If you have friends who've been resisting checking out The Gates, this touching scene from last night's episode may win them over. Vampires Dylan and Claire decide to "come out" to their daughter... but they get a surprise. Spoilers below.
This was the "coming out" episode of The Gates all around, although the episode took some really interesting detours on the way there. In a nutshell, Devon the evil witch causes Nick and his family to be haunted by the spirit of the woman whose brother Nick killed, and whose death Nick helped cover up. And as a result, Nick is forced to come clean to his wife Sarah at last, about the fact that they're living amongst vamipres and werewolves. Meanwhile, Charlie keeps struggling with his hawt ex-girlfriend Andie's confession that she's a succubus, until Charlie's sister gives him a kick in the head and tells him to act his age about it. And finally, Dylan and Claire get an unwelcome visit from Emily's birth aunt — and Child & Family Services — about whether Emily's in a good, nurturing environment. And this leads to the "coming out" scene you just watched above.
What I loved about this episode, in particular, is how much care the show puts into the characters by this point — the people who looked like ciphers in the first episode. In each of these subplots, there are little moments that make us buy into the characters and what they're dealing with.
Like the way Nick handles his haunting, on top of the bad dreams he was already having — he freaks out, just like anyone would, but by halfway through the episode he's already taking steps to deal with the situation and being proactive, because that's who Nick is. He's not, as Lady Gaga would say, a paper gangster.
Or the way in which Charlie struggles with fact that he still has the hots for Succubus Girl, and then his annoying nosey kid sister gets in the middle of it. The dynamic here felt real, and was a nice change from the succubus-human-werewolf-werewolf love quadrangle we'd been getting used to in previous weeks.
And perhaps the biggest surprise of the episode was the reminder that, yes, Dylan and Claire are actually really good parents — they're not just crappy parents who are in love with some fantasy of parenting. They actually do care about Emily, and they do a good job of caring for her. Instead of taking shortcuts that only show us that Dylan and Claire are desperate to hang on to their adopted daughter, the episode actually shows us moments of real affection and family closeness — for some reason, I really liked the pancake thing. And I was startled and touched that Dylan has already made up his mind he wants to renew his bond with Claire — a lot of shows would have drawn that out a lot longer.
Anyway, as a study of "coming out" and the different ways in which it can go, this episode was pretty fun. As the clip above shows, Emily handles her parents' disclosure pretty well and we get a really sweet scene that somehow reminded me of the bit in The Wedding Banquet where the elderly relative already knows the main character is gay. And Charlie comes around this week, probably because he realizes it'll be awesome to watch his hawt girlfriend eat steak. But Sarah doesn't quite handle things as well as everyone else, and she insists they have to leave The Gates right now — although when she realizes that means no more addictive mind-control tea, she may change her mind.
What did you think?