Dear God, this was abysmal.
Whereas Charmed tackled witches through coherent plotting, charming performances, and a mythology that made sense (at least at first), Witches Of East End is a horrible mess on pretty much every level.
First off, is this a comedy? A supernatural thriller? Or a mishmash of both? Because the show has a severe identity crisis and the tone is all over the place. And the writers do a terrible job of setting down the show’s ground rules. What are these witches capable of? What are their limitations? And just because the dialogue is self-referential, doesn’t make it better. It just further proves that even the writers don’t know how to mask the script’s sloppiness.
And the acting, good God the acting. I wasn’t impressed by a single performance, which says a lot as you can almost always find SOMEONE to salvage the material. The performances are a disaster across the board, but none are as atrocious as Jenna Dewan’s Freya (our unfortunate protagonist). The girl is plain horrendous, and completely unlikeable (as evidenced by her cheating on her fiance the night of their engagement, with his brother no less).
Even the ending is incompetent. Instead of leaving the audience wanting more, it’s unsatisfying and wholly unexciting; Ingrid simply opens the magic closet in hopes of saving her sister from the evil painting. How utterly thrilling (that silence is the sound of me slitting my wrist). Dear lord, what a piece of dreck.
And finally, why does the title of the show (which is apparently based on a “successful” book) sound so much like The Witches of Eastwick? That can’t be a coincidence. And if you’re going to rip off something, at least do it well.
Conclusion
A painfully insipid pilot with half-cooked plotting and lazy writing. Stay very far away.
Nad Rating
D
omg thank u so much..finally I found sum1 who dislikes this as much as I do because i truly don't understand how people find this a good show..it's just very very bad
I don't get all the good reviews for this. Honestly? I don't even mind sloppy plotting, as long as the characters capture me. The leads in this are awful. Even the guys, who are attractive, aren't intriguing enough. No charm, or level of acting that can grab me and pull me in. Have a hard time imagining ever liking Freya. Ingrid is plain boring, and they were so transparent in their attempt to make her “relatable.”
Thank you! glad to see I'm not the only one who hated it!
I really don't get the good reviews either. This is pure trash. Nothing about it was intriguing or charming (and yes Charmed was a zillion times better). Thanks for the comment 🙂