TV Rocks My Socks

After dusting off the keyboard, I would like to first give thanks to Jimmy Fallon for sucking so incredibly badly - the majority of my traffic comes from that one post.

But I digress, because I just love to revisit my short-lived, beloved shows!  Tonight: FreakyLinks!

FreakyLinks was a short lived series scheduled in what TV fans lovingly refer to as Fox’s infamous “Friday Night Death Slot.”

 For the uninitiated, I’ll start you off with the trailer:

Having had the privilege of seeing both the original version of the pilot and what made it to air was obviously quite different.  This show was insanely ahead of its time . Derek Barnes was a surfer/skater who had a much more responsible twin brother Adam (Spoiler alert if you’ve never seen the show; I am about to tell you happens very early in the pilot “Fearsum”: Derek found that his found that he brother had commited suicide.)

So Derek takes over Adam’s creatively-titled occultresearch.com, redubs it the much hipper sounding FreakyLinks.com, and travels the country, friends and video cameras in tow, in pursuit of the “truth behind the strange and unusual.”

When I say that the show was “different” from the original version, I mean it.  The show (by the great folks at Haxan who were also responsible for making The Blair Witch Project) was originally intended to be much scarier and different in a variety of ways according to interviews with the show’s makers.

Here’s a little example for you: They changed the music and the intro (no biggie there, it was just a screener copy) and added a new scene to try to “add more humor” I guess.

One more change: They felt the need to sex Lan up a bit.

Why did the make me wear this? And the glasses? Really?

I still have to show my midriff, but at least I’m not the nerd anymore.

Note the lack of glasses, more flattering hairdo, less garish clothing.  I could do wonderful screencaps for you at some later date that do a much better job of highlighting my point here, but I think you catch my drift.

I Loved The Interactive Component

The website was an integral part of the show.  This is why I am so insistent that it was so ahead of its time, which is really sad, because at the time, it was something unique.  In those days, it wasn’t a prerequisite to have a site; it wasn’t intended as part of the show run by the characters themselves, and you couldn’t interact with the characters.

Why would I make a point off saying that FreakyLinks was insanely ahead of its time? Because it was. Derek’s website, FrakyLinks.com (now part of Haxan’s portfolio, as someone was too cheap to pay the registration fee to keep the domain name) was an integral part of the show, as you would see if you looked.  Derek’s “Diary of a Madman” was a blog before there were really blogs.  His audio entries, I assume would be considered podcasts now.  There were even “webisodes,” behind-the scenes footage taken by the characters with their camcorders.or example.

Also, background information that was not explained on the show due to the utter change in focus were attempted to be explained on the site: For example why did Derek live in a huge beach house when he was barely scraping by investigating the paranormal?  Well, on the website, Derek tells you that he is, in fact, housesitting for a surfer friend.  From what I understand, there was a hell of a lot of interference in the show.  The website was the one saving grace for hardcore fans such as myself, because it offered the only (albeit extremely open-ended) answer to what happened to the characters after the show ended.

I loved the characters

• Derek Barnes (Ethan Embry): Goofy, charming, and very passionate about what he does.  His passion is completely understandable given that he believes, fueled by the tales of Vince Eslins.
• Vince Elsing (Dennis Christopher):  who sporadically appears than inexplicably disappears, while giving Derek cryptic clues as to what may really be going on.
• Chloe Tanner (Lisa Sheridan): Was engaged to Derek’s twin bother, Adam; she helps on a consulting basis but eventually  becomes a member of the team.  Her status as a Clinical Psychologist assists in some of the cases.
• Jason Tatum (Karim Prince): Quite obviously Derek’s partner in crime. 
• Lan William (Lizette Carrion: The computer whiz and the one who kept things running smoothy from the technical end.  Derek would be lost without her computer expertise.  Lan also happens to have a huge crush on Derek, to which he largely pretends to b completely oblivious too.

I Loved the Show for What it Was

True, the show was not as serious or scary as originally intended. Indeed, it also was not nearly early as campy as it could have been, but it knew it was cheesy and even seemed to embrace the fact. Those who didn’t and had their names removed from the finished product clearly felt quite differently about having their vision turned into something completely different.

 Gone But Definitely Not Forgotten

This show ran for thirteen episodes between 2000-2001. The site had forums, and an e-mail list  and a guy hired to “be Derek” online and interact with viewers.  They even had behind the scenes footage on the website, and secret URLs that were only sent to members of the e-mail list.

For some Godforsaken reason, Freakylinks has never been officially released on DVD.

FreakyLinks currently airs on Chiller from time to time, and I strongly urge you to check it out.

Hurdy Gur,

Kim