CHLOE KING Needs a Mai Guy?
THE NINE LIVES OF CHLOE KING
Season 1, episode 7: “The Dogs of War”
[All photos: ABC Family]
Wow. This is only episode 7. I feel like I’ve been watching this show all summer. All. Summer.
This week’s formulation: CK = a + (e x 4) + a + (e x 8 ) + d +A + (e x 2) + L
Where a = minor action; e = exposition (talky talky talky); d = dramatic moment; A = Major Action (with parkour!); L = Lovey-dovey “awww” moment
I’m not going to quote book, chapter and verse this week. It’s more talky talky talky about Chloe being the Uniter. There are the obligatory OMG moments between Chloe and Amy when Chloe reveals that Kitty Hat said the magic words before Chloe ran off in abject terror that she was going to kiss/kill him.
And then the Jackal shows up. No, not the terrorist. (Although it would have livened things up a bit…) This jackal is another race, like the Mai. I guess they’re the dog people? It’s never clear, except that Alek keeps talking about how they smell, so I guess it’s a dog people thing. In my house, the dog smells if the Mrs. doesn’t wash him…
This is the first minor action sequence, when it’s revealed that jackals have teeth. I guess this was inevitable, given that MTV is running “Teen Wolf”… Jackal gets away, mainly because Alek lands on top of Chloe in an attempt to — ahem — “keep her safe” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).
The jackals are the offspring of Anubis, Hoodie Crew says, which immediately makes me look for Christopher Judge and a few hundred Jaffa warriors. But wait! Chloe’s empathy works on Jackals, too! Chloe sensed much fear in this one. He’s clearly not the Chosen One.
Oh, wait. Wrong movie. Moving on…
Chloe’s convinced that this kid is just wandering the streets of the city in search of adventure, excitement (crave not these things!… oh, wait). He just wants to go home, so Chloe takes him home to clean him up. The whole dog thing is just smeared all over this episode. Chloe taking the guy home smacks of “Mommy, can we keep him?” And he ends up in the closet with Amy while Chloe tries to get Mom out of the house on her date with Frank. Amy clearly doesn’t mind. Meow. Or something.
Mom’s having a gas with Frank, who brings her coffee and makes her smile, and Chloe likes him and everything’s hunky-dory in Mom’s love life, which makes poor Chloe sad, because she threw away the only love she ever had – college boy who was falling for a SIXTEEN YEAR OLD! (This still creeps me out.) And Chloe sighs and bucks up and soldiers on. Because, you know, she’s sixteen and stuff. They’re so emotionally stable at that age.
Now, it’s obvious to everyone except Chloe, that Alek has the hots for her, too. Which of course is going to interfere with his job watching over her. Because how many of us want to have a job where we stalk our dearly beloved 24 hours a day? I mean, really. This would be crazy talk for us humans. But Alek’s a trooper. With Moon eyes.
And Alicia Coppola’s back this week! Yay! And she has some decent lines to deliver, and she plans to hunt down the jackals and destroy them. But she’s so elegant in the way she says it. Like I’ve said before, Alicia Coppola classes up the room just by walking in. I could watch her read a phone book, because she’d believe every word of it.
Chloe, having pulled the Uniter card, takes Kai back to his lair/den/home under the bridge (because the jackals are nomads), and it looks like the Mai hunters have gotten there first, so they all go in. Except for Amy and Paul, who stay outside where the other jackals are:
Crikey! They need a groomer!
So, then we’re inside and everyone’s chasing after each other and running through dark tunnels filled with blue light and moving back and forth like the Scooby kids did in that hallway where they’re always crossing back and forth and you’re never quite sure how they ended up from one spot to the next and then they all meet where the jackals are and run for your lives! No wait, they get caught! Because (say it with me) “It’s a trap!” (Come on… you saw Ackbar, too, just then, didn’t you?)
And it’s Alek to the rescue. But Dad Jackal is something like twelve times bigger than Alek. Stuffing beating time for the boy.
And then it’s Chloe to the rescue! Offering herself up for the rest of the gang.
And then it’s Kai to the rescue!
The gang gets out in the sunlight, which gives everyone a chance to see just how pretty Alek ain’t no more. But that’s OK, because he gets to spout inane dialogue about not knowing what he’d do if anything happened to Chloe. And of course, all the girls watching the show probably went “awwww” all over Twitter at that moment.
In the denouement, Jasmine lies to Valentina and takes the blame for the whole operation going south. See, they were supposed to send a text with their location so the Mai hunters could come in a “wipe them out. All of them” (don’t Star Wars quotes make this more fun?) Valentina is so very disappointed in Jasmine. But that’s OK. Jasmine’s used to it, because that’s the kind of cliched troubled mother-daughter relationship they have on this show.
Jasmine has to share her two cents worth about Alek, too. His feelings for Chloe are going to interfere with his job and leave him standing all alone in the apartment while the camera slowly trucks back away from him to visually reinforce how alone he feels at the moment…
Chloe comes home to find Mom with a red folder. We know it’s important because it’s RED. And it has a declaration of death. Mom hasn’t signed it. Dad’s been gone ten years. She won’t sign it unless Chloe’s OK with it. (I thought Mom was the grown-up? Works that way in my house. I’m usually in charge, not my kid…)
And then we’re done with all the boo-hoo emotional stuff when Alek shows up outside and tells Chloe “We belong together” before planting a huge wet one on her. Really? Isn’t he the only Mai guy she’s met? Shouldn’t she, you know, date around first?
But at least he’s not a college boy making moves on a SIXTEEN YEAR OLD.
