premiere.

Unlike the book, Freya and Ingrid are unaware of their powers when the premiere began. Joanna decided that during this life she would keep their magical abilities a secret from her daughters for as long as she could. Joanna has given birth to both girls twelve times over the centuries. Each time the girls knew about and grew their magical abilities resulting in their premature deaths before the age of 30. Joanna thought that maybe this time she could change fate if she could keep that part of their psyche from them. However, towards the end of the premiere, fate intervenes and Joanna has no choice but to tell Ingrid that she's a witch ... which Ingrid began to suspect when she chanted a fertility spell over one of her friends and the friend told her the next day she was pregnant.

The beginning of this series was good. It had to introduce a lot of different characters right off the bat which made it feel a bit rushed. I'm hoping that now the main characters are introduced the storyline will slow down just a tad so the viewers can enjoy the dynamics of the relationships being formed not just among the characters but among the actors and actresses as well. I'm definitely intrigued and am already anticipating the next episode (next Sunday, 10/13, at 10 p.m. EST on Lifetime).


1 comment:

  1. I'm not Lifetime fan, but I did watch the Witches of East End. I haven't read the book, so I don't know the changes that were made to the series. It was better than what I thought it would be. I'll be watching next week.

    ReplyDelete

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