Title: “Takedown”
Series: Creeped Out
Season: 2
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Emma Campbell
Storyline: Well this is going to be fun. The subject matter is wrestling, and I hate wrestling. Not that I’ll let that impact my rating - hah! B Minus without even watch - huh? Oh. Um, didn’t realise you were still there. This? No no: an unrelated matter, I assure you. Nothing will pre-bias my … B minu - are you
still there? Look can you just
go please? It’s very distracting. Thank you.
Better see what this is like, I suppose. Says it’s for kids, but then so was
Are You Afraid of the Dark? So let’s see before we pre-judge this with a B minus - oh come
on! I
heard you go! What do you mean you came back? Forgot your
what? Right, right, just get it and please go! I have work to do! I don’t know, some people.. What? No, no, nothing. Nothing at all…
Alexa is a good wrestler (see: I told you!) but when she’s selected by her team coach to go up against the boys she believes she has not the confidence or skill to compete against them. Her friend believes in her, but when she gets a weird unsolicited text message telling her she has been chosen, and must text back the gift she wants, she’s a little nonplussed. The text warns that the gift will be taken from someone else, and if she doesn’t choose something, the person sending the text (who calls herself Trudi) will hide under her bed and take something else. She blocks the number but it texts her again. Weird. Shouldn’t be able to do that.
That night she thinks about it, and texts back that she wants physical strength. Immediately a reply tells her that her gift has been sent. The next morning she has great strength, but another text advises her that a gift has been taken from her. She worries what it might be, but still asks for more strength. There’s no response. The next day Lincoln, the top wrestler is taken ill and so a spot is up for the regionals, and she intends to take it. That night while she’s in the garage with her father the jack slips while he’s under the car he’s fixing and it falls on him, but using her new strength she is able to lift it off him, much to his amazement.
Alexa’s friend has been watching Lincoln, and thinks that she may have been given his strength, as he is flinching whenever she lands a blow on one of her opponents. She shrugs it off though, despite what the text said. And again, she asks for more strength. I’m not sure what she is thinking here: she’s already stronger than anyone; how much more strength does she need? But when the final match to decide who goes to the regionals is played, it seems Lincoln is back in business, and what’s more, he’s got her sense of tactics. She’s not the only one Trudi texted. Now that she relies on brute force without strategy, she’s easily beaten.
But that’s not the worst of it. Now her friends start weakening, possibly dying. She has to text Trudi to take it all back, but the warning notes that one gift returns means all gifts returned. Lincoln tries to stop her, of course, but she manages to send the text and all is restored. Unfortunately her father then reveals that, though she thinks he always wanted a son he did not. He tells her that he used something similar - chain letters, god I remember them! - to ask for a daughter instead of a son.
And now, everything has been undone. And he no longer has a daughter, but a son.
Comments: A good and unexpected ending that raises the story a little above bleh, but here’s the thing: the creators of this series stated that they were heavily influenced by
Amazing Stories, and this is just “Gershwin’s Trunk” rewritten, with a chunk of
Are You Afraid of the Dark?’s “The Tale of the Vacant Lot” thrown in, so boo guys, minus points for originality. Also, is that a thing in America - mixed wrestling teams? Young teenage girls allowed to be grappled by -
required to be grappled by teenage boys? Would never fly here. Sounds ridiculous.
Rating: B - (Only not a C due to the ending)