Helstrom “Hell Storm”

Well, that was…something.

Yes, despite the fact I was never quite sure how somehow who was a half-demon (I think) could actually be possessed by a demon, a good portion of this episode concerns Daimon being possessed until Ana, Victoria, and new Keeper Demon Chris Yen can free him.  From there, they rescue Gabriella as she gives birth to a baby girl that is Mother (or Lilith) in human form, and that child grows up really fast.  Daimon and Ana make up, Louise seems to be cured, Caretaker is hanging around, and then Mitch Pileggi, Papa Helstrom, shows up and claims the juvenile Mother.  Which Marvel demon is Pileggi?  I don’t know.  And while he can’t hurt Yen, Lilith’s caretaker, he can cause scores of other people to just fall over dead as he takes the girl away.

But it all seemed so…ponderous.  It wasn’t as if the show was without humor.  They tried to make Yen funny (he wasn’t), but Robert Wisdom’s Caretaker got a little chuckle out of me at least once.  Between him and Elizabeth Marvel, at least the veteran actors were able to do…something.  And Marvel was less so that when Mother left Victoria’s body for good.  The Blood were a dull antagonist group.  I couldn’t really keep track of all the demon stuff.  And, well, Daimon and Ana were rather bland characters in their own ways.  Daimon was worse, but I think if I spend most of the time making half-assed almost-jokes about how tall and thin Ana looks, well, that’s probably not a good thing.

So, really, I was more bored by Helstrom than anything else.  It was rarely particularly scary, didn’t really explain what sort of demonic powers its characters had very well, or if they did I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to pay that much attention.  The demon villains were rather rote, even if one possessed a priest, and the Blood were just kinda dumb.

And now it’s over and not coming back at all.

6 out of 10 one-eyed demon skulls kept in a poorly secured vault.

Now I need to switch to something better.  I told Watson a while back when I was done Helstrom, I would move on to something he was touting at the time.  Truth be told, I was probably going to go that way anyway, but I really wanted something to wash the Helstrom out of my mouth with something that was as far removed from Helstrom as I could get, and I am not sure American Gods‘s third season was going to do that.  So, starting next Monday is the Netflix mini-series The Queen’s Gambit.

I mean, it apparently made the game of chess exciting television.  That has to be worth something.