When a show begins with Paul Wesley being almost naked, you know you’re in for something good, and the premiere episode of Tell Me a Story didn’t disappoint.
It wasn’t what I was expecting, but not in a bad way at all. It’s incredibly dark and all the characters have a little bit of darkness in them. And if they didn’t at the beginning of the episode, they certainly did by the end.
I would have liked to have seen Paul more, who plays Eddie, but from the promo for the rest of the season, it looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of him, we just have to be patient.
Paul wasn’t kidding when he said that this character is unlike anything he’s ever played before. Ripper Stefan could get pretty dark but Eddie has a different kind of darkness. He’s not an evil man, he’s just lost and doesn’t make good choices. Those choices have gotten him into a little bit of a mess.
Danielle Campbell’s character, Kayla, reminds me a little bit of her character Davina from The Originals, but she’s more broken than the witch she played. She’s a teenager who’s lost and mourning. A choice she makes in the premiere episode will also come back to haunt her.
James Wolk’s character, Jordan, is the most innocent of all the characters but that’s because tragedy hasn’t stricken when we meet him, but it will.
Estranged siblings Hanna (Dania Ramirez) and Gabe (Davi Santos) are brought back together because of a mistake Gabe makes. There certainly seems to be a common theme of bad choices in the first episode.
We know that Kevin Williamson is crafting a modern telling of three fairy tales: the three pigs, Hansel and Gretel and little red riding hood. We all know the childhood stories but it’s unclear how much of the stories we know will be fused into this modern telling. The first episode did a good job of setting up the three stories, and I’m a little sad that CBS All Access won’t just give us all the episodes at once. I would definitely be watching episode two instead of writing this if we had access to all episodes.
Because Tell Me a Story is streaming and not on TV, Kevin clearly is working with that dynamic and we get a lot of hot shirtless guys in the first episode. He clearly cast them appropriately and is it wrong for me to say that I hope this is a trend in all episodes? Billy Magnussen teased a shirtless Paul at New York Comic-Con but neglected to say that all the main men would be shirtless, too.
You should definitely check out the premiere before episode two drops Thursday, November 8. I think we’re in for a fun season.
