SEARCHING
FOR
THE
CREEPY
CORE
OF APPLE-PIE
AMERICA |
 
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In Trinity, South Carolina, the PTA meets Monday nights at the church, neighbors never lock their doors... and the sheriff is the devil incarnate... Created by former "Hardy Boy" Shaun Cassidy, with horror-film maestro Sam Raimi as executive producer, American Gothic is part soap-opera, part sci-fi. "I liked the idea of showing a town that wasn't as it appeared," says Cassidy. "A place that was too good to be true - so good, it had to be sinisterly bad at it's core." |
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The show's master a macabre is local lawmaker Lucas Buck, played by Gary Cole. In the series premiere, Lucas murders a young autistic girl named Merlyn Temple (Sarah Paulson) by snapping her neck, and tries to bond with her brother, Caleb (Lucas Black). The dirty secret is that Caleb is actually Lucas' son, conceived when he raped his mother years before. As Lucas, Cole broods and blackmails. "You have to know who's boss," he tells a deputy who challenges his ethics. "For those who don't follow my lead, it can be a mighty tough road." And he isn't kidding. Lucas has no qualms about killing to get his way, and while his deputy, Ben Healy (Nick Searcy) is alarmed at his boss's lethal amorality, he is powerless to do anything about it. In the first season alone, expect more than one of the innocent townsfolk to take a powdering when Lucas gets his wicked way. |
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"The beauty of the show is you don't know what could happen next - or who could be next on Lucas' list," Cassidy says. "Lucas' motivation is sheer power and possession," says Cole, best known as Mike Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie and co-star of In The Line Of Fire with Clint Eastwood. "He wants custody of Caleb, his son, and he will do anything to get it. He has no heart or soul - only hunger." Caleb is on to Lucas, guided by his dead sister's ghost who appears to him in visions and will reappear in the flesh later in the season. The boy also finds some protection from his cousin, newspaper reporter Gail Emory (Paige Turco) and Dr. Matt Crower (Jake Weber), a former alcoholic. "Caleb is smart enough and brave enough to sense the darkness," Cassidy says. "The rest of the town believes the sheriff is the good guy - but this boy sees right through him. He’s not fooled." Gail also sees Lucas for what he is, but at the same time she’s strangely drawn to him. |
"It's
an unconventional romance exploring a grey area," Turco says.
"Gail uses her suspicions about Lucas to confine the way she
thinks about him - but after four or five episodes, her feelings
become unleashed in a bizarre way."
Lucas, it appears, has also played a hand in Gail’s past - he may have murdered her parents. "Not exactly pillow talk," Turco jokes. "But she's undergoing this internal moral struggle - she can't resist him." Cassidy hopes the same can be said for his show: "I'm hoping people will be hooked instantly," he says. "This show is filled with secrets. Everyone has a skeleton or two in their closets. No one is safe." And how did this clean-cut, former teen idol come up with such a spooky concept for a TV series? "Never underestimate people," he says raising an eyebrow. "They're never what they seem." |
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