How could I not be excited about Yaga, the new Crave production featuring Hudson "Heated Rivalry" Williams and Carrie Ann "The Matrix" Moss? And oh, dear reader, how I have tried. How I tried to love it, let me count the ways. I've looked at it as a comedy, approached it as a mystery and as a buddy cop show - but I am still confused about what Yaga itself wants to be.
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| Yaga doesn't quite succeed in translating the mystery from the page and the stage to the screen |
Let me start by saying that as a theatre aficionado I first read the Kat Sandler play the show is based on. Yes, I was one of the people that bumped up sales of the stage play after Williams' casting announcement for the show was made, I will confess. But I did so wholly for artistic purposes as nothing intrigues me more than trying to follow the creative process of adapting something made for dialogue and subtext to a tv show that must be aware of the fact that it is going to have to cater to the heated Heated Rivalry fandom - whether it wants to or not.
May I say that "inspired by the Kat Sandler play" doesn't even cut it close? This is farther removed from the original than West Side story is from Romeo and Juliet. I'm on episode 3 right now and I have seen maybe 10% of what is present in the play. Now the show moves at breathtaking speed (one of the things that I think is off and that makes it impossible to determine what genre it's trying to be - there sure isn't enough slow camera movement and haunting foggy X-files and Twin Peaks impenetrable mystery to make it... well, mysterious) so maybe they are all going to info dump it on us in the last few episodes but I still don't know what I am watching.
Where are the strong women characters? Why do we get Logan in the first place? Was Henry Park really that non interesting to get to know as we do in the play? Noah Reid is entertaining enough and I actually find his slick womanizing act highly entertaining to watch. The town sheriff is a bit of a creep as well, too easily fawning over a young girl the minute she is born for questioning.
Three episodes in and I get that men should not be trusted and are only out for their own interests. I wish I'd seen a bit more of the coven and the saga that the play had in it. I am not quite bewitched, but I do feel haunted - I wish the episodes would just breathe a little more. Even that crazy ass costume party which had the most promising color palette and creepy symbolism just handed on a silver platter was not drawn out.
Oh Jacob Tierney, I just hope you are going to stick to your guns and draw that other Crave production out for all its languishing tension and that you are going to let us feel all of the feels with your slow paced camera action that makes every reheat another fresh and first encounter. Because sorry Yaga, to paraphrase the great Rose Landry: you're just not doing it for me... and I wish it were different.
