Sanctuary - Pilot: Sanctuary For All (recap)

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Two cops are responding to a domestic disturbance in a New York apartment building.
They bang upon the door from whence the disturbance is coming, only to be greeted by a bug-eyed, thoroughly freaked out Russian woman who assures them, “No trouble here! Go away!”

New York’s finest persist, and soon discover a dead old man tossed aside like a throw pillow in a bedroom that is decorated in an unassuming olive tone – although the blood splatter really makes the window treatments pop. In the same room, there’s a kid cowering beneath the bed. Cop #1 wants to help the poor tyke, and tries to coax him out from his hiding place. Big mistake, seeing as how the kid has a pet killer worm, or more specifically, a pet killer worm growing out of his belly….or even more specifically, a pet killer worm who thinks an old man appetizer is best paired with a hearty cop entrée, and a Pinot Grigio, maybe.

Things don’t look promising for Cop #2……..

 

Will Zimmerman is called to the scene. He’s a Mentalist type guy who can survey his surroundings, and with the briefest of glances tell you that the occupant of a particular room is a weird hyperactive Russian kid with night sweats and serious issues, not the least of which is the obvious fact that his parents deadbolt his room from the outside. The old-school detectives who are already on the scene have a shooter in custody, and they don’t know nothin’ about no kid. They don’t like this smarty pants book-learned Will guy, clearly.

Leaving the building, Will catches sight of a weird looking kid on the lam, which is quite a coincidence - what with the other detectives not knowing nothin’ about no kid, which didn’t exactly convince Will. Will wants to talk to Eddie Munster, only the kid takes off. Will starts to chase him down an alley….only to barely escape getting mowed down by some chick on a motorcycle. (This will eventually prove to be Ashley, daughter of intrepid creature curator, Dr. Helen Magnus.) Whew! Ashley misses him - barely! This leaves him wide open to getting mowed down about ten seconds later by the car Ashley’s mum Helen is following in. “Not the way I hoped we’d meet,” Helen demurs as she leans over Will. (The British are so polite!) Her voice triggers a childhood nightmare of Will’s, in which he’s being dragged away by a pointy-toothed Bogeyman. And then he passes out.

Will regains consciousness in the E.R., then proceeds directly to the police station, because he’s a workaholic. At the station, the Russian mother is identifying the alleged cop killer….in a really lying liar kind of way, notes Will. He follows her and insists on questioning her, or at least calling her a lying liar, which she doesn’t take kindly to. She storms off.

The bodies of the cops who got munched by the killer worm are taken to the morgue. Helen follows. The mortician is fine with that. Lunch on Tuesday then? Lovely!

Helen proceeds to extract glowing green killer worm goo from the cop corpses, as Eddie Munster is being trailed by Ashley in the tunnels of the subway system.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, a Creepy Bald Englishman is pining over an antique picture in a locket….it’s Helen, from a bazillion years ago! A hooker interrupts his pining to ask him if he’s looking for a good time. He inquires as to whether she’s heard any rumors about some weird big sanctuary type building where strange things happen. The hooker admits she’s heard stories….and she likes that he’s obviously into some weird crap, but before she has a chance to charge him extra for it, he kills her.

And still elsewhere. Ashley is hot on the heels of the that kid with the scary pet worm.

And elsewhere yet, one of the old-school detectives is getting annoyed by Will’s insistence on paying attention to stupid stuff, like forensic details which prove that those dead cops weren’t killed by bullets. Old-School Detective has donuts to eat and a wife to smack around, probably…..why should he hang around working overtime when they got a “positive” ID from that shifty-eyed Russian woman?

Helen is listening in on this particular conversation, and then follows Will outside in the pouring rain, where she proceeds to introduce herself as the broad who ran him down in the alley. She then offers Will a job. Only he’s not interested in working for some mysterious English stalker lady who’s a menace behind the wheel, even if she does raise a good point about how he’s too clever and esoteric for standard police work. She hands him her business card…..just in case he changes his mind.

Will goes home, where his smokin’ hot ex-girlfriend expresses concern for his well-being as she begrudgingly packs up the last of her things. This establishes Will as an uber-nerd, because he’s got way more on his mind that convincing this hottie to stay. So she goes. Reluctantly.

Will examines Helen’s business card. This soon leads to Helen picking him up in her car (instead of dragging him along under it this time, which is a nice change). Actually, she has a driver….and in the rearview mirror, Will notices that the driver has monster eyes. But there’s enough else going on that he doesn’t have to dwell on this.

Elsewhere still, Creepy Bald Englishman is trying to crash the party at Sanctuary headquarters…….only the invisible fence protecting the property crashes his party, instead.

Helen and Will arrive at the Sanctuary. During the course of their conversation, it becomes painfully obvious that Will has a huge stick up his arse…………which, hey, might come in handy later when it comes time to stake vampires or something. In the meantime, Helen’s hardly bothered by his attitude. She’s encountered far worse than uptight jerks, as we’ll soon learn…….

Transit cops are walking the line when they spot Eddie Munster on the run. Ashley tries to warn them away from the weird kid, only they’re transit cops, not Nobel Prize winning physicists, so they don’t want to listen. She has to kung fu them for their own good, but it was probably good for her too, ’cause you can tell she likes to kung fu people. This gives the weird kid time to escape.

Will is introduced to the inner sanctum of the Sanctuary and stops acting like an uptight jerk long enough to go, “Whoooaaaaaa!” Mermaids! Shy South American Lizard Men! Fire-Breathing….Things! Jeckyl and Hyde! (Hey, that Jeckyl seems like a fun guy, actually……) And Bigfoot! (Though he’s not in a cage….he’s staff.) As Helen reveals, some of these creatures are here voluntarily. (Sanctuary – hellooooo?) Others are being held as more of a public service type deal to the general public. Helen also reveals that “monsters” is not the P.C. term nowadays. “Abnormals” is.

Will’s not sure he wants this job, but he goes with Helen to collect the weird Eddie Munster kid, whom Ashley has cornered down in the subway tunnels. Because we’ve already established that Will is a nerd who is utterly impervious to hot women, he barely blinks upon meeting Ashley. Although, to be fair, a boy with a killer worm affixed to his midsection did just try to kill Will. Maybe he was a tad distracted…..

Ashley would love to hang out and make small talk, only she has a fun night out planned, during which she intends to buy hollow-point bullets and other weaponry from some shady arms dealer. Mama Helen doesn’t think it’s safe to go out on THIS particular night (as opposed to the others, when they are merely dealing with werewolves), seeing as how someone tried to breach the invisible fence earlier.

Yeah, like, whatever, Mom!

Based upon the chemical composition of the fluorescent killer worm goo extracted from the dead cops, Helen deduces that the kid grew up near Chernobyl. She sends Will in to the cell to question him – which, as resident techie Henry points out, makes for a particularly harsh job interview. Henry also mentions that a dead prostitute turned up earlier in the evening, which alarms Helen way more than kids with killer worms where their bellies should be.

Indeed, Will has been sent in to the cell to question the boy with the bad case of tapeworm. To hear the kid tell it, the worms get agitated when they sense fear. Cool self-defense mechanism, notes Will. They bond. The kid’s not so bad when his midsection isn’t otherwise busy trying to eat you!

Helen is now pouring over security video footage, during which she spots the Creepy Bald Englishman on the loose. This is bad news for Ashley, who has skipped curfew to lovingly fondle rocket launchers. That’s not a euphemism….this chick likes the real deal. Weird Englishman shows up and sends a throwing star into the torso of the Arms Dealer, who is actually kind of cool….for an arms dealer, anyway. Ashley gives chase to Creepy Bald Englishman, who is fast on his feet. Really, really fast.

Helen and Will are having a conversation on a rooftop. She reveals that she met him a long time ago, when he was only eight years old….you know, when that monster killed his mom. Oh – so that was real? Does this mean that Will has spent his whole life thinking he was crazy, and devoted the rest of his life to studying psychology, in order to get to the bottom of the nature of craziness, only to find that he wasn’t actually crazy? Again: whoaaaaaaaaaaaaa……..

Creepy Bald Englishman and Ashley are duking it out in a cat and mouse kind of way. Doesn’t she want to know who he really is, he asks ominously. Nope! She just wants to tae kwon do his bald, bad self! He reveals that he’s been following the crazy antics of mother and daughter for some time. He would reveal even more, only Arms Dealer Guy has revived enough to pick up a super-deluxe taser gun and shoot a whole bunch of electric metal spikes into Creepy Bald Englishman. Wow – it takes a LOT (like, 10,000 volts) to knock this guy down! What is he – immortal or something?!

Henry has retrieved Ashley in his van. She’s bagged Creepy Bald Englishman as a souvenir of her night out. She goes to shower, leaving Henry to deal with the seemingly unconscious Creepy Bald Englishman who is freaky fast on his feet and impossible to kill. Poor Henry. You get the feeling he’s grossly overworked and underappreciated around here.

Sure enough, Creepy Bald Englishman is just playing possum. He forces Henry to disarm the security system in the building. Then he tasers him.

Creepy Bald Englishman confronts Helen and Ashley in the library. We learn his name is John, and that he and Helen go way back. Waaaaaaaaay back, to when he made quite a name for himself cutting up Victorian prostitutes……

John is ailing in some mysterious fashion, and threatens to harm Ashley unless Helen helps him out. To make his point, he drops Ashley inside the cage of a velociraptor, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. (Around here, apparently a guy who can withstand 10,000 volts still has to prove that he means business.) John goes back to bargain with Helen. You saved me once, he reminds her. You can do it again! Besides, we’re family! Or hasn’t Ashley wondered who she inherited her killer moves from? Uhhhh….Helen admits that she told Ashley her father is dead. This upsets John.

But immortals gotta stick together, so Helen agrees to give John the cure for what ails him. Psych! Not really. The medicine has a weird side effect of making its recipient vanish into thin air.

Henry and Will are already rescuing Ashley from the velociraptor. Big Foot provides enormous assistance in this endeavor as well. (Who says reliable domestics are hard to come by?!) Alas, he gets swiped good by the raptor. Helen scoops up her injured daughter and whisks her off.

With all that has happened over the past 24 hours, Will is loosening up a tad, as evidenced by his slightly friendlier exchange with Ashley the next morning. But he still doesn’t think he wants the job. He goes to visit Big Foot in the infirmary, and tries to give him a pep talk, during which he makes it a point to not use the word “monster,” but Big Foot says, “Dude, monsters DO totally exist!” (OK, he doesn’t use the words “dude,” or “totally,” but the rest of the message is pretty accurately transcribed there…..)

Will goes to Helen with questions. Why didn’t she kill the monster that killed his mom? (She tried.) Also, he happened to catch the name of the Creepy Bald Englishman during the previous conversation – John Druitt? Like, the same guy who was the primary suspect in those Jack the Ripper killings? Not to mention…….if John and Helen go back that far……they’re immortal? And, wait….Jack the Ripper is Helen’s immortal baby daddy?

So, NOW Will is intrigued enough to accept the job. (Geez – takes a lot to tip the scales for this hardened cynic!) For future reference, Will conveys to Helen that he’d appreciate it if she would be more forthcoming about her dark secrets and mysterious past.

She’ll try.

Post-Game Analysis: Pretty cool stuff. The cast handles itself admirably. The effects are quite awesome. And having a whole parade of legendary monsters (I mean, “abnormals”) to play with in future episodes leaves a lot to look forward to. I really, really wanted to love this….and I do. I guess I’m not a hardened cynic like Will Zimmerman. The only thing left to say is:

More, please!

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