ETERNELLE
(The Awakening)

Season 1

2009

• Episode 1
• Episode 2
• Episode 3
• Episode 4
• Episode 5
• Episode 6

Episode 1

A naked woman runs out in front of a doctor's car in the middle of a storm. When she awakens in hospital, she has lost her memory, but seems to know everyone else's, even though she has never met them before. She fixates on Yann, the doctor, and suffers heart attacks when he threatens to leave her alone. Her blood is infected with a strange pathogen.

An amnesiac patient with strange powers is hardly a new way to start a genre show. Is she an alien? A mutation? An experiment? There's a mystery to be resolved right from the outset. A second mystery is quickly added when it becomes clear that the investigating police officer's daughter disappeared without a trace years before. It seems obvious this will be rolled up into the main plot at some point.

ETERNELLE has some issues that are plain to see right from the start. The first is a lack of budget. The entire first episode takes place in just a few locations, mainly that of the woman's hospital room. Some flashy editing attempts to hide the budgetary constraints, but fail to do so. Also, and much more importantly, the writing is pretty poor. Though it is in a different language, if the subtitles are anything to go by, the dialogue is pretty dire. The performances are also uniformly not good. This could be down to the material the actors are having to work with, which is not good. The plotting requires them to do things that would never be allowed in the real world. A woman is found naked and knocked down, but the police don't show up to do any investigating until the next day. The woman shows up at the doctor's house (which must be very close to the hospital since she is barefoot and walks the whole way in a hospital gown without anyone seeming to mind) and he decides it's better for her to stay the night, something which neither the police nor the hospital authorities seem to have any issues with.

ETERNELLE hasn't got off to a good start and it will need to improve quickly if it is to hold the audience's interest.

Episode 2

Yann has spirited the amnesiac woman away from the hospital morgue following her resurrection. Whilst she hides out at his house, she starts to exhibit powers of the mind, not just reading thoughts but the ability to remove memories and pass skills from one person to another. These may turn out to be useful when they pair encounter a serial killer.

The mystery element of the show is starting to deepen with the woman, now calling herself Julie, showing new skills but not the ability to control them perfectly or to understand the moral and ethical implications of them. The removal of Yann's memories of his unhappy marital situation could have made for a more interesting theme, but it is quickly jettisoned so the plot can move on to the serial killer scenario, which comes right out of the blue.

Other plot strands are left twisting in the wind with the police inspector nowhere to be seen, the doctors covering up the loss of a body to protect their reputations even though she is carrying an unknown pathogen that might be hugely contagious. The CDC authorities show up and then are fobbed off after a single scene, which hardly seems likely given the circumstances.

Claire Keim is an attractive presence, but is required to do little more than look bemused and childlike; hardly a stretch. Guillaume Cramoisan seems unable to dial down his performance from 11 at any point, which makes his character more irritating than anything else. The dialogue they are given to work with hasn't improved much either.

The show hasn't improved into its second episode, though the mysteries have deepened a little. The introduction of the pulp serial killer plotline seems unlikely to increase the depth or believability of the show.

Episode 3

Julie's ability to read minds steal people's memories/abilities leads to increased trouble when she pretends to be the lost child of a police detective. Meanwhile, an rat infected with her blood turns violent and a stranger appears claiming to be her father.

If we thought the serial killer plotline was a bit over the top then the stranger turning up to claim her is goind down the other side. He is instantly unbelievable and could only be more villain-like by growing a moustache to twirl. He is clearly related to her somehow because his presence causes them both to have crazy eye incidents, but he seems to be much more in control of his powers. Those powers are mainly to act mad, act suspicious and breathe a cloud of red gas from his hospital bed that can stretch all the way to the detective in his prison cell (however far that is away) without anyone else seeming to notice. This is utter nonsense.

The slowburning storyline with the lab tech and his suddenly cannibalistic rat specimen at least shows some signs of being possible, almost plausible when compared to some of the other nonsense going on all around.

The performances are getting more and more hysterical, almost as if everyone is trying to outdo each other with how ridiculously intense they can be. The show is going downhill rapidly and it was that far uphill to begin with.

Episode 4

The World Health Organisation experts have arrived on site in the hospital and have taken over the investigation. Lab Tech Martin has escaped with the infected rat and Julie, who has also been moonlighting as the detective's missing daughter Sophie, decides to go and find the real article. Her investigation leads directly to a man the WHO experts have been warned is the worst person she could possibly meet.

Nobody could accuse this show of hanging around too long on a single plot point. There is so much going on here that the audience could get whiplash from the changes in direction. The WHO have descended with the subtlety of a brick, taken over and acted generally like the Men In Black. They immediately pick up that the pathogen in the blood of Julie, her father, the lab tech and his rat is a fungal spore from ancient Sumeria with the ability to absorb all the moisture of a human body in a short period of time. At the same time, Yaan's hand starts itching from the strange fungus he rubbed out in his garden. More whiplashily (and we know that's not a word) the supposed father of Julie has collapsed after destroying the hospital's lab. He remains alive just long enough to make dreadful predictions about the catastrophe that will occur if July meets a mysterious other. This is an abrupt end to this strand of the tale and a serious infodump that sets up the danger of the main storyline.

That strand sees Julie wiping the detective's memory of his missing daughter before deciding to go and locate her. The first point of investigation is a friend of the missing girl's that she picks out of the detective's mind. This woman collapses under the mildest of questioning from the pair of amateur detectives, which makes us wonder how good a detective Gir can possibly be that he didn't get the same information from her himself. We don't have time to wonder for too long because then we're off to a nightclub to meet a nemesis who knows well enough to keep his sunglasses on so Julie's powers can't affect him.

The plot thickens with fungus and ancient Sumerian sects of 'guardians' popping up, but it's all done with some wild abandon and apparent lack on interest in logic or narrative that it remains impossible to take any of it even remotely seriously. Still, there is some entertainment value to just surrendering to the current and seeing where it is going to sweep us off to.

Episode 5

The search for the detective's missing daughter leads to a sick and heavily pregnant woman about to give birth in a building scheduled for demolition in a few hours. Unable to move her, Yann must carry out a surgery that brings back traumatic memories. Ikshan tries to learn more about the new role he has been given, getting only concerning hints in response and Martin the lab tech goes on the run with his rat.

Events in the nightclub come to an abrupt end. The man Yann and Juluie have met turns out not to be the big nemesis we were promised, but just a scumbag. Julie discovers she can drink alcohol without apparent ill effects and can be quite ruthless when she wants to be. All of this is rushed through to get to the problem of the mother about to give birth. The idea of calling the authorities to stave off the demolition of the building is immediately discounted and yet once matters there are resolved, the authorities are duly called in to deal with the situation. Consistency is nothing in this show.

The history behind Yann's abandonment of surgery for general practice is clearly meant to be tragic, but instead feels somewhat self-indulgent on the part of a highly trained surgeon. At least Ikshan's search into the ancient Sumerian backstory shows a little promise that there is a plan to this storyline which is otherwise just careering around like a pinball.

Episode 6

Julie takes up gambling, which makes her the target for some very bad people. Yann comes under the WHO spotlight and the detective's daughter remains in a coma, but is cured of every disease and drug ravagement by the mysterious bacteria.

This is the final episode of the show and it is a relief because matters are plunging into ever more ridiculous depths. Yann finally acknowledges his attraction to, and feelings for, Julie and her sojourn to a gambling den in order to win the money to allow him to keep his house is at least comprehensible, but the nonsense that goes on when the gangsters show up to take her and Martin prisoner is just utterly breathtakingly silly. On top of that, the detective shows up to a house with a couple of completely desiccated corpses and allows the murderers to escape unpunished with complete equanimity.

There have been times when it has been difficult to take the storyline seriously and the writers themselves seem so unconvinced by the plots they are spinning that they have rushed them away to move onto the next in the hope that the next one will be better. Unfortunately, the headlong rushed hasn't managed to camouflage the show's inherent weaknesses and neither have the less than stellar cast. ETERNELLE took some time-honoured tropes and tried to breathe new life into them, but the quality was never there in the writing, production or acting. In the end ETERNELLE was anything but.