I will say upfront that I have totes read the Charlaine Harris Midnight, Texas book series. And it was… not always great, but compulsively readable, and oddly satisfying if you’d read any of her other series. Which I have. I have a problem. But in any case, it’s a world where psychics, vampires, angels, witches, and etc. are all real and viable and coexisting, though not always publicly and/or peacefully. LET’S DO THIS.
We open on an older lady coming to visit a handsome young man, and they set up the shots to make it seem like he is a male escort. It’s a misdirect, he is a psychic, and she wants to tell her dead husband that she’s seeing his old business partner. The dead husband loses his shit, possess the psychic, and tries to kill everyone. The psychic wins this battle of wills, and throws out a snappy one-liner. This is Manfred Bernardo, and I respect like hell that Charlaine Harris has never tried to give her leads “cool” names.
Manfred gets a mysterious call from someone called “Hightower” who has a dramatic accent and tells Manfred he can’t run from him/them/it. Manfred is all, cool story bro, what is this running of which you speak, then immediately hops into a RV and drives into the desert. Cool things about Manfred: he gets visitations from his ghost grandma. This is slightly more disturbing than you’d expect, because apparently when we come back as a ghost, we look like our corpse, but an angry version. Anyway, she tells him all mysteriously that he’ll be safe in Midnight, Texas.
In Midnight, which basically looks like the desert roadstop of your nightmares, Manfred is renting a shack from Bobo Winthrop, owner of the local pawnshop (Manfred hears voices coming from the objects in the pawnshop – his life is super not fun). Bobo, for what it’s worth, can only be described as hunky. Not hot – hunky, like you’d see him being relentlessly pursued by Jessica Wakefield in Sweet Valley High. In any case, Bobo says Manfred can have a month of free rent if Manfred can find Bobo’s missing fiancee, Aubrey. Manfred says he’s a fake and just a good people reader. But wait! Didn’t we just see him get possessed, talk to a dead relative, and hear a chair swear? Let the man have his mystery and his obvious man-pain. (Neither man’s man-pain seems to stem from the fact their names are Manfred and Bobo.)
The local diner is a-poppin’ for a town that is literally one intersection. But Manfred is a local now and gets to sit at the Midnighters table, which is a who’s-who of Hey It’s That Guys. Creek the waitress is Haddie Braverman from Parenthood; Olivia is from the surprisingly good John Tucker Must Die; Lemuel the vampire is Doctore from Spartacus. (Though he’s not in this scene, local tattoo artist and gay man Joe Strong is Smith Jerrod from Sex and the City.) Lemuel feeds on energy rather than blood and he spouts vague sentences. Olivia showed up earlier, in a different wig that she won’t discuss. Ooo-wee-ooo.
Creek Braverman invites Manfred to the local picnic the next day, which is out among the dead trees and sad actual creek, because Midnight is sad, y’all. We also get to meet Fiji, local witch, who gave Manfred magical cookies to find out if he’s a bad person, has a thing for hunky Bobo, and conveniently finds a dead body. Bobo drops dramatically to his knees in the riverbank, because it’s his fiancee Aubrey. Was anyone really surprised?
“[dramatic western sting]” is the subtitle taking us to the credits, and I think that tells you all you need to know.
Manfred gets a visitation from Ghost Aubrey, who wants help. She is all gurgly and bloated, so naturally we cut to her youthful and alive, because Bobo apparently propped his camera on a rock to film himself proposing to Aubrey. He’s watching the video and having a Sad. Fiji decides to come and comfort him. The detective reveals that Aubrey wasn’t quite who she said she was; she was married five years ago to a white supremacist who recently got out of prison. Also they might still be married. You’d think the mysterious, jailed husband whose name she was conveniently pretending she didn’t share would be a good suspect, but alas, our humorless detectives only think that’s more motive for Bobo.
Manfred uses a ouija board to talk to Aubrey, but it turns out the place he’s renting is hella haunted, including by a child who just waves around a hammer and screams. The humorless detectives think everyone is acting weird, but mainly Manfred, who in fairness just got interrupted from his bad-idea ghost summoning, which also revealed sometimes his floor glows. He explains he’s a psychic and gives them the one thing Ghost Aubrey was able to communicate before the other ghosts came in and started yelling: the location of the gun that shot her.
Olivia sees Manfred getting out of the car with the detectives and loses her shit: she brass knuckles him, strips him down, and ties him up. She thinks her father sent Manfred, but he has no idea what she’s talking about. Fiji and Lemuel catch her, and the four of them have a nice sit-down where Lemuel explains that something about Midnight, Texas lures all kinds of supernatural folk, like himself and Manfred. Also he knew Manfred’s grandmother Xylda. She was being hunted before she died, a bounty that has been presumably passed to Manfred. This show also throws the word gypsy around a lot as part of its mysticism, which isn’t great.
Bobo gets hunted down at the shop by Aubrey’s husband and his white supremacist buddy, but Lemuel is coming in for the night shift, and his girlfriend Olivia shoots the guys with an arrow. They were looking for “the money,” but that’s all we get out of them.
Manfred goes to flirt with Creek at the Gas & Go, but her dad cuts that off right quick, never a good sign. Creek swings back to Manfred’s trailer to exposit that her dad has been weird since her mom died, and that she is in fact out of high school [so Manfred isn’t super creepy for hitting on her]. She gives us the rundown to accompany a montage of the local weirdos:
- Joe “watches over” everyone – he has wings and is flying over the riverbank where Aubrey was found
- The Rev is very strong and also obsessed with his pet cemetery – he’s moving a giant bloody animal body
- Fiji is more than a new age crazy cat lady who doesn’t have a mean bone in her body – she’s in the middle of casting some kind of spell with fibers from a jar labeled Aubrey. She’s talking to her cat, Mr. Snuggly – and he’s talking back. Also Mr. Snuggly is a sassy asshole, which doesn’t really surprise anyone who’s ever met a cat.
- Olivia has “more secrets than anyone” – a secret room full of weapons. A conversation between her and Lemuel reveals she is likely a hitwoman.
Anyway, after all that helpful exposition, Manfred and Creek are about to make out when the humorless detectives show up and arrest Bobo for Aubrey’s murder. Everyone goes out into the streets, some disturbingly armed, to see. None of the Midnighters really think Bobo did it, judging by the mild uproar. The detectives try to drive off but Fiji magics they car a little bit to make it squishy. Olivia and the Reverend say a few vague things about being smart about this and full moons and let’s never reveal all our secrets in the pilot, so she unmagics the car and there goes Bobo.
Manfred gets back to his shack, which is now aglow and filled with menacing, ghost-y shadows. He is not having the best day.
Television Without Standards 