Continuing on with the idea of female detectives who made their way to television from within the pages of a series of novels, we have Lifetime’s Blood Ties. A supernatural detective drama which owes a nod or two to Buffy and her Scooby gang, but surprisingly in the best sort of way. It doesn’t have the imagination or scope that Buffy had (and I’m going to go on record as assuming there will be no musical extravaganza) but what Blood Ties does have going for it in common our favorite Slayer is wit, and a re-imagining of the vampire myth in it’s own right.
The series revolves around private investigator and former police officer Vicki Nelson, whose degenerative eye disorder forced her out of official police work and into the realm of the private sector, where she learns there exist all manner of mythical creatures going bump in the night. Among them is a five hundred year old vampire named Henry Fitzroy, the lone (for the time being) vampire in the city due a territorial instinct within the vampires which keep them solitary creatures, repelled by another vampire’s presence in much the same innate predatory manner as a lion who would not want to share a hunting ground with another.
One of the more interesting, but least touched on, elements of the series is Vicki’s waning eyesight. It is something of a problem for a person who hunts creatures of the night that she is rendered nearly blind in the darkness. Also interesting is attraction/flirtation between Vicki and Henry, who accept their connection as people who understand there’s no possibility of a future between them.
Henry:(sniffing her hair longingly) You smell like death.
Vicki: Okay, how is that even remotely a turn on?
Complicating matters even further is Vicki’s ex partner, and lover, Mike Celluci, who represents the most stable but unfortunately least interesting side of the triangle. He’s everything Vicki should want, opposed by everything Vicki can’t have in the form of Henry.
Happily, the mixed up love triangle only serves as an undercurrent to the storyline of the series, which finds Vicki early on branded by a pair of tattoos meant to summon a demon to accept her soul as a sacrifice to enter into the world. The tattoos mark Vicki’s inexorable connection to the world of the occult, a connection largely undefined and with a decidedly ominous air. But whether they are a gift or a curse is not a subject Vicki dwells on any more than she dwells on her failing vision. She merely accepts it as her new reality, and then tries to find a way to deal with that reality. It’s this stubborn, pragmatic streak which keeps her, and the series itself, grounded in the face of the fantastic elements and monsters of the week she encounters. And the strong, even performance of Christina Cox brings a three dimensional woman to life even in the face of the supernaturally bad CGI.
And while like Buffy, Vicki is adept at clever, snarky banter that helps to keep some of the darker elements of the series at bay, unlike Buffy, Vicki does not approach her attraction to a vampire with the doe-eyed sense of a teenager. She’s a full grown woman, who had relationships long before Henry came along and, if anything, uses his presence almost as a buffer to keep the functional reality a relationship with Mike could represent at arm’s length.
One of my favorite elements of Vicki’s character is her staunch determination (otherwise defined as abject bull-headedness). Anyone looking to tell her what to do, how to do it or where it should be done would be better served, as my mother used to say, by going out and spitting into the wind. She’s strong minded to the point of absurdity sometimes, and even though she’s got a vampire at her side, Vicki is the one solving the cases, driving the investigations and never backing down from a fight. It’s demonstrated early on that Henry’s vampiric ability to alter the thoughts of the weak minded (kind of like Obi-Wan – only with black eyes and fangs) hold no sway over Vicki, herself.
What’s best about the relationship between the two of them is how unlike Angel, the character of Henry is portrayed. In the mythology of Buffy, once turned, a vampire had lost their conscience, unless a soul is restored to them by mystical means. Henry on the other hand, is not a creature without conscience or strictly of evil. He’s more a student of the human condition, viewed from just on the outside of it, who accepts his differences and even his animalistic nature in the same practical way that Vicki accepts her own limitations. He knows that he’s a killer by nature, but he’s a friend by choice. And he has met in Vicki a person who can stand as an equal of sorts to his will, despite his much greater age and experiences.
His history is one he views with a sense of nostalgia rather than overbearing guilt. He knows he has killed, and will likely kill again, but feeds mainly on the willing, who trade their blood for the thrill of how it is taken from them. And unlike the love-struck, bad poetry spouting Spike, though he is an artist as well, Henry keeps meticulous control of his emotions. Rather than being tormented by any sense that he’s been rejected by Vicki, he delights in the game of flirtation and teasing they can indulge in together, rather than dwelling on the things they cannot.
Henry: Where are you going?
Vicki: Husband hunting.
Henry: (pointing to himself) Husband material.
Vicki: You're sweet, but you're just not a morning person.
Henry: No, I'm not.
In a sense, Blood Ties manages to cover such similar ground as Buffy, perhaps even as a spiritual successor of sorts, in large part because it comes at it from such a different angle. Instead of the angst-ridden, ‘in love with my own tragedy’ of youth, it’s much more a show about the tread worn cynicism of adulthood coming face to face with these demons and nightmares. Vicki accepts the tragedy of this new path as just another thing to deal with, just another layer of an already complicated life which has seen too many tragedies and monsters of the human variety to be thrown completely by discovering the existence of mythical monsters.
She is still rocked by lives she cannot save, and annoyed by questions she can’t find an answer to. And she tackles each new case with the obsessive air of a workaholic former cop who is well versed in the art of avoiding her private life in the name of her work, and allows herself only to exist in the grey area she finds between the two. And like Henry's rather extreme allergy to sunlight, Vicki's near blindness at night helps underscore the ephemeral nature of that grey area where she is trying to forge her path. It may not be as long, and I hope it's not quite as bumpy as the path tread by Buffy, but it's certainly fun to follow along for the ride.
Lifetime's website has full episodes to stream for anyone wanting to jump on board.
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