When it comes to watching verticals, I think that there are a few things that we can all agree on. It will most likely be ridiculous, there will be plot holes, and there is too much violence. Now, The Devil Loves Me made every attempt to not have plot holes, but it did. It also wanted us to believe that the two leads had chemistry. They didn’t. As a matter of fact Tim Steins character of Blair had more chemistry with the ridiculous stereotypical fedora he was wearing or the three piece suits that needed to be burned.
You can not take any vertical really seriously and Mafia stories are rarely great. Some are so bad that they are good. But as I write this I will tell you that is not the case. This one was just so bad, and a lot of that has to do with costuming and chemistry.
I know that actors work really hard and that it’s definitely not easy to bring any story to life. Then again, I also am fully aware that the behind the scenes people are also in this boat. That being said I am sorry that I am having a big problem with the choices that people made.
Hannah Deale and Tim Stein both deliver on their performance, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that they deliver good performances better when they are not in the same scene. When they are in the same scene its as exciting as watching paint dry. Lots of notes there.
Blair loves her because a few years prior, she had saved him when he was bloody on the sidewalk. I just don’t get why he was there, what happened, and so forth. I think that it’s hard to understand why he’s obsessed with her, because as far as I am concerned it seemed like she just helped him inside.
Saving someone – a stranger – isn’t always love.
Then there’s the whole husband cheating on her. Why is she staying around when he’s cruel to her and his mom is literally the epitome of the worst mother-in-law ever. I would have knocked her out.
What was beyond cruel to me was when they tossed Wendy’s Moms ashes on the driveway and then washed the ashes with water. What the actual h-e-double hockey sticks was that. Everything is beyond. While Hannah Deale does show a lot of emotion and makes you feel for her as Wendy, they dressed her as if she was 40. I couldn’t get past the fact that in some scenes she looked as though she could be Blair’s mom.
Stein – I think – needs to break out of the mafia roles and expand. Show us him in a rom-com. It’s not that he doesn’t play a good mafia don, it’s that he has done it a million times. It was this series that made me go oh no, not again. It’s the whole costuming that made me think twice about what I was watching. I couldn’t stop laughing every time he walked onto the screen all I could do was think that this had turned into a comedy.
Because it as funny. That hat, the broach, and the three piece suits were too much. The way that he changed depending on the person he was performing against made me laugh, because I couldn’t take him seriously.
I wanted to love this series, but I found myself quickly wondering why it needed to be so violent (a nail gun to the face, say what?). Yes, mafia. I get that. But what I also get is that it felt weird and forced for Wendy to do that to her ex, because she wasn’t like this. Am I glad she came into her own? Absolutely, but she could have done that without violence.
One of my favorite ridiculous things is when someone gets in someones way and makes them mad, they call someeone and it’s like bankrupt them now. It doesn’t matter that it is late at night and the stockmarket is closed. Or even better is when they buy something and it takes all of five minutes to buy out someones company.
Those lawyers must have everything prepared.
Timelines in verticals – they’re crazy and apparently we need to suspend that. It is kind of difficult to do that when they make it so insane I need to know the rules. These things don’t make sense and I am having a hard time with that. Especially in this one.
I watch these and I know that someone is going to slap someone, or someone is going to be kidnapped. I am not sure if the writers don’t get that violence is not always the answer. They seem to like it a lot, but I don’t think that all this violence needs to be a plot point.
In this series, Blair is always looking out for Wendy and I can appreciate that. But, he comes off as more of a stalker than a man that wants to be with her. His idea of protecting her always results in violence but him apologizing for not being there.
Do they fall in love? Yes. Do they let each other in? Of course. Engaged? Absolutely. Do I get why they call him the devil? No.
The Devil Loves Me is mediocre at best. I laughed through most of it even though I knew that I shouldn’t be.
