The premiere of ABC’s new serial killer/cop drama Wicked City began with Billy idol’s “Dancing With Myself” playing as the camera panned the Hollywood Hills and iconic Hollywood sign. Normally an excellent sign of things to come, especially for a TV show set in early 80’s Los Angeles.
Except this time. Because after the fun, upbeat, and exciting intro things took a decidedly twisted and cryptic turn for the worse that made me question how this show ever got on network air in the first place.
The story begins in Los Angeles in 1982. The scene is “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” As the camera shows the “Whiskey-A-Go-Go” and several other hot L.A. night spots on the Sunset Strip, Kent Grainger (Ed Westwick), one of our main characters and a psychopathic murdering freak, cruises the boulevard before pulling up to his chosen “hunting grounds” for the night.
The good-looking kid out looking for trouble is a theme that is pretty common in serial killer shows. No harm no foul…yet. But eventually Kent meets up with his chosen victim of the night, makes his call to the local radio station to have them play “Feels Like the First Time” by Foreigner, drives his unknowing and unlucky victim up to a “make out point,” and while she goes down to perform oral sex, with her dedication playing loud in the car speakers, he stabs her repeatedly with a large knife.
Though the show doesn’t actually show the murder-ee performing oral on the murderer, it does not refrain from showing copious amounts of blood splatter all over the 80’s vintage radio as it blares “First Time” for what will undoubtedly be her last time.
Not that it ended there! Oh no, later on Kent makes his new girlfriend Betty (Erika Christenson: who he is not trying to kill because, sensitive sweetheart that he is, she has kids) pretend like she’s dead so that he can get off, because he’s got himself a little necrophilia fetish. You know, normal boyfriend/girlfriend issues.
But why the explosive, blood-splattering stabbing? Why the necrophilia freak show? The writers for this show borrowed heavily from the SOP and profiles of real-life Hillsdale murderers who terrorized L.A. in the late 70’s. The murdering couple --Doug Clark and Carol Bundy-- were known to like children and engage in necrophilia.
But the show is only loosely based on Clark and Bundy, who were arrested in 1980. This show takes place in 1982 and identifies Kent and Betty as “copycat killers.” So showing the necrophilia and the oral is completely gratuitous and unnecessary.
Unless ABC is trying to do on network what channels like FX and Fox have done in later time slots. Which is desensitize people to horrific displays of sexual violence. By wrapping Wicked City up with the trappings of a real-life story based on actual events the network gives itself an awful nice cover for basically airing scenes they never in a million years would have dared to do otherwise.
Hence, Wicked City is a canary, lowered into the cultural milieu to see if it can survive. The networks want it to survive because shock value drives not just viewership. But also digital, in the sense that the scenes and vids can be shared across multiple social media platforms and build momentum for the show.
I would like to see the show fail. To die the kind of brutal and horrific death that it seems to think is so cool to portray. But whether it lives or dies is up to neither up to the network or me. It’s up to you.
