Birds of Prey Review – “Prey for the Hunter”

A new episode of Birds of Prey ran tonight. It sure didn’t feel new.

Cast

Dina Meyer as
Oracle/Barbara Gordon.
Ashley Scott
as Huntress/Helena Kyle.
Rachel
Skarsten
as Dinah Lance
Shemar Moore as
Detective Reese
Ian
Abercrombie
as Alfred Pennyworth
Mia Sara as Harley
Quinn

Teleplay by Edward
Kitsis
and Adam
Horowitz
.
Story by Adam Armus
and Kay Foster.
Directed by Chris
Long
.

Original Airdate


Prey for the Hunter

originally aired on Wednesday,
October 23, 2002.

Synopsis

Metahumans are being killed by someone with the power to mimic their
powers.

High Point

The Batman speech. This is a departure from the comic book history,
but it explains a lot about the attitudes of the people in this
version. It’s also nice to see him treated the way we’d expect to
treat him.

Low Point

The police officer driving the car in the baseball cap was
conveniently blind. What patrolman wouldn’t notice two people
fighting in front of his car, only to see one of them throw the other
in front of the vehicle? (I’ll forgive him not noticing the eye thing,
as the light was poor and most people in this city would dismiss that
as some trick of the light, or something else that means they didn’t
really see what they tought they saw.)

The Review

The originality of this series is lacking. I’ll forgive them
for not coming up with original powers, as there’s almost 70 years
worth of comic book superheroes setting all kinds of precedents.
Still, they have yet to use these characters in any way we haven’t
seen before. If they don’t start coming up with something original,
then this will be the show I stop watching when I inevitably decide
that I don’t have time for six hours of television each week. I can’t
think of a single element this week that we haven’t seen before. I
can’t even think of anything that we haven’t seen in combination with
the other elements. I give it 1 out of 6.

The effects were, for the most part, good. The wire work
looked like wire work, but it wasn’t bad. The only effect that really
didn’t wash for me was the fake ice around frosty. The rest were
mediocre. I give it 4 out of 6.

The story was way, way too predictable. The Batman
conversation was a little gem in an hour otherwise filled with
mediocrity. I give it 3 out of 6.

The acting was never spectacular, but it was only bad when
Huntress (Rachel Scott) lost her temper at Oracle. I give it 3 out of
6.

The emotional response this generated was not promising. The
Batman conversation held my interest, and I chuckled at the “beat him
to a bloody pulp” line. The rest of the episode fell pretty flat. I
give it 3 out of 6.

The production was, like much of the rest of the work,
neither spectacular nor terrible. It seems like they spend so much
time and effort getting the fight sequences right from so many angles
that they didn’t leave themselves enough time to do the rest of the
episodes. While the fight sequences are very well done, especially
for a weekly series, they can’t lose sight of the rest. I give it 3
out of 6.

Overall, this was a very run-of-the-mill episode. I
shouldn’t be this bored with the characters in the third episode of a
series. I don’t know how long this show will last, and I’m honestly
not sure I’ll be sad to see it go. I give it 3 out of 6.

In total, Prey for the Hunter receives 20 out of 42.

7 replies on “Birds of Prey Review – “Prey for the Hunter””

  1. Needs some work
    Downsides:

    The exterior CGI shots need a little tweaking IMHO. Since these look to be on there way to becoming stock exterior scenes for the series they should try to re-animate the bits of Huntress running across the rooftops. Also the exteriors are just a bit too clean in general for a major metropolis.

    Huntress’ “My People Are Dying” speach was perhaps the lamest bit of writing I’ve ever heard. Let’s hope they don’t feel a need to subject us to any more Militant-Meta stuff in the future.

    Upsides:

    The cop coming from Bludhaven was kinda kewl, perhaps we’ll get to see Nightwing sometime in the future.

    Turning the bust of Shakespeare(Least it looked like him) to open the secret door was such a nod to the 60’s Batman and Robin. Glad to see the show isn’t too proud to poke some fun at it’s roots.

    Huntress has gotten better crime fighting apparel. The stuff she wore in the first episode was rediculous, all kinds of stuff to snag and get caught during a fight. The leather Matrix look is much better.

    Dina Meyer, without a doubt the best actress in the show and a super hottie. :)

  2. Already gone Battlestar Galactica
    The third episode and they are re-using effects shots? Come on! The scene of her patrolling the city was right fromt he first episode, as was the scene of her climbing up the fire escape after fighting the bad cop the first time. Plus, how the f**k did Barbara Gordon get that wheelchair on the top of the building?

    I think it would’ve been MUCH better if only Dinah had come up to distract him and Huntress kicked him off the side. They could spend the entire season with her desire to kill bad guys, but knowing that it’s not the right thing to do. I mean, didn’t Batman kill badguys for a while and carry a gun?

    Plus, how hard would it be for Reese to look up her mugshot and figure out who she is? She really should wear a mask, even if it’s just the lame Robin/Lone Ranger eye-only mask.

    • Re: Already gone Battlestar Galactica

      I mean, didn’t Batman kill badguys for a while and carry a gun?

      Er…no?

      • Re: Already gone Battlestar Galactica

        I mean, didn’t Batman kill badguys for a while and carry a gun?

        Er…no?

        Yep, way back at the very beginning. Didn’t last long, though.

  3. Freak of the week
    My wife, who is not a comic fan (neither am I, actually), keeps wanting to give this show “chances”. She really wanted it to be good for some reason. Last night she said to me, “Is this show trying to be like X-Men? I’d rather if they made an X-Men show.” This event, and her fiery anger at the producers of MutantX have me thinking she really did like the X-Men movie a lot. :D

    This show needs to do a few things:

    Give Oracle something to do other than argue with Huntress during fight scenes. She is supposed to be the intelligence in the group, but all the “research” she does on the TV/Movie “show me something relevant before I even push the button” computer has been either throwaway stuff, or so easily obtained that she becomes little more than an audio interface to the computer.

    Give Dinah something to do, anything. The junior partner who always gets captured thing is hackneyed, but at least it involves the junior partner in the plot somehow.

    Slow down the relationships. Jumping the gun like many shows, they are burning through potential years of relationship growth and/or conflict in the first season. It’d be more effective if Reese and the Huntress had made it till the end of the season evolving their working relationship before he called her a thing and a creature. Huntress takes it as a betrayal, but we haven’t been with the characters long enought to feel the same way. Now she has plenty reason not to like Reese, but really no reason to like him other than physical attraction. If they’d waited, there could be a far stronger dynamic with that…

    Anyway, given its position on a fairly lackluster network, we may get a second season out of this show, but do we want it?

    • Re: Freak of the week
      Sorry, too used to ./’s plain-old-text posting, there were paragraphs in there, I swear. :P

  4. Juggling too many storylines
    My rants:

    • It seems like we’re jamming in way too many subplots per episode.
    • Is Dinah going to come to the rescue every week?
    • Yeah, the effects on Frosty sucked.
    • This was the first episode without Mia Sara. They missed her badly, and not just for cheescake.
    • It only took two crimes to figure out the villian was a mimic. It should have been harder.
    • Once the writers brought in a bar full of super friends, they were going to have to use them, weren’t they? It shouldn’t have been that easy.

    I almost feel like this should have been a 2-parter. But I don’t think the can sustain a 2 parter this early in the series. Maybe now that we’ve established the teams, the community, and the menace, we can slow things down a bit.

    Blue

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