Spoilers ahead. If you care about that, don’t read until you’ve watched the series. You’ve been warned!
I’ll come right out and say it: This is my kind of trash TV. Second only to time travel with a touch of historical fiction, supernatural mishmash is my favorite flavor of drivel. With access to Netflix, it was only a matter of time before I finally bit (heh heh) the bullet.
See, that’s the thing about trash TV you love. You know that you could be watching, reading or doing something else more substantial and/or relevant, but instead you’re feeding your brain the equivalent of junk food. Not great in the long run, but in the moment? Bliss.
A note: I’m aware that Bitten is adapted from Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the OtherWorld fantasy book series. Typically, I don’t like reviewing adaptations without also checking out the source material… but honestly, the TV series didn’t inspire me enough to check the books out. So here we are.
What Do I Like About the TV Series Bitten?
Let’s get a few no brainers out of the way: Female protagonist and other “strong female characters”—check. Not cancelled without a resolution of the main arc—check. Great fight scenes with blood and gore—check.
I especially like the fact that fight scenes with Elena Michaels are just as dynamic, if not more so, than those without her in it. Actor Laura Vandervoort has a second degree black belt in shotokan karate, so that’s likely what drew me to the fight scenes. (My dad was third degree black belt in shotokan karate in his prime, so maybe I’m…. imprinting? I don’t know.)
Now for specifics that need a little bit of explaining—sadly, not much, but here we go.
Noah Danby as Zachary Cain
This actor’s agent must have the same taste in TV trash as I do, because he pops up in a surprising number of series that I’ve watched.
Danby’s had bit roles in Eureka, Warehouse 13, Hemlock Grove (another train wreck of a supernatural mishmash, but that’s a mess for another time) and Orphan Black. Most recently, he had a semi-important role as short-lived pack leader Russell in Shadowhunters; which I’m currently hate-watching.
The gag? Danby plays a tough werewolf in both Bitten and Shadowhunters. This is probably why he’s outstanding and memorable in both roles. Neither Zachary Cain nor Russell are integral to the respective plots of Bitten and Shadowhunters, but they’re characters I ended up really caring about.
Zachary Cain just wanted a family, Barbra. What a classic brawler with a heart of gold.
Steve Lund as Nick Sorrentino
In stories like this, there are usually two main male characters: Stefan and Damon in Vampire Diaries, Bill and Eric in True Blood, Roman and Peter in Hemlock Grove, Jace and Alec in Shadowhunters, etc. The point is provide a contrast, I suppose.
I don’t watch a trash TV series if none of the characters are eye candy. It’s already junk food, so why would I bother staying… for the plot? Anyway. With Bitten, I kept watching because of Nick Sorrentino—mostly because his red pants and ridiculously tight v-necks were less annoying than Clay Danvers’ perpetually flaring nostrils.
Usually, my eye candy is actually a female character (e.g. Elena Gilbert in Vampire Diaries, or Izzy Lightwood in Shadowhunters) but Nick was it for Bitten. What a sweetheart! Guess it also helped that he lost his dad in the first season, and I watched the series right after my dad died. Again: Maybe some strange imprinting happened.
What Don’t I Like About the TV Series Bitten?
Where to start? Again, let’s state the obvious: Paint-by-numbers character development, both for main and side roles—check. A painful lack of casting diversity, with the only main POC character killed off mid-series—check. Annoying decisions by characters that don’t make sense given their personalities and knowledge—check.
Now for the specifics, and Universe have mercy, but there’s a lot to unpack.
Excessive Sex Scenes
Look, I’m not a prude. And I understand that this is a werewolf-centric story, and that entails showing a significant amount of nudity. I’m all about that. Werewolf transformations were in the nude and that scores high for me.
But the sex scenes just got tiring after a while. And again, I understand that I’m not the target audience. Not only am I not a horny fanfic-writing teenager, but I’m also asexual.
This isn’t uncommon at all; True Blood is probably the most mainstream example of this phenomenon. Sex sells, and it: Humanizes the inhuman? Makes for a great interlude? Fills in a few minutes when there’s not enough plot to work with? Take your pick.
If it’s not to further the plot, what’s the point of a sex scene? Elena and Clay are in love—we get it. I do appreciate that they showed one scene where Nick sleeps with a random girl to gain access to her workplace, but that was just one time out of many. Even Outlander isn’t this obvious about it, and that series is just time travel smut, let’s admit it.
Elena Michaels as the Only Female Werewolf
This is a huge spoiler, but if you’ve read this far, it probably doesn’t matter to you: In the show’s lore, it’s explained that Elena Michaels is able to survive the First Change after being bitten only because her birth father is a werewolf—and her mother is the daughter of one, too.
To recap: Werewolves have been a boys club for centuries because this particular situation has never happened before in the history of this fictional universe. There is no law or rule barring werewolves from having daughters. There is no law or rule barring werewolves from mating with daughters of werewolves. But somehow, Elena Michaels is the first and only one of her kind. What?
I hate plot devices like this. If you’re going to have a character with a certain je ne sais quoi that makes them special enough to be the protagonist, the back story better be amazing. This just feels like a cop out.
The Russian Albino, & Then Some
What a wasted opportunity. This character was everything. Again, huge spoiler: The Albino is actually a set of twins, heartless mercenaries with the same scent.
We didn’t get a proper back story, hardly any on-screen interaction between the twins, and for such a horrific Big Bad, their respective downfalls were both quite disappointing.
Instead of the stupid side plot with Katia kidnapping Rocco and Rachel coming into her powers, why couldn’t we have had a flashback episode set in Russia with the origin story of the Albino? How did he come to be? Why go full on The Prestige and live as one person?
Actually: Never mind Elena Michaels and the North American pack. Why not just focus on the Russian pack? Wolves hunted for sport by the Russian government for 5,000 rubles each, saved from extinction by a traditional, mafia-like, district-driven national pack structure? Come on.
Elena’s Final Solution
I was legit yelling at the screen as I watched the series finale. What the hell did I just watch?
Don’t get me wrong. Sure, let’s get on board the whole werewolf reveal. But to assume that the Russian pack will instantly leave the North American pack alone the moment the news gets out is ridiculous. That’s short-sighted and honestly unbelievable.
Also: Canada granting sanctuary to werewolves mere months after the reveal? Sure, buddy. 100% if this happened in real life the process would be a whole lot different. Elena and Clay able to live their lives peacefully still in Bear Valley after StoneHaven burned down? How could they have managed that?
Not to mention the actual scene of the reveal. What happens to Paige, who so conspicuously accompanied Sasha to the press conference? Does she get detained? Are witches revealed to the world, as well? What happens to Sasha’s body? Does he get a decent burial or is his body turned over to a lab to be poked and prodded? We may never find out.
Unless we read the books, I guess. And eh, I’ll pass.
Bottom Line: Would I Recommend the TV Series Bitten?
In a word: No.
This is a series I binged while still grieving my dad’s recent death, and that’s probably the only reason I didn’t drop it. The predictability was mind numbing, and as with most trash TV, it’s not the best. It’s not even the best compared to others in the same genre—although, to be fair, it’s not the worst. Let’s place this somewhere above Hemlock Grove and somewhere below Shadowhunters—for now.
The one bright spot that manages to shine past the drab denouement of Bitten is the fact that we got a TV series with werewolves and without vampires. Don’t know how common that is because werewolves aren’t my favorite cryptid, so I don’t specifically seek out werewolf fiction. But wow, am I tired of vampires. Whew. At least Bitten gave me a short respite in the middle of finishing the last season of Shadowhunters.
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