Hunted


Plot Summary

A series of bizarre murders lead Nick and Schanke to believe that somebody is hunting the city's most dangerous criminals for sport. When they go undercover to catch the killer, Schanke is taken hostage and it is up to Nick to save him before the hunter makes Nick her ultimate trophy.

Critique

The beginning of this episode was kind of surreal. This completely wired guy runs around, scares a few people, finds a gun, and is shot.

I'll admit that there were a few good scenes in this episode. Schanke has a long spiel about how "man was born to hunt" while he's devouring a large sandwich. Natalie asks "god, how sick do you have to be to get your thrills like this?" (about hunting men for sport) just after Nick flashes back to when he did just that. But overall I just wasn't impressed by "Hunted".

For one thing, Schanke was given ample clues about Nick being a vampire. The biker guy actually sees Nick as a vampire, shoots him a few times, and complains that he didn't die -- yet Schanke just dismisses it all as fantasy ("yeah, right"). But later he believes the biker's description of how he got the watch. Even when the Hunter mentions garlic, and how Nick's type "doesn't need money, do they?", it just passes over him. You'd think he could add one and one and one and one and get something more than two...?

The ending had the elements of a typical melodrama. There's a timer counting down to zero, and a bomb connected to it. Nick saves Schanke at the very last instant. The villain says "oh, sh--" *just* as the bomb goes off. Oh, and there's the out-of-the-blue possible love interest scene at the very end, as if to show that the overall storyline was indeed affected.

Then there's this slight continuity problem with the watches. They focus in on Nick's watch every couple of minutes. Fine. Unfortunately, it isn't always the same watch -- sometimes it's a Triathlon (cool modernish digits) and sometimes it's an Ironman (normal watch digits).

At least the Hunter (played by Gwynyth Walsh) is a fun character. She's clearly attracted to Nick from their first encounter -- possibly because of the thrill of hunting such a dangerous creature, but more so because she feels Nick is a kindred spirit. When he reviles her, saying "you're all that I detest", she's very shaken, and starts making mistakes. Still, the bit where she trips and dies at the very end made me say "What? What?".

Episode rating (0 to 10): 2 **


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"Hunted" -- comments from others
"Hunted" -- cast credits

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Marc Wallace
marc@wallace.net