After “Dawson’s Creek” and before his commercial resurgence with “The Vampire Diaries” and “The Following,” uber-producer Kevin Williamson stumbled through a few interesting failures. Among them was “Glory Days” (2002, WB), which lasted nine episodes before it was axed.
Like “Murder, She Wrote” for the WB crowd – or at least how I picture “MSW” in my head, as I haven’t seen it in 20 years — these episodes serve up the safe/scary brand of horror that maxes out what could be done on network TV in the pre-“Hannibal” era. Although it kind of grew on me toward the later episodes, “Glory Days” – set on an island in Washington state and filmed in Vancouver — is never particularly good or smart TV.
Every episode, the trio of Sheriff Rudy Dunlop (Jay R. Ferguson, later of “Surface”), author/reporter Mike Dolan (Eddie Cahill, later of “CSI: NY”) and forensics specialist Ellie Sparks (Poppy Montgomery, previously of “Relativity” and later of “Without a Trace”) investigate a murder in Glory. As in Cabot Cove, Maine, residents rarely comment on the high crime rate. Also in every episode, they peg the wrong suspect initially, but then save the day when the actual killer reveals him/herself before the 44 minutes are up.
With this formula in place, “Glory Days” relies on the other trappings to stand out – but it doesn’t. The portrayal of all three featured jobs is absurd. The Glory Gazette is the most off-point portrayal of a newspaper I can remember on TV, as at various points, Mike (whose sister, Sara, is the editor) prints false information in order to lure out a killer (without Sara knowing), threatens to get the classified-ad clerk fired because he’s protecting the identities of personal-ad buyers, and writes a profile on the new family that moved to town. That’s something that might happen in the weekly of an extremely small town, but not in Glory, which is big enough that not everybody knows every murder victim.
I know less about law enforcement work, but I know enough to see it’s not portrayed accurately here. In one episode, Rudy gets pegged with a murder, so someone from the state’s sheriff’s office arrests him and takes over the office. To free Rudy, Mike gives a false confession and Ellie lies about fingerprint evidence. The outside official threatens to arrest them for obstruction of justice, but he’s rebuffed when the trio sticks together as a team. When faced with the law, I don’t think it works that way.
Ellie works and lives in a lakeside forensics office/morgue, where she also runs experiments on decomposition of human bodies. (This also allows her to regularly comment that she’s more comfortable with corpses than with the living, although her bright personality puts a lie to that.) Ellie’s workplace/home is so ridiculous that it’s obviously a stylistic choice, so it actually bothers me less than the newspaper and sheriff’s office portrayals.
“Glory Days’ ” strength is the chemistry between the actors, although they deserve better character arcs to work with. By default, Rudy is the most interesting – he’s a decent, earnest guy who has trouble with the ladies. The will-they-or-won’t-they between Mike and Ellie is obviously leading to “they will.”
For the teen set, the featured relationship is between Sam Dolan (Emily Vancamp, later of “Revenge”) and Zane Walker (Ben Crowley), who have been friends since first grade. This is what “Dawson’s Creek” would’ve been if Dawson was 100 percent into Joey and she was 5 percent into Dawson; indeed, some of Vancamp’s line deliveries remind me of Katie Holmes. It’s hard to totally like either of them, as Sam is giving Zane just enough hope to keep his heart in a perpetually fragile state, and Zane doesn’t take the responsibility of breaking out of the Friend Zone – which does, after all, always have an exit.
Although the execution is always a bit corny, there are some fun concepts, including a clown festival (9, “Clowning Glory”), a man who takes over another man’s life (7, “There Goes the Neighborhood”), and a vampire cult (5, “The Lost Girls”). The latter is notable because Williamson would go on to produce “The Vampire Diaries,” and also for the guest turn by “Higher Ground’s” Meghan Ory as one of the so-called vampires.
Other familiar faces in “Glory Days” include “Being Erica’s” Erin Karpluk as Cal, the spunky Gazette receptionist (I wanted the writers to do more with her), and “Parks and Recreation’s” Adam Scott in “Everybody Loves Rudy” (6) as the nerdy classified clerk.
“Glory Days” shouldn’t be confused with Williamson’s similar-on-the-surface (but of superior quality) “Hidden Palms” (2007, The CW). That one was an ongoing mystery, whereas “Glory Days” is not – but oddly, it seems like it will be at first. Mike’s novel, “Glory Days,” is a barely fictional account of his dad’s unsolved murder in Glory from years earlier. It seems like this will be an ongoing thread, but it’s barely mentioned after the first two episodes (the only ones penned by Williamson), as if the series’ concept was retooled. The murderer in his novel is based on the diner waitress, but she goes on to be portrayed as an unambiguously good person.
In further evidence of rejiggering, IMDB lists an “unaired pilot” among the episodes, although it seems this is an artifact from the original concept, a character piece that featured no crime-solving element whatsoever. (Interestingly, Julie Benz of “Buffy” fame played Ellie in this version.)
Coming from a producer who had two strong, personal hits (“Dawson’s Creek” and the “Scream” movie saga), “Glory Days” feels notably impersonal, as did the similarly short-lived and forgotten “Wasteland” (1999, ABC). Even though the “Murder, She Wrote”-for-young-people concept is consistent, the show seems like it’s restraining itself from having bigger ambitions; or perhaps it doesn’t know what its additional layer should be. Aside from a bizarre European DVD repackaging as three “Demontown” “movies,” “Glory Days” is lost to TV history, and – while it’s interesting to look at if you’re studying the arc of Williamson’s career — it’s no big loss.
(This blog post is part of a series about great short-lived TV shows that haven’t been released on DVD or digital or streaming services, and are rarely – if ever — shown in syndication. While some of these shows can be found somewhere on the Internet, fans of great TV want to see them get a proper release. If you’re one of those fans, your best bets are to vote for the show at TVonDVD.com or to request information from Amazon.com in the event the show gets released. This will let the copyright holder know of your interest.)
Main image: WB publicity photo