Here are my ups and downs from Wolf Pack season one, episode 101 From a Spark to a Flame - written
by Jeff Davis and directed by Jason Ensler with Rich Paisley Director of Photography.
I am ripping off this concept from another channel that I like - TrekCulture.
And I do mean ripping it off completely.
What can I say? Ups and downs are a good way to review a show without getting lost in the weeds.
All of that now out of the way,
this video contains spoilers for the first episode of wolf pack.
So go watch that on Paramount Plus first before diving in here.
My first awarded up, right out of the gate, is for the landscape special effects.
People can pick apart CGI all they want,
but I was completely immersed into this total chaos from the very start.
So I really hope we get more of this level of detail.
Same with these animals. Yes, they're all effects.
But they really won't let you set a Bighorn ram on fire for a TV show these days.
Overall, an up for the animal effects and the use of the metaphor.
When we say our planet is on fire, we don't just mean the wooden parts.
I do have a down in this traffic jam of death.
Part of this scene was a bit brutal for my tastes.
It's only for like half a second, which I can't show on YouTube, but it fit with
what was going on and it signaled that this world is very much real and very dangerous,
But for me personally, ew, just ew.
Speaking of animals - let's go ahead and address the werewolf in the room.
TrekCulture has their "Latinum up" for the best thing that happens in an episode.
I don't know the werewolf equivalent of Star Trek currency - silver doesn't seem
right - but anyway the werewolf effects are my up above all other ups for this episode.
From the subtlety of how the wounds heal completely to any outside observer, to the
wonderful glowing eyes and this dream sequence, I'm just looking forward to more of all of that.
And that's all before I mentioned the big daddy werewolf, which is introduced
in a very John Landis "American Werewolf in London" way with this chest-bursting scene.
Again, something else I can't actually show you on YouTube.
I like that they're not keeping the big guy hidden.
His agenda is only hinted at here,
but we get up close and personal with his final form and that is worth all the ups.
If there's a down for me in the werewolf stuff,
I didn't love the effects to show the increasing speed of our young werewolves.
Nine seasons of The Flash and other pop culture material
kind of exhausted all the ways you can do this.
But still, this just didn't work for me.
Another big up in the first episode is the casting.
That - ladies and gentlemen - is Rodrigo Santoro.
He's not as well known to American audiences as he is in his native
Brazil and elsewhere down there, but take my word for it this is a huge win
for the casting and a huge win for the audience here because he is fantastic.
Also the young cast is engaging immediately. I like them all.
Kudos specifically to Armani Jackson and Bella
Shepard. Their chemistry is instant and believable.
Chloe Rose Robertson doesn't have all that much
to do in this first episode except play the worried daughter and annoyed sister.
But the way she looks in those few scenes, the way she moves through this world as if
she's somehow apart from it - alien to it - is visually arresting and very intriguing.
Then we come to Harlan played by Tyler Lawrence Gray.
Again, we don't actually learn as much about him as we do some of the others,
but his is perhaps the most intriguing introduction.
And it really left me wanting to see more from this character.
Of course Sarah Michelle Geller is in this too.
She's been the hype point for the network and is by
far the biggest named star for American audiences.
But here's the thing - she's not in this episode
very much due to the nature of how this story unfolds.
I mean, yeah, they could have squeezed in a few more scenes, but I actually kind of like
only getting a taste and then having her snatched away from us so quickly.
I'm very excited to see where her arson
investigator will take us in the run of the series.
Those are my ups and downs for the first Wolf Pack episode.
Here are a few canon observations for those who keep up with that sort of thing.
Baby werewolves in this universe are fully animal in appearance as
we learned in this flashback with Garrett finding Luna and Harlan.
We went over the wound thing which I love and the super speed thing which didn't work for me.
It appears that different wolves are better at different abilities. Luna's
sense of smell is sharp and Harlan's hearing is better than his sisters.
Their abilities usually get stronger on a full moon which is why it's so strange in
this episode that those senses are dialed up to 11 - two days early - before the full moon.
Their eyes only glow when they're in a pack,
that's kind of cool. And they all glow the same color to signify that pack status.
There is a serious mental link between the two bitten teens.
I'm interested to see just how deep that goes. Because in this scene,
she's not looking through his eyes, but is sensing everything around him.
Speaking of unexplained mental links, there's this thing that happened to
all four of them at the same time and ultimately brought them all together.
Their eyes rolled back in their head and they started running.
I can't wait to see what that means.
Wolf Pack streams new episodes every Thursday on Paramount Plus.