Shadowhunters Review: The Mortal Cup (Season 1 Episode 1)

Shadowhunters comes saddled with a lot of baggage– by which I mean, it’s got a lot to measure up to. The show itself is based on a massive bestselling series of novels, The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare. Prior to this show, Hollywood had a go at adapting the series once already, trying to capture that elusive successful-YA-novel mystique with a movie version based on the first book of the bunch, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.

Full disclosure time: I have not read any of the books, and I have not watched the movie. What I know, I know from word of mouth and from reviewing the plethora of available character guides floating around on the internet. My mentality going into this series’ pilot was to keep an open mind and judge the show on its own merits, not hold it up to the source material or the movie in a “Spot the 6 Differences” type of thing.

Unfortunately, even when trying to divorce expectations from the actual execution, the whole thing is kind of… disappointing. At the very least, it is an incredibly ham-handed, awkward, and muddled pilot– not incurably bad, but honestly, this is a very rough start.

The background and the world of the show have so much promise: Shadowhunters is set in an alternate universe where all of the traditional supernatural creatures you’ve heard of (vampires, warlocks, demons) are real– with a few unique twists (the titular demon-fighting ‘Shadowhunters,’ for one). However, the set-up of this world in the pilot is incredibly rushed, and both the dialogue and the sequence of events feel extremely exposition-heavy, to the detriment of the pilot’s cohesiveness and flow.

Important events follow one another at breakneck speed: first, we see three preternaturally hot teens “hunting” a shapeshifter, at which point protagonist Clary Fray (18, artist, “ordinary girl” who is secretly a memory-wiped Shadowhunter) has a meet-cute with Jace Wyland (age unknown, Shadowhunter, owner of a “Hey, I’m a cool guy” haircut). Then, we flashback to eight hours earlier, backing up to meet Clary under more normal circumstances, along with her best friend Simon. Simon, of course, is in love with her, obviously — this is YA, after all, and thus platonic opposite-sex friendships do not exist. Finally, we met Clary’s mother Jocelyn, and Clary’s mother’s kind of boyfriend, Luke, the cop.

Are you keeping up? I hardly could. The events of the pilot easily could have been spread out over two to three episodes, total.

Plot points are shoved down the pipeline as we chug along, catching back up to where we were at the beginning of the episode (with an even earlier flashback thrown in there somewhere, for good measure). It’s basically an info dump, and the way the info is dumped is clunky.

CLARY: Simon, how can someone as smart and perceptive as you not realize that the person sitting right there is in love with you?

SIMON: I guarantee you, I’m not the only smart, perceptive person to make that mistake.

If you were unfamiliar with the laws of YA love triangles before, the above exchange, combined with Jace’s later rescue of Clary after her demon attack, pretty much cements the set-up for a Simon-Clary-Jace love triangle, which I’m sure will eventually eat the show.

Except Simon is adorable and sings an acoustic version of “Forever Young” with his band, Champagne Enema, and is therefore obviously the preferable choice to “mysterious” hot guy Jace. (#My2Cents)

The show also tries very hard to set up the dynamic between Jace and Clary as banter-y and flirty right off the bat. It doesn’t go well, and it feels false because there is absolutely no lead-up to it. In case you aren’t sure that Jace has a thing for Clary (immediately and totally inexplicably), we are treated to a scene of Jace’s Shadowhunter associates, siblings Isabelle (Izzy) and Alec, discussing it:

ALEC: There’s no such thing as new Shadowhunters.

IZZY: There is now.

ALEC: You don’t find that strange?

IZZY: What I find strange is that you’re so upset. Maybe you’re upset by the way Jace is looking at her. [chuckles]

My least favorite thing in all of TVdom is TV couples who have an “instant and deep connection” for no discernible reason. Jace and Clary do that. He’s intrigued by her! She’s new and mysterious! She wants nothing to do with his demon-y, scary world! Yawn. I’m much more interested in Izzy’s implication that Alec has a thing for Jace. That, at least, intrigues me and makes me want to know more about (1) Alec and (2) Alec/Jace’s dynamic and history.

Speaking of Izzy and Alec: the show does not do much to set these two up as anything remotely resembling fully-realized characters. They are incredibly one-note. Izzy is a rule-breaker — she says so herself, in case you aren’t catching it quickly enough. Alec, on the other hand, is a devout rule-follower.

Emeraude Toubia, who plays Izzy, does her best with some of the weakest material in the pilot, but Izzy’s strutting, devil-may-care attitude only comes off as grating. The scene immediately before the fight, when Izzy hops up on a table at Pandemonium, tosses off her wig, and starts sexy-dancing in a little white pleather midriff-y number to distract the demons, is probably the cringiest moment of a very cringey pilot.

The fact that this distraction works flawlessly makes me think these demons are a bunch of idiots and takes away any and all fear-factor. How can we fear these guys at all now? How can they seem like a threat, if a pretty girl dancing provocatively is all it takes to distract/defeat them?

The fight scenes are decently executed, particularly the initial one at Pandemonium. The Shadowhunter weaponry is very distinctive and cool, with the whips and the blades and the accompanying swooshy sound effects.

Jocelyn Fray, Clary’s mom, also gets a bit of a raw deal in this episode. We only see her briefly, worrying over telling Clary the truth, fighting off “the Circle” to ward them off of her daughter, and then finally ingesting a coma-inducing potion so that “the Circle” can’t get information about a mysterious cup (the titular “Mortal Cup”) out of her. Prior to this, all we know about Jocelyn is that after Clary was attacked by a frog-demon years earlier, she had Magnus (resident eye-liner wearing warlock, played by Mike Chang from Glee) erase her daughter’s memories. Another information dump.

An unconscious Jocelyn is then carted off to Chernobyl of all places, where our Big Bad, Valentine, creeps on/moons over her — until he learns that Jocelyn has a daughter in the closing moments of the episode. He then turns his attention to getting to our hero, Clary Fray.

Valentine, at least, seems like a promising villain, and I am left curious to know more about his connection to Jocelyn because there are some love-vibes happening around there.

As of now, I’m basically tuning back in to find out if/why Alec loves Jace and if/why Valentine loves Jocelyn. Fully aware that I’m 100% focusing on the wrong relationships, here.

Other thoughts:

• This could improve as the show progresses and the cast gains their footing and gets more comfortable with one another, but these early attempts at portraying chemistry and camaraderie are, more often than not, distinctly awkward. That early-on fist bump thing between Clary and Simon, when we first meet Clary’s BFF, made me cringe so hard I got a neck cramp. Seriously, this show injured me.
• Why does Clary’s biscotti turn into a drawing?? I’ve watched that scene at least 7 times, and I am still so confused.
• “Hashtag Stalker-Mom.” Heaven help us.
• Champagne Enema is a gloriously terrible band name, and that is probably the one bit of the show that made me laugh on purpose.
• The runes tattoos on the Shadowhunters look awful. Just cheap and bad.

What did you think of the Shadowhunters series premiere? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Shadowhunters airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on Freeform.