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Forever Knight: I Will Repay

"The life I can give him is worse than death..."

The only way to save Natalie's brother is to bring him across...

Quite a conundrum.

Natalie, the coroner who's been working tirelessly to cure Nick's vampirism, just watched her brother get shot and carted off to the hospital. Nat's a doctor. Nat knows it's bad. So bad, that she's about to ask Nick for something unbelievable.

Natalie never asks for anything. She's crazy about Nick and she works tirelessly to find a cure for him without being asked. She's never wanted a single thing in return.

But that all changes when her brother is inches from death. Now she sees Nick as the answer, and she asks him to bring her brother across, to make him a vampire.

This is explored regularly in vampire stories today, but, believe it or not, it was something we hadn't wrestled with way, way back in the distant early 90s. So if this sounds like familiar territory, trust me, this episode aired before that was the case. This was new ground.

Nick hates the idea, but he can't say no. Natalie's been too good to him (and he hasn't taken her on a single date) so he finally agrees.

Naturally, it's a disaster.

Nat's brother becomes a vigilante vampire, which sounds great at first, but he's not some do-gooder with sharp teeth. He's a monster who can't be trusted, and he won't listen to Nick's advice. He leaves a trail of dead bodies everywhere he goes, and he even leaves witnesses who describe him well enough that the vampire community gets upset at Nick. If this little experiment doesn't get taken care of, all of them could be exposed.

As Nick expected, Natalie's brother doesn't care about finding his humanity or regaining his soul. For some reason, Nick is the only vampire who cares about that. The others are just evil creatures. (Did something go wrong when Nick was brought across? We never learn why he's so special.) The brother is only consumed with eating people for fun, and all bets are off when he starts biting his own wife. Nick has to take him down and stake him to death, right in front of Natalie, who had to watch her brother die twice.

It's a tragedy. No happy endings here. Just another bad day in the life of a nice vampire. No matter how hard Nick tries to do the right thing, being a vampire is all rotten.

Flashback:

Nick finds a leprous woman who's been attacked and left for dead. He brings her across, making her beautiful and strong, but she takes revenge on her attackers (understandable) and becomes another monster rather than the friend Nick needed. He ends up killing her.

As the show goes on, you start to notice that Nick isn't very good at bringing people across, and when he's successful it always turns out bad. Real bad. There's a lot more stories to come of Nick failing at this. We can see why he didn't want to help Natalie's brother.

Quotes:

"Leave it in God's hands."
"God made a mistake, this time, and you can fix it. Only you can fix it. Make him like you. Give him back his life. I want you to make him immortal."

"What I can offer him, Nat, is not life."
"Oh come on, Nick. I've known you for a year and a half. I'd say you were alive. In fact, I'd say you have a pretty good life. You're human. You've got feelings. You've got emotions. I've seen you laugh. I've seen you get angry. I've seen you show compassion."
"Yeah, those are human qualities, Nat, but I'm not human."

Little Bites:

-Fashion Police: While visiting her brother in the hospital, Natalie wears a bow that can be seen from space.

-Vampire Lore: A vampire's heart beats, but only once every ten minutes or so. And to make someone a vampire, you have to drain most of their blood, and leave a bit behind. Also, Nick explains that some immunity to the sun can be built up over time, which explains why he sometimes walks past open windows during the day.

-When Natalie's brother is attacking, Natalie holds him off with a wooden cross, apparently the same one that came from Joan of Arc.

-Janette says she's never brought someone across. Poor Janette gets too darned thirsty and drinks people up like they're Capri Suns. Of course, she has brought people across, according to future episodes, but continuity wasn't a concern for writers in those days. No one could have believed we would re-watch a series so many decades later and have instant access to these episodes. But it's always funny to watch Janette flippantly tell Nick how she can't stop herself from sucking humans dry. She's hilarious.

Final Analysis: This one has a good idea, but a lot of logistical and timeline issues make it hard to get into. Two out of four giant bows.

Adam D. Jones is a writer, musician, and medievalist who feels a kinship for vampires because his sensitive eyes that make it difficult to go outside during the day.

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