#also I’m so sorry | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

enzymedevice · 1 year

Text

So I recently finished watching The Crow: Stairway to Heaven (1998), the 22-episode TV series based on the film The Crow (1994) and the comic of the same name. I’ve seen a few posts here and there about it being weird, but since even a lot of those have come from people who haven’t actually seen it who're going off hearsay, I haven’t seen any definitive list of the weird things that are in it. There are many weird things in it and here they are. Suffice to say there are spoilers in here so don’t read it if you live in a world where people could really actually care about spoilers for The Crow: Stairway to Heaven.

I’m going to assume that anyone who doesn’t follow me who’s interacting with this post has seen the film, but just in case (because I know 90% of my followers are here for Naruto), uh, musician Eric Draven is resurrected by a magical crow to exact bloody vengeance upon the people who murdered him and his fiancé Shelly Webster. Daryl Albrecht is the cop assigned to their murder case. Sarah Mohr is a young teenage girl who is also there, and her mother Darla is a drug addict who is romantically involved with one of the murderers. Murderers aside, I think that’s the reasonable dramatis personae.

The first episode is just a retelling of the 1994 film but with all the swear words and most of the gore taken out. Also Eric sings a song and it sucks. Those who watch this show will be hearing that song so very much.

The most important thing to know about this show right off the bat is that it is a police procedural and killing is wrong.

Eric roundhouses a guy for smoking a cigarette.

Good people get resurrected by crows; evil people get resurrected by cute albino pythons.

Eric cannot enter a room without dropping from the ceiling or jumping in the window. I love him but because he’s a cool martial arts guy he cannot use a door.

He also has a lot of casual conversations while exercising shirtless.

At one point he is lying on the floor and gets up to greet someone by doing a handstand.

At another point I’m pretty sure he snaps a man's fucking neck with his thighs? Not to death but like, to pain, certainly.

Dragula plays in episode 4. Episode 1 contains the song Powertrip by Monster Magnet, which isn’t particularly significant, but they’re my favourite band so I noticed.

Episode 5 is the circus episode. Pretty much every episode is a themed episode that most shows only get round to over the course of like 8 seasons? Episode 10 concerns daredevil car racing.

There's a part where the police are searching for Eric and a witness has described a man who's "Asian or Hispanic" and Albrecht's face lights up so quick like "Woah! I know an Asian or Hispanic man!" and that’s how he knows it’s Eric.

Sarah is a lead in this show and she and Eric kinda form the fun tag team for banter. She waves her hand in front of his face and looks at him funny when he’s having a traumatic flashback. Their dialogue is my favourite. Here are some examples:

SARAH: How many [pull-ups] did you do?

ERIC: I stopped counting at 200.

SARAH: That’s not normal.

SARAH: You need to get out more.

ERIC: But I don’t wanna get out more!

SARAH [ABOUT ERIC]: The man doesn’t eat. The man doesn’t sleep. He only sits around thinking about his dead girlfriend.

ERIC: I’m getting these weird feelings…

SARAH: I hate to break it to you, but all your feelings are weird.

Reincarnation is also a thing separately from the resurrection. Eric and Shelly have met each other in every single one of their previous lives, during which they have always been played by the same actors.

Several random characters are also shown to be able to commune with the dead, including a child who lives in a cage.

Eric talks someone down from a suicide.

Eric talks someone down from doing a revenge killing.

There’s a recurring character who’s a hacker called Nytmare.

Shelly becomes corporeal twice, once by possessing someone and once by angelic powers or something I’m not sure I didn’t listen. Oh yeah Shelly's also a lead in this show, waiting in the afterlife and sometimes being homoerotic with deceased women Eric chastely assists.

One episode features the Russian mob.

There’s a character called the Skull Cowboy. Now, the Skull Cowboy is in the original comic, but unlike the original comic he is regrettably not a skull nor demonstrably a cowboy, save for his cool jacket. He’s great though, shoutout to my man the Skull Cowboy.

Eric beats up a fire-eater with a fire extinguisher.

In one episode Eric's convinced he's gonna die so he puts on a white t-shirt and blue jeans. That’s mildly amusing because he’s a goth but I mostly bring it up because this was the episode I truly became aware of how sculpted his pecs are.

In episode 9, Eric is hypnotised by a man (recurring character) who believes John Lennon's consciousness is alive on the internet and he mentally regresses to one of his past lives, when he was an Indigenous American man. I have no further comment on this episode other than the fact that They Do A Mysterious Ritual and there are slurs.

Episode 20 establishes Eric as a Vietnamese orphan adopted during the war. That’s the secret brother episode (Eric's secret brother is played by Corey Feldman).

One further comment on episode 9, actually - Eric makes a gay joke in it which I can add to my Eric/Albrecht ship manifesto.

Eric opens a portal to hell.

From hell emerges a man with electricity superpowers who kidnaps a bunch of people.

Eric jumps off a high balcony and spins round and round to defeat the electricity guy.

He also does a front flip off some stairs while casually maintaining a conversation, as touched upon earlier.

There's a multi-episode courtroom drama storyline wherein Eric is on trial for Shelly's murder.

Oh yeah people just straight-up know he’s alive. He works as a bouncer in the bar his band used to play at. Darla works at the police station and attends Alcoholics Anonymous but then struggles with relapse as a whole storyline.

Albrecht gets a new partner whose struggles with PTSD are a whole storyline. Albrecht's also in the most complicated on-again off-again relationship with a District Attorney of all time. This one bullet point is him covered - he otherwise doesn’t have a lot going on aside from that one time he gets kidnapped and taken to an island and Eric has to save him in a comedically tiny boat.

Eric's murder trial is very funny to me: firstly, it’s a clip show, 12 episodes into the season. Secondly, a lot of the defence is resting on how the prosecution is discriminating against Eric for being a goth. A quotation from Eric's attorney: "He’s not on trial for being different, he’s on trial for murder!"

Eric's described as "different" a lot. He also describes himself as such when prompted, such as in this exchange:

WHOEVER SAID THIS LINE: Why do you look like that?

ERIC: Because I’m different.

Anyway the trial gets really boring but Eric has a cute ponytail and just looks soooo dapper in his little suit; I want to make him a nice sandwich for his packed lunch and pat him on the head as I send him on his way.

He’s pronounced guilty and then in the next episode immediately pronounced innocent. Spoilers.

There is a time loop episode during which Eric is forced to say the words "pretty please with sugar on top."

There is a plot to resurrect Rasputin. Rasputin's corpse is burned in a fire and his ghost appears superimposed upon the air.

Eric does a backflip towards the Rasputin corpse fire.

This is in hell. The guy resurrecting Rasputin needs to open specifically Eric's hell portal from the electricity superpowers episode.

In a completely different fire, Eric burns a valuable Russian manuscript which is entrusted to him.

Eric makes Albrecht hold some seaweed. I dunno, it made me laugh.

There is a secret organisation who have members in very significant positions in society and they have figured out how to separate a person's soul from their body and transplant it into a different body. One of them inspects Eric's abs for what felt to me like an extremely long time.

There’s a woman resurrected by a different crow and she cries black goo so I really hope Eric can cry black goo as well and that’s just a canonical thing about the undead.

In episode 18, the background music is diegetic but only for Eric, and it turns him evil.

Episode 18 prominently features Canadian rock band Econoline Crush, who perform two songs from their 1997 album The Devil You Know, including All That You Are, the song they sued Nickelback for ripping off to make the 2003 single Figured You Out. Eric is determined to win against them in the battle of the bands.

The rest of the series cameos a veritable smorgasbord of Canadian rock bands, but I didn’t recognise any of their songs by name and nobody says the names of the other bands out loud as many times as they said Econoline Crush so I guess they weren’t paid as much.

Female Crow - her name is Talon - has cool eye makeup that I like a lot. I don’t know what else to say about her that doesn’t sound misogynistic on my part, because the writers writing her are misogynistic.

There’s an episode where pretty much all Eric does is walk through the forest and hallucinate a dance sequence from one of his past lives.

The Crow in this series' continuity is Eric's alter, kind of. It has a separate soul, as evidenced by the fact that it remains in his body when his soul is put into the computer by the secret organisation's evil scientists who are pretending to be Shelly.

I guess I’ve been a bit rude referring to what it does as what Eric's doing this whole time but there’s no clear delineation between the two personality-wise and I could not tell you which moments are supposed to be the alter because I did not know it was a thing until episode 21 of 22, sorry.

Also the Crow makeup just manifests on Eric's face supernaturally. Sometimes it just turns round and has done a transformation sequence.

So the secret organisation kidnap the crow (the magical bird) and use its blood to do a ritual on Eric's grave and resurrect the Crow (the alter) in a separate body from Eric's so that it can fight him.

Eric is offered "steaming hot wieners." He nibbles one with care.

The Crow draws on a wall in blood, just like my favourite moment in the original comic (sadly not the Cat in the Hat though. That would have truly made this whole thing worth it).

A guy has transferred his consciousness into the body of his personal trainer, played by Michael Weatherly, who after 13 seasons of NCIS I didn’t enjoy looking at.

When the two bodies indirectly touch through Shelly's corporeal form, they merge into one in a golden fizzle of regeneration energy.

There's more after that but it ends on a cliffhanger.

#goth stuff #the crow #the crow: stairway to heaven #ending the post on a cliffhanger just like how suddenly the series ends…#also I’m so sorry #i know at least 3 people explicitly want to read this and I’d just send it to them but a link is simpler so I guess that’s what we're doing #upon this fine morn #long post #also while this post is long I must state that this list is not exhaustive; neither is it indicative #it’s a pretty ordinary tv show that is just very into its 90s 'issues episodes'

21 notes · View notes