Cult-TV Blogging: Brimstone: "Heat" (October 30, 1998)

Brimstone hits its stride in the third episode produced (though second aired): “Heat” written by Janis Diamond and directed by Jesus Trevino. It hits that groove because the episode remembers a critical aspect of Detective Stone’s experience.

Like the 113 escaped convicts he pursues so relentlessly, Stone went to hell for his immorality. He is, in some significant sense, a lot like the men and women he hunts.  They are all sinners, and have all faced punishment for their sins.

The aspect of Brimstone that thus makes it a great television show is Stone’s reckoning that there are indeed shades of gray in terms of humanity’s understanding of his actions, but the hierarchy in the universe --represented by God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell -- is not gray.  Contrarily, it is black-and-white. 

How is Stone to account for this fact?  For the idea that humanity can see a whole range of moral solutions to problems, but the universe itself views matters of morality only in rigid absolutes?

Hence this week’s story, called “Heat.”  It involves a girl who lived in the Middle Ages, named Gwendolyn, who has escaped from Hell, but is still experiencing the post-traumatic stress associated with her victim hood in life.  

When Gwen was a young woman, a group of squires burned her house and then repeatedly raped her.  She reported the crime but was told by the local clergy that, essentially, boys will boys, and that all those squires were from noble families. Hence nothing could be done, or should be done.

Gwen responded to this crime and injustice by visiting terror upon the squires. She burned them alive.  And for that act, she went to Hell when she died.  

Now, back on Earth, each time Gwendolyn attempts to make love to a man, memories of the rape cause her to, literally, burst into flame.  Any modern lover she takes to bed dies from the unearthly heat her body generates. 

When Detective Stone learns the specifics of Gwendolyn’s crime, he associates her behavior with his own transgression.  He killed his wife’s rapist, Gilbert Jax, in cold blood.  And like Gwendolyn, he went to Hell for taking the law into his own hands. 

It’s even worse than that, for Stone, here.  In “Heat,” he learns from a psychiatrist, played by Lindsay Crouse, that many rape victims never fully recover from this crime.  Stone wonders if this is what has happened to Rosalyn.

Accordingly, Stone confronts the Devil (John Glover) and refuses to send Gwendolyn back to Hell, feeling that she has suffered enough.  “I won’t do it,” he tells him.  The Devil, however, has Stone over a barrel.  Sympathy is fine, but if Stone won’t do the Devil’s work, then the Devil will find another inmate who will. 

And doesn’t Stone want that second chance to live? That chance to reunite with his wife, with Rosalyn?

Stone’s dilemma makes for a great character conflict and Brimstone triumphs when it examines the morality of crimes, and juxtaposes those crimes with Stone’s history. 

“Heat” also cements Stone’s persona here, in terms of how he treats suspects that he questions.  It’s a kind of Kolchak: The Night Stalker vibe, actually.  Stone is  a little suspicious, a little bemused, and a little pushy when sussing out information.  

Also, those suspects here are depicted in the same way they are on Night Stalker: as quirky, individual, and a little bit funny.  In “Heat” we see this dynamic in terms of the haughty college resident monitor, and in terms of the Goth chick Stone interviewees.  She tells him “There’s no law against worshiping the devil,” for instance, and Stone bites his tongue.

She might want to rethink that life choice…

“Heat” also represents a turning point for Brimstone because it involves a hell convict that doesn’t really deserve to go back to Hell; one the audience can sympathize with.  In “Poem” and the “Pilot,” that was most definitely not the case.  

In both of those cases, the convict was evil and committing further evil acts.  Gwendolyn, by contrast, is just trying to figure out who she is, where she fits in, and how, finally, to find the love that eluded her in her life, before it ended.

The episode also works -- as so many entries do -- because John Glover is entirely amazing in the role of the Devil.  He’s a real scene-stealer. Early in the episode, he asks Stone: “What are you going to do?  Kill me like you killed your wife’s rapist?”  He makes the line almost playful.  And finally, he delivers one-liners such as the delightfully wicked: “Stop and smell the burning flesh of sinners.”  It takes an actor with real aplomb, a nd a certain heightened sense of self, too vet such dialogue with so much charm and such authority.

This is the very first episode of Brimstone I ever saw, during its run on Fox television, and “Heat” was good enough to get me hooked.  The idea of “dangerous sex” is certainly a cult-tv cliché, one featured on many programs, from Torchwood to the 1990s Outer Limits.  But despite that familiar convention, “Heat” doesn’t feel lurid or sleazy.  On the contrary, Gwendolyn is a truly tragic character, and it’s appropriate that Stone treats her with sympathy…at least as far as he can.

It's great that a series about a universe of absolutes finds the space to contemplate the in-between.  And it won't be the last time it happens on Brimstone, either.

Next episode: "Encore."