S03.E12: Reunion

[Tabbyclaw]

Nathan's high school reunion is tainted by the deaths of classmates who appear to have reverted to their teenage selves.

 

[Elsinore]

Best scene in this episode.

 

TeenDuke waltzes into the office all Duke like, Nathan obviously recognises him, and then Audrey realises and falls back into her chair.

 

Perfect comedic timing.

[Tabbyclaw]

As my friend put it the first time we watched this episode, of course Nathan instantly recognizes the Duke he knew in high school. In his mind, he's still dealing with the Duke he knew in high school every day. And major props to the kid. Save for being right-handed, he's got every bit of Eric Balfour's performance down. Actors pretending to be other actors is my favorite thing ever when it's done right, and this was done right. Shame that every other one-off character in this episode was just obnoxious.

[Shanna Marie]

They definitely did a great job with teen Duke. Not only did the teen actor nail the character, but it's also funny how Lucas Bryant doesn't skip a beat in dealing with him. He acts with him exactly the way he does with adult Duke, to the point you can almost forget it's a different actor he's dealing with. They even manage to maintain the normal conversational rhythm they have going, where Duke treats Nathan's silences, reactions and facial expressions as though they were words and keeps the conversation going. And yet a lot of teen Duke's motions and body language are definitely "teen" vs. "adult," so it's not just that he's playing Duke as he's seen him. If we hadn't seen Eric Balfour playing a teenager on the Buffy pilot, and if it hadn't been for the handedness issue, I'd almost have accused them of having found a way to de-age Balfour for an episode.

 

I still think SyFy overreacted in refusing to show this episode the week of the Sandy Hook shooting because it wasn't really a "school shooting" incident. It was only one person being shot in defense of someone else among adults at a reunion dance at a gym, not a crazed gunman targeting kids in school. This episode becomes more amusing in retrospect when you know that just a few months later on a CSI episode about a school reunion, Bree Williamson played the bitchy former cheerleader victim and Lucas Bryant played the former star quarterback whose life peaked in high school. He went straight from playing the former geek investigating a crime at his reunion to being the former stud who was a suspect at his reunion.

[Tabbyclaw]

It wasn't the same week as the shooting, though; it was the same day. There wasn't a lot of time for careful thought and weighing both sides of the debate, but there was time for a still-shocked audience to have a negative reaction. If there had been a few days between the shooting and the intended airdate I might feel differently, but as it is I don't blame SyFy for erring on the side of caution. Mostly I appreciate their recognizing the serial nature of the show and not airing the remaining two episodes out of order, even if it did mean waiting a bit to get to them.

[Elsinore]

Pretty sure they halted the show for a month over the Sandy Hook shooting.

 

I'm in the camp that say there was little in this episode that was so offensive it was held back for that long. I understand not airing it the night or the week after the shooting, though.

[Tabbyclaw]

They held it back so long because the two weeks when these episodes would have aired were the last two weeks of the year in which most of their shows were airing new content, the theory being that everyone's doing holiday stuff in late December rather than watching TV. Instead of being tucked among reruns they weren't expecting anyone to watch, it was in with the January premieres when it was more likely there would be an audience.