Mockingbird Lane: Is ‘Mockingbird Lame’ Eddie Izzard Couldn’t Save It

Eddie Izzard as "Grandpa", Sam Dracula in this Munsters remake.
Eddie Izzard as "Grandpa", Sam Dracula in this Munsters remake.
Eddie Izzard as “Grandpa”, Sam Dracula in this Munsters remake.

“Mockingbird Lane” was introduced by my favorite Blutbaden  and starred Eddie Izzard, one of my favorite comedians.  Disappointment came rather quickly. This pilot episode did not leave me wanting more.

“Grandpa Sam Dracula is essentially Dracula who assembled Herman because no man was good enough for his daughter Lily, a sexy vamp. Lily’s niece Marilyn the freak is actually normal and Lily and Herman’s only child, Eddie, has his werewolf tendencies surface in puberty, forcing the family to relocate to their famous 1313 Mockingbird Lane address.”  Imdb.com

This is an excellent cast and the characters are good for the most part. Something went wrong when the writers got the whole thing together. It just didn’t click.

Portia de Rossi as Lily Dracula Munster, Countess of Shroudshire is perfect. She is sexy, mysterious and slightly off since she gave birth to Eddie and didn’t eat him.

Charity Wakefield as Marilyn Munster had to work with an ambiguous character.  The writers seemed to struggle to get her into the pilot.

Jerry O’Connell as Herman Munster didn’t have the funky eccentric quality that you expect of Herman.  They wrote his part as a put upon “any man” that didn’t pop.

Mason Cook as Eddie Munster didn’t sparkle in the role. Maybe he was confused because the writers who wrote his part were confused.

Eddie Izzard as “D” was just enough weird to make Sam Dracula, Count of Transylvania interesting.  “D” was the one character in the episode that scratched the surface of its potential.

The pilot is hard to pin down. It isn’t “Dexter” but it tries to be on some comedic level. Grandpa drinking blood from a corpse wasn’t as funny as it should have been, it fell flat. The scene wasn’t  creepy like “Dexter”or entertaining the way you expect an Eddie Izzard scene to be. Izzard sipping blood should have been belly laughing funny.  In the end, Eddie Izzard and Portia de Rossi couldn’t save this mess. If there is another episode, which looks doubtful, they would be the only reason to give the show a second chance.

 

The following is from the NBC website.

“Mockingbird Lane,” based on executive producer Bryan Fuller’s (“Pushing Daisies,” “Heroes”) script and directed by executive producer Bryan Singer (“X-Men” film series, “House”), is a new, reimagined version of the classic 1960s comedy “The Munsters,” now as a visually spectacular one-hour drama with a darker edge and tone. The cast includes Jerry O’Connell (“The Defenders”) as Herman Munster, Portia de Rossi (“Arrested Development”) as his wife Lily, Eddie Izzard (“United States of Tara,” “The Riches”) as Grandpa, Mason Cook (“Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D”) as Eddie and Charity Wakefield (“The Raven”) as Marilyn.

In the original 1964-66 series “The Munsters,” the odd, but lovable family lived on 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

In “Mockingbird Lane,” sweet little Eddie Munster (Cook) is a normal kid about to enter the horrors of puberty. The truth is, he’s about to discover that, for him, becoming a teenager means growing hair in truly unexpected places – as in all over his body – every time the moon is full! Eddie’s got it pretty good though. His loving, supportive, run-of-the-mill family includes his mom Lily (de Rossi), the daughter of Dracula, his dad Herman (O’Connell), who brings new meaning to “Frankenstein,” and Grandpa (Izzard), who would give Dracula a run for his money if he weren’t actually Dracula! Of course, there’s creepy cousin Marilyn (Wakefield), who’s really the odd one because she’s so completely normal.

Buying a house these days is a nightmare, so Herman and Lily are shocked that no one scooped up the rambling Victorian mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane that was the site of a series of grisly hobo murders. Settling into their new place, they’re quickly onto the mission at hand: to gently ease Eddie into the reality of his werewolf adolescence. But it’s not always so easy to accept that your child is a little “different” from the rest of the kids. Meanwhile, Herman, who works as a funeral director, is suffering from a heart condition. Since he’s made up mostly of spare parts, he knew his makeshift heart would eventually give out. No worries though, because Grandpa, who is pretty good at procuring body parts, is on the case. All Herman cares about is finding a new heart with the same capacity to love Lily as much as he has for so many decades.

“Mockingbird Lane” is from Bad Hat Harry Productions and Universal Television. Executive producers include Fuller, Singer and Sara Colleton (“Dexter”). Singer also directed the pilot.  http://www.nbc.com/mockingbird-lane/about/

Author: Losillë
Mother, wife and kinda old.

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