Freakylinks
"Subject: Fearsum"

Airdate: October 6, 2000.

The Freakylinks cast.

Two roads diverged in a yellow network.
Freakylinks took the one traveled by X-Files, Millennium, and every other Fox genre series.
And that has made all the difference.

A young man comes home one day to find his brother is dead. Deciding thereafter to devote himself to tracking the paranormal in order to discover the truth, he embarks on a series of strange adventures fraught with danger, unexplained phenomena, and darkly lit sets. He is joined by two friends -- a technically skilled, skeptical woman and a young, laid-back man there mainly for comic relief. Together, the Freakylinks team will investigate the strange and unusual--

The what team now? Hey X-Files doesn't come on until November, okay?

Oh, Freakylinks. Poor, sweet, ripe-with-potential Freakylinks, a show that's actually fairly decent but screams Nielsens Casualty nonetheless. Freakylinks, which surpassed my every expectation -- okay, granted, there were none -- by being well-acted, wonderfully directed and pretty entertaining. And which, even in its moderately cool first installment, still managed to show the warning signs of degradation. I feel kind of sad about Freakylinks, because viewing it is going to be like watching seasons 4-8 of The X-Files in warp speed, and not just because of the blatant plot swipes, either.

There are two reasons for this. The first, of course, is the title, and the fact that its very utterance (it's also the name of the website around which the show centers) in even the most serious or horrifying of situations causes me to burst into side-splitting laughter. The main problem, however, has to do with the reasons behind that title, which was originally the much superior Fearsum. Freakylinks, you see, is seriously Foxed up.

Mmmm, Ethan Embry...

The first five minutes of Freakylinks are excellent, and it steadily collapses thereafter. We meet Derek Barnes, played by Ethan Embry, who is investigating simultaneously combusting strippers for a paranormal-themed website maintained by his brother Adam. Now, as soon as they started talking about lap dancers that explode I knew this show had potential, and Embry's goofy charm -- distracted by the subject matter, he hangs up on his concerned brother -- only made me like it more. And when Derek comes home and breaks down at the sight of his brother's body, my eyes widened as I realized I was actually getting into this show. This was kind of sad. I was interested. I was fairly moved.

But then, as we became introduced to Derek's friends and Freakylinks.com coworkers -- Lan, a seeming cross between Velma from Scooby Doo and Scary Spice, and Jason, whose character is so underwritten I still think of him solely as Francis's cute friend from Malcolm in the Middle -- my interest began to wane. The opening scenes of Freakylinks are original and sharply written; the remainder of the episode is a compendium of X-Files clichés, hokey storylines (ooh, Roanoke colony, how original) and a total lack of focus. You can see the struggle between the show's original creative team (which included The Blair Witch Project's Gregg Hale and Dark City's David Goyer) and those who shunned their ideas in favor of light, derivative writing. The show doesn't know whether it wants to be silly or profound, campy or dark, and it has trouble reconciling how to do both. None of the characters outside of Derek are particularly well-developed or interesting; on that note, you'd gain a more deft portrayal of Derek himself by visiting the freakylinks.com website.

Of course, these are generally the kind of concerns you disregard when it comes to a series pilot. Characters need time to develop, and shows often don't find their footing until a few episodes in. But the problem with Freakylinks is that it has found its footing, and it's fighting that road every step of the way. The talent evident on the show, combined with the intriguing website premise (intriguing to nerds like me, anyway), could have made this a series to reckon with. Instead, it's wasted potential, a germ of a brilliant idea turned into a raging virus of network intervention.

-- Sarah Kendzior

Freakylinks airs Friday nights on Fox at 9:00 PM EST/8:00 PM MST.

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