February/March 2025 Media Log
My pitch for the next Riverdale, trying to enjoy Rachel Bloom, and more.
Originally I drafted a February Media Log, mostly consisting of leftover items I didn’t get to in my Winter 2024/2025 Media Log, justifying it as February being the shortest month, and I didn’t really have time to consume anything new. Then travel and (ironically) a writing class interrupted my progress on that. So then it became a February/March media log, where I tried not to draw attention to the fact that I was working with less fresh content than I usually do for these. Then in March the following things happened:
I finished my writing class, was derailed by intrusive thoughts about nostalgia and heartbreak, and birthed the idea for an entirely new essay project
My sister got married
I got sick
So here we are, end of March, and yes, I am reheating some takes about things I encountered in fall 2024, but also bringing in some things I finished reading and watching last month. Come with me as we contemplate a sexy CW take on classic IP and anxiously analyze my relationship with Rachel Bloom.
The CW’s Dracula: A Pitch
Dracula, the novel by Bram Stoker, is a classic in the horror genre, but Count Dracula as a pop culture phenomenon has somewhat overshadowed the book’s original legacy. Interpretations of the novel’s characters have mutated over time, with subsequent adaptations being influenced by previous adaptational choices more than the original text.
Dracula is also in the public domain. In 2021, Matt Kirkland launched Dracula Daily, which is a newsletter that will send you excerpts of the novel on the day it takes place. For those who have never read it, Dracula is an epistolary novel, which is a novel written as a series of letters between the fictional characters of a narrative, in addition to other source documents, such as newspaper articles and diary entries. Each section of Dracula, therefore, has a specific date attached to it, and takes place within one calendar year - from May 3 to November 7.
Dracula Daily gained popularity in those entertainment-starved days of Year One of the COVID-19 pandemic, at least on geekier corners of the internet like Tumblr. People who had never read the book, but were familiar with the countless film adaptations, were delighted to discover things such as:
Jonathan Harker not only is rather a nice fellow and not the jerk he’s often adapted as, he’s our original protagonist/audience surrogate
Lucy Westenra is just a nice Victorian gal who’d love a polycule and not some morally dubious slut
Abraham Ven Helsing is a hammy, foreign academic prone to malapropisms rather than the badass vampire hunter of later versions
Dracula has to pretend to have servants when Jonathan comes to Castle Dracula, which means Dracula runs around and does all the servant work behind Jonathan’s back like he’s in a bad sitcom
There’s an AMERICAN COWBOY named Quincey Morris who is a MAIN CHARACTER who SHOOTS DRACULA-AS-A-BAT with the gun that OF COURSE HE HAS
In 2023, there was an audio drama adaptation of the novel, Re: Dracula. Created by Tal Minear, Re: Dracula operated similarly to Dracula Daily, where there was one episode released per date of the events of Dracula. This was, once again, very popular amongst a certain segment of the internet, particularly fans of audio dramas like The Magnus Archives and Wooden Overcoats. It re-released in 2024, and that’s when I finally hopped on board the Dracula fandom train. It’s a beautiful story about found family, you guys! And yet, I can’t help but feel that the culture at large is still missing out on a truer-to-the-text understanding of Dracula. See these posts:
So of course, the way to bring this to mass audiences is obviously to make a Riverdale-esque TV show on The CW.
Setting: As bonkers as it would be to try to bring this story all the way to high school, I think we need to set it in college. College is kind of the perfect way to gather our cast together from near and far. Van Helsing is already a professor, John Seward can already be his student. Quincey is an out of state student, and Dracula is perhaps an international student.
Elephant in the room time: Dracula, as an invading parasitic foreigner in the original novel, has often embodied a racist fear of the Other. We do not want to recreate this problematic dynamic in our sexy CW show. So instead, drawing on how Invasion Literature was a self-report by the British, who feared being colonized the way they had colonized the world, this Dracula will be that worst of all foreign invaders: British.
Yes, I am setting sexy CW Dracula in America, although it will be filmed in Canada. Everyone meets at Whitby University, a private post-secondary school in Maine.
Our cast of characters:
Jonathan Harker: pre-law student at Whitby University. A softboi with a crush on his friend Mina Murray, he nevertheless finds himself drawn to British foreign exchange student, Victor Drake, who begins an intoxicating flirtation when Jonathan agrees to be Victor’s tutor.
Victor Drake: ostensibly a British foreign exchange student who seeks a tutor to help him understand American law and business, Victor is of course actually a centuries-old vampire, who in life had been the aristocratic Earl of Harewood1, a cunning and ruthless student of the occult who sought immortal life. Obsessed with anything he can’t have.
Lucy Westenra: psych major at Whitby University. Raised by a conservative, religious family, Lucy is the quintessential girl next door who just so happens to discover that polyamory might be right for her when she goes away to school. Forms a quad polycule with Jack Seward, Philip “Quincey” Morris, and Arthur Holmwood. Complications arise when Victor Drake enters the equation. Has been best friends with Mina Murray since kindergarten.
Mina Murray: pre-law student at Whitby University. Came to Whitby with her best friend, Lucy Westenra, and made another good friend, Jonathan Harker, in her pre-law program. Mina is the most attuned to Victor Drake’s sus behavior, but her feelings for Jonathan cause the others to chalk her suspicions up to jealousy—at first.
Jack Seward: psych major at Whitby University. Falls head over heels for his classmate, Lucy. When he introduces Lucy to his best bud Arthur Holmwood, there’s initially friction between the three as it is obvious Lucy likes both of them. But when the arrival of a third suitor—Philip “Quincey” Morris—sparks infatuation instead of jealousy within Jack, a quad polycule begins to form. Jack is being mentored by Dr. Abraham Van Helsing and interning at the psychiatric hospital that Van Helsing runs in Portland, Maine.
Philip “Quincey” Morris: business major at Whitby University. Quincey is an out of state student from Texas who was named after the Philip Morris tobacco company. He does not like his namesake and thus goes by a different name designed to piss off his parents. Plays up Texan stereotypes to amuse his new friends. Ends up dating both Lucy and Jack.
Arthur Holmwood: business major at Whitby University. Good friends with Jack Seward. Arthur comes from an old-money Maine family. Is the least open to the polycule with Lucy, initially, but eventually comes around.
Dr. Abraham Van Helsing: psychology professor at Whitby University, who also oversees a large psychiatric hospital in Portland, Maine. Takes a shine to Jack Seward and mentors him. Has a reputation as a Fox Mulder-esque kook.
R.M. Renfield: a mysterious patient at the psychiatric hospital where Van Helsing and Jack Seward both work. Inexplicably British. Takes a long time for Van Helsing and Jack to connect the dots to the other mysterious British character. Very much is Victor Drake’s ex-boyfriend.
I’m imagining that the first one and a half seasons play out the plot of Dracula as we know it (one and a half because it will originally serve as a mid-season replacement). Maybe the shortened Season One will end with Dracula biting Lucy. It’s extremely possible that a vampired Lucy stays a main character in this iteration - OR, if she does die like in the book, the polycule she leaves behind will grow closer.
The suitor who dies in Dracula (NO SPOILERS for this ancient book) may only die at the end of the show, as I imagine Victor Drake will keep finding new schemes and ways to come back in the inevitable three additional seasons that don’t have the book’s plot to turn to. I didn’t outline the Brides of Dracula above, but I think there’s a lot of potential to bring them in as well, either as a season-long Big Bad or as sixth ranger friends (or both!). I’m targeting a 2027 premiere date, since that will mark ten years since The Vampire Diaries went off the air. CW executives—call me!
Fast Film Takes
Heart Eyes (2025) is a fun new Valentine’s Day themed horror movie. It is written by Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy, who are responsible for so many of my favorite new horror movies, which usually blend comedy and other genres with a horror movie premise. This includes the body-swap film Freaky, where a bullied teen and a serial killer switch bodies, kicking off Kathryn Newton’s amazing horror film career2 and the two Happy Death Day films, a slasher-meets-Groundhog Day-meets something unexpectedly moving, which SHOULD have kicked off an amazing career for Jessica Rothe, but so far hasn’t.
The Old Guard (2020) slaps. That is all.
Carol (2015) might be Todd Haynes’ best film? I feel like that’s not a controversial opinion, but since it’s his most successful film by conventional metrics (box office, Oscar nominations), it’s maybe a more basic opinion. I don’t know, you watch this aching, romantic drama infused with longing and swooning, dreamy 1950s New York City and Americana vistas, and perfectly calibrated performances that range from melodrama to camp, and you tell me this isn’t a classic.
Everyone’s Got That One Problematic Fave
Rachel Bloom, co-creator and star of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (which I’ve written about before), composer of Hugo-Award-nominated “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury”3, and defender of Theatre Kid Energy, is someone I really admire. We are very close in age (five years apart), both experienced middle school bullying and romantic obsession that has stuck with us, and of course we both adore musical theatre. I watched all of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend early on in the pandemic after resisting it for years (I was scared of how much I’d relate to it, of course), cried watching her one-woman show Death, Let Me Do My Special last fall, and finished reading her memoir, I Want To Be Where the Normal People Are, last month.
Which is why it pains me that Rachel Bloom and I are probably not aligned when it comes to Israel and Palestine.
Some Context: Rachel, her husband Dan Gregor, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna, were some names among many who signed an open letter on October 12, 2023, with the following stated goals:
The open letter calls on the entertainment community to speak out forcefully against Hamas, to support Israel, to refrain from sharing misinformation about the war, and do whatever is in their power to urge the terrorist organization to return the innocent hostages to their families. (link here)
Many months and an obscene death toll later, I cannot stand in good conscience with anyone who feels that Israel’s invasion of Gaza is justified. During that same time frame, Bloom hasn’t been acting like Debra Messing and Brett Gelman, two actors who proudly stand with Israel’s actions during the war and insist all calls for ceasefire are antisemitic, but in January 2024 she did appear at a comedy fundraiser for the largest hospital in Israel. Fundraising for the hospital isn’t really the part I have an issue with, it’s that the fundraiser featured comedians telling jokes painting all Palestinians as genocidal.4
At the same time, to quote Rebecca Bunch from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend:
I know that’s a classic side-stepping tactic for talking about Israel and Palestine, and I don’t mean it in that sense. But Gregor’s father, Bloom’s father-in-law, is Israeli. Do I wish that everyone in their family might have the moral courage to see what’s happening in Gaza for what it is? Yes. But do I understand why they feel defensive about Israel, and in fact feel a deep love for Israel? Also yes.
So I’m gonna keep listening to any fun songs Rachel Bloom puts out, watch for her insightful observations about mental health, and hope that maybe, just maybe, she will see that what’s happening in Gaza is a lot less nuanced than that.
No real Earls of Harewood were harmed in the making of this pitch. But who cares, fuck ‘em.
See: Lisa Frankenstein and Abigail
As an aside: I’ve been wondering if there is a Rochelle Blum in the Riverdale universe who penned “Fuck Me, Brad Raybury”. See this post for more context.
Though again, I’ll say, not nearly as tone-deaf as Messing and Gelman’s various statements.