Discussion of "First Kill" on Netflix

So, with my recent “Something to Consider” post in mind, I will preface this by stating First Kill is a Supernatural Lesbian (Or Sapphic if you prefer) Teen Romance Drama and thus contains elements from all of those genres and if you do not like that then this review (And this show) isn’t for you.

Now first things first:

Caution Potential Spoilers for First Kill Season 1 Ahead!!!

First Kill just came out not long ago on June 10, 2022 and as I write this it is June 22, 2022. Some of you may be completely unaware of it or may only have the barest understanding of what the show is even about because Netflix did very, very little in terms of promoting the show. This is, unfortunately, something that happens specifically with sapphic media quite often, but we will not get into that here.

Honestly, I love the show, I think it is great and have already watched it about 10 times. There are of course problems with it, but every show has problems, I can accept the ones in First Kill even if I can’t with other shows. If you like all of the elements that go into a Supernatural Lesbian (Sapphic) Teen Romance Drama then you will likely love First Kill and should go watch it to help it get a second season.

A quick summary of the show is: Juliette Fairmont (Sarah Catherine Hook) is a teenage Legacy Vampire who will soon need to make her first kill in order to cement her vampiric change before it makes her incredibly sick and dangerous, but all she wants to think about is the new girl at school she has been crushing on. Calliope “Cal” Burns is a monster hunter, as is her whole family. They have moved to town due to increased supernatural activity in the area, not long after she choked on her first monster kill. She is determined to prove herself to her family and start becoming the greatest monster hunter who ever lived. Unfortunately, in the process of trying to earn the trust of her parents to get the chance to try once more for her first kill, her classmate Juliette caught her eye, and she watched her long enough to determine that Juliette must be a vampire. Both attend a party where their first kills are at the forefront of their minds, and their actions there have far reaching consequences for both families. As dictated by Newton’s Third Law, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and the actions of this party definitely results in a lot of reactions. Can the girls figure out a way to forge peace between the families or will their Romeo and Juliet tale end in tragedy like all the others?

Now, for this discussion I’m actually going to go over some of the common complaints I have seen, as my personal view is “Great stuff, want more!” Which is why I’m not exactly calling this a review. The top complaints I have seen are:

1. There is Too Much Music/The Music is Too Loud

2. It’s Lame/Dumb/Cringey/Unrealistic

3. Cal is so Flat/Cal and Juliette Have No Chemistry

4. It Should Have Been Set in College

5. It’s Basically Just Romeo and Juliet but with Lesbians and Supernatural Elements

6. Production/Design is Poorly Done

Now, most of these can be addressed rather quickly in terms of why this complaint is “a thing” but also why they aren’t. I could easily go on to long rants about each, but I will do my best to keep it short and sweet, but hopefully you will bear with me a bit.

1. There is Too Much Music/The Music is Too Loud

So, I’m not sure which shows the people making these complaints are watching but every show I know is full of music and the music, effects, etc. are always way too loud while the dialogue is way too quiet. This isn’t individual to First Kill it is a universal problem. The music within the show was all newer to me with the exception of “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood, and I know that some people have issues with that kind of stuff, but unfortunately, for them specifically, Teen Dramas are often full of “newer” or “less well-known” music. In part, it is because a lot of new music has a bigger target audience in younger people as the older you get the more you settle into your own musical ruts, but also it is simply due to budgeting. Look at The Umbrella Academy it is easy to tell that they must have had a pretty big budget from Netflix if only because they use a lot of “known” and “popular” music. Budget is always an issue, especially when a show is just starting out, a good way to limit your budget is to use less well-known music as you often need to pay less to access it and use it.

Personally, I thought the soundtrack was great and often end up singing along as I watch despite not knowing it before watching this show. Each song seems to do its part to help convey meaning and I’m never irritated by the songs themselves.

In fact here is the Opening Intro:

Now, the volume of the music is of course completely ridiculous sometimes especially in conjunction with how quiet dialogue is, but as I said above that is a universal issue that I experience on literally every single show I watch. It would likely need to be fixed by regulating it on a large-scale level, but I doubt we will move in that direction anytime soon.

So, yes, generally, if you don’t like “newer music” in shows then First Kill isn’t for you but that is often a staple of the Teen Romance Drama genre anyway, so again, this wasn’t really for you in the first place, and loud music is not a new complaint nor is it specific to First Kill.

2. It’s Lame/Dumb/Cringey/Unrealistic

Oh, I could so wax poetically about this, but I will do my best to keep this short and simple.

THAT IS A STAPLE OF THE GENRE!!!

Like literally for one it is a supernatural show, already negating “realistic” right from the start. As for Lame, dumb, and/or cringey, I would ask that you show me any Teen show at all (Not just Teen Drama) that is not lame, dumb, and/or cringey. Like they literally all are. That is the lame, dumb, and/or cringey stage of your life (Which can extend as long as it chooses), which is part of the appeal of the Teen genre of shows. Just because it is lame, dumb, and/or cringey doesn’t mean it can’t be good and you don’t get enjoyment out of it! It is a TV show, literally there to entertain people, if it isn’t entertaining to you then don’t watch it, but otherwise if you enjoy it (and it isn’t hurting anyone that you do) then it doesn’t matter that it is lame, dumb, and/or cringey.

Like just look at the posters for some of the other shows in this genre!

Additionally, part of this can easily be an issue with the hypersexualization that is a constant on-going problem with all shows in the Teen genre, but it is unfortunately still a deeply in-grained part of the genre that First Kill would be completely unable to dislodge on their own, (and honestly shouldn’t have to), and realistically isn’t all that bad in comparison to a lot of other shows out there.

Yes, there are passionate make outs with what could probably be classified as “Dry humping” and “Heavy Petting” but as it currently stands, they haven’t done the whole “We are naked under these sheets and cuddling in bed” thing or the “We are obviously having sex in this car” thing or the many other ways that shows do this. No clothes are removed and no one is implied to be naked, so it is honestly way less sexualized than a lot of shows at this point.

Yes, what is shown is also “cringey” especially if you are like trying to watch this with your parents or something but it also isn’t bad. As it currently stands, you could even say that the show is taking a step back on how sexualized teen shows are. Sure, it isn’t Derry Girls which so far doesn’t seem to have any of that but it also isn’t the hardcore levels some Teen shows push through.

VS

I would say First Kill is in the middle somewhere

3. Cal is so Flat/Cal and Juliette Have No Chemistry

A lot of elements can go into this complaint, but generally I am going to be kind here and simply say that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Look, the reality is that we all see, hear, process, conclude, etc. through our own lenses and that can cause immense differences in how things are perceived. Personally, I thought Sarah Catherine Hook and Imani Lewis had/have great chemistry, and generally would be unsurprised if they at some point started dating or whatever, but that is none of my business so I will leave it there. They seemed very believable to me, but I am looking at it through my own lens of course.

As for people saying “Cal is a flat character” or otherwise saying anything that implies Imani Lewis is doing anything other than an amazing job, are not actually considering her character as a whole. Cal is guarded and cold, you would be too if you grew up in a family of monster hunters. Literally, it is a stated canon plot point that her oldest brother (Yes, he is a half-brother but literally they do not make that distinction very much at all in the show which is honestly a breath of fresh air) was 12 years old when he “killed his first monster while out on a patrol with [their] dad.” So, that is literally a 12-year-old boy killing something that could have easily ripped him to shreds before his father could have stepped in and saved him with a gun, after presumably other prior times of going out on these patrols and watching as his dad did so too and training for this moment.

Cal’s other brother first did this at 14, and she got her first chance a year before at 15 but failed. Now, she is 16 and doing her best to start being able to prove herself to her family who has been training her for this her whole life. That is like military families times a hundred since they have to operate in secret and there are limits on how much “training” a military family can even remotely attempt before their child turns 18 and actually joins the military.

If Cal was open, peppy, positive, etc. it literally would not make sense within the context of the show, as she was raised to kill monsters and not care about it, to the extent that she doesn’t understand why Juliette would be upset that her family had fully written and drawn out plans on how to kill her and her family since she already made it clear that she was always going to be a hunter and her family are professionals (Which is logical for her to not understand given her upbringing).

Cal is played exactly how she should be given her background, if you think she is flat you may want to either analyze why exactly you seem to think that or you could literally do the easy thing and watch some interviews with Imani Lewis and Sarah Catherine Hook as you will see that how Cal is, is not her actual personality and thus is a legitimate actual part she is playing based on the context and not someone who doesn’t know how to play a role.

4. It Should Have Been Set in College

There are so many things I could say about this and maybe one day I will give you all a full post on it, but let’s just get to brass tacks. I know we all (Yes me included) like to say that things “Could’ve been set in college” but you need to understand that while yes it seems like a lot of things that are “practically nonexistent” in High School shows anyway mean that it could just be in college, but that is actually fundamentally untrue.

Let’s try a quick and easy example. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer Buffy’s mom is rarely around to have an influence, but the reality is that her mom is still a vital plot point in the show even though she is barely present, and having Buffy the Vampire Slayer immediately start in college actually probably wouldn’t have gone as well as you might think. See, part of the whole plot was that they moved to Sunnydale because her mom thought she was getting in too much trouble back in L.A., her mom doesn’t know she was getting in trouble because she has had a magical destiny placed on her shoulders and now has to spend a lot of her free time dealing with everything that entails, which gets her in trouble (with the law, with the school, and just in general) and causes her grades and such to suffer. This makes her mom a driving force in the plot even though she isn’t present.

If Buffy was in college, she wouldn’t have to worry about being out past curfew, whether or not her mom thinks she is participating enough if her mom will accept her boyfriend, etc. because there is much more leeway with that kind of stuff in college unless your parents/guardians are like super strict and controlling. Yes, she may have to text her mom to let her know she is out late or not coming home that night if she still lived with her, but generally you lose all of the little dramatic plot points that make up this genre where they have to do something because otherwise their parents will know what is up or will ground them or will become more involved or whatever which adds stakes (no pun intended) to the plot as a whole. College has it own plot points but if the points you want as background aren’t present there then it doesn’t make sense to set it in college instead.

As a final addition to this part, I will also quickly point out that generally there is actually a reason to write stories where high school aged kids go out and do something big/special/important with little to no help from the adults around them and manage to do “great things.” These stories play an important role not only for their target audience but also for those outside of it. Young kids need to see (and as a result often like to see) people they relate to being able to go out and do things without the help, input, or support of the various adults in their lives to help them gain the confidence to do the same. As kids get older, they may also need stories where they are given help, input, or support by the adults in their lives just as they may also need stories where it is in college struggling through like they are but that is a different genre to look at altogether.

5. It’s Basically Just Romeo and Juliet but with Lesbians and Supernatural Elements

Honestly, this one confuses me because I’m not positive why it is a complaint. Like yes, if you do not like Romeo and Juliet but with Supernatural Lesbians shows then the Romeo and Juliet with Supernatural Lesbians show probably isn’t for you! The show makes it very clear that is what this is about, no one is forcing you to watch this unless you are actually being tied down and forced to watch this. If you aren’t having a good time watch something else. Otherwise, this seems more like a positive. Like in Easy A they literally talk about how it is a movie cliché that the students are working on a play or reading a story that actually reflects what is happening in their lives because that is used all the time. First Kill is no exception. Literally the school play is Romeo and Juliet. It is a common trope to do this. Additionally, everything is based on everything else. There are only about 7 original plots and everything else is all just based on each other. If you don’t believe me, I need you to take a second to read and absorb this fact:

Around 175 CE, during the height of the Roman Empire, Lucian of Samosata (a part of modern-day Turkey), publish a story, called True History where the plot was essentially that a group of people were on a ship but it was blown up into space where they eventually landed on the Moon only to find that not only are there people on the Moon but they are at war with the people who live on the Sun because they are fight over a colony on Venus.

Please go back and re-read that and really let it sink in. There are no new stories, and that is perfectly fine!

6. Production/Design is Poorly Done

This here really should be the longest to talk about, but once again I am going to do my best to be short with this. So, first of all, poor production and design is honestly a staple of this genre, just because there is better technology now than when say Buffy the Vampire Slayer was on the air, does not mean that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is now bad. If you think that is why people have become more critical of the show, I can almost guarantee that most of the people who would complain about low quality on Buffy today say it because it is a quick and easy thing to discuss. Most of the actual criticism of the show nowadays actually have way more to do with writing and plot issues that are now more widely acknowledged as problematic in addition to the information we are now much more aware of about what was going on behind the scenes on set. Some of these issues do detract from the show now, but most of them nothing at all to do with how things looked.

To bump up to more recent times we can easily look at shows like MTV’s Teen Wolf or Vampire Diaries from the CW. If you look at their first seasons you will actually see a lot of similar production/design elements to First Kill because it is a staple of the genre AND because most of these shows don’t have huge budgets for their first seasons. If a show can tell the story, it wants then it doesn’t matter how big or small the budget it or how low-quality production seems, because it did the job it was supposed to do.

An easy look at this is in season 1 (I think it goes on longer too, but it is most prominent in the first season) of Vampire Diaries you will notice that a lot of the times when they are doing the whole “Vampire biting someone’s neck” thing they like open their mouths extremely wide and like go up and then go down before biting into the neck. This happened for 2 interconnected reasons. Reason 1 is that the fangs they used that season were apparently really short, making it difficult to try and bite necks, and Reason 2 is that this is a TV show and they need to get the best shots possible to convey what is happening. To get the shots they wanted with the teeth they had that is the compromise that happened. It was such a staple of the show that the Hillywood Show actually included it as part of their parody. I only know the background on it because Ian Somerhalder (Who plays Damon Salvatore) was asked about the parody at one point and stated that them including that detail meant that they truly knew the show. Both the Parody and the video of Ian Somerhalder are embedded below

Vampire Diaries Parody by The Hillywood Show

Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley Discuss the Vampire Diaries Parody by the Hillywood Show

An additional easy thing to look at, are these comparison shots of werewolves. One is from season 1 of Teen Wolf while the other is from this first season of First Kill. I personally find them to be incredibly similar, but that’s your call.

MTV's Teen Wolf Werewolf (Alpha Peter)

Netflix's First Kill Werewolf

Now, as a final point to touch on for this post, I would extremely remiss if I failed to mention the predecessor to First Kill which does an excellent job of proving that production does not matter one iota if you can make your plot entertaining and engaging for viewers. That predecessor is the web series Carmilla which ran for 3 seasons and actually was popular enough to gain a movie too. The show (Which you can still watch for free on YouTube) ran from August of 2014 till October of 2016. They had a total of 121 episodes with an average length of around 5 minutes each.

The show was based loosely on what many consider to be the actual first vampire story Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu which was released in 1871 (a full 26 years before Bram Stokers’ Dracula). It is shot like a video blog following journalism student Laura Hollis (Elise Bauman) in her freshman year at Silas University (A fake Austrian University), after her original roommate suddenly goes missing only to be immediately replaced by the weird and mysterious Carmilla Karnstein (Natasha Negovanlis).

The show and movie were both great and I would still be completely down for more, as would many, many other fans of the show, which is absolutely hilarious because their production/design was largely non-existent. The show was shot as if from her computer for school which remained in a stationary location, most of the action took place off screen while the audience was simply hearing about it and seeing the effects on the characters after the fact.

Stills from Carmilla Season 1

Stills from Carmilla Season 2

Stills from Carmilla Season 3

The movie of course included more stuff, but still not to an extreme degree, and it literally never mattered. What mattered then and will always be the important factor of shows, movies, games, books, etc. is if they manage to tell the story they are trying to tell and get the audience invested in the characters, which Carmilla obviously did with essentially nothing and which First Kill also does with whatever they have. Yes, some things in First Kill look cheesy or overdone, but that is literally every show in this genre and many people are grateful it is there at all, while also acknowledging it is completely unnecessary since so many were obsessed with Carmilla which had basically none of that.

Now, if you made it through all of that and First Kill seems up your alley go check it out! It really is a fun show and views are super important right now as fans are waiting to hear if they are going to get a second season. Its numbers have done pretty well so far, but more would never hurt. It is always a bummer when good shows get cancelled too soon, and that would be the case here, so any support you can give is really helpful. I’m more than happy to talk with any of you about the show when/if you finish it!

Otherwise, if you made it to the end but it doesn’t seem like that show for you know that is totally fine, and I’m even fine to discuss why that may be as long as you are willing to keep it civil! I am always curious about the different ways people think about and experience things.

Be on the lookout for more updates!

Till Next Time!

-Shadow Finch