The best compliment I can pay Hemlock Grove in its second season is that I think I’d be willing to watch a vampire-only cut of this show too. This is a compliment because my previous favorite version of the show would have been 30 minutes of dead air, then one minute of Shelley embarrassedly smiling, followed by 20 more minutes of dead air. The Roman Godfrey in “Gone Sis” represents the smoothest and most interesting version of Roman we’ve gotten yet. There may be some Skarsgard-ian charm in this kid yet. Take where the episode opens: in a non-descript hotel room with a brooding, smoking Roman. It wouldn’t necessarily take Vince Gilligan to know where this scene is going. Roman is clearly far more interested in draining blood than bedding a prostitute but it doesn’t make how events play out any less satisfying. Roman mentioning the blood type he’s looking for, murdering a pimp and then downing a cigarette with is face covered in blood is…cool. The plot still hasn’t moved forward and the show hasn’t declared how it’s different from Twilight/True Blood/Vampire Diaries/Insert-pretty-Vampire-media-here but at least it’s starting to provide compelling images in motion, which is kind of the whole point of this “pointing cameras at actors and sets” thing. More to that point is the story of Roman and his horse. Thanks to his meeting with his now, sympathetic mother (thank God Dr. Pryce has all these drugs that conveniently fix characters most annoying tributes) we and Olivia know that Roman is struggling with his hunger. “Your hunger alone will eventually grow deeper. Bodies will pile up,” she says. This finally makes explicit the relationship between Olivia and Dr. Pryce. She kills people via exsanguination and then he gets the bodies to experiment on. But it also gives scene’s with Roman an added sense with desperation. If nothing else, Hemlock Grove should have been “cool.” Work in some supernatural gore, some nudity, some slick editing and a good enough soundtrack and you have a show that still won’t show up on any year-end “best of” lists but will have enough .gifs to make the Tumblr crowd happy. Season two has done a much better job with this. Take even the title of the episode. Peter’s plotline hadn’t progressed much aside from him becoming a two-truck driver/mechanic, which is the most reasonable profession for a gypsy werewolf anyway. But something as simple as creating the linguistically interesting phrase “Gone Sis” from a truck stop called “Wagoner’s Oasis” is just not something that would have occurred to this show in the first season. Problems remain, but with memories of season one’s disaster fresh in my mind, I’ll be happy to grade on a curve as long as Hemlock Grove continues to bring the style, even without the substance. Check back on our Hemlock Grove season two page for more coverage. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!
