Cruel Intentions – Season 1 Episode 1 “Alpha” Recap & Review

Alpha

Episode 1 of Cruel Intentions begins with us at Manchester College. Delta Phi sorority are ruled over by Caroline. She’s back with her boyfriend Rourke, and is briefed on what’s going down by Cece, her assistant. However, Caroline has more important things to worry about right now as there’s a big scandal hanging over school.

To give context to this conversation, we cut back three months earlier to the Spring Formal. We get a glimpse of Lucien here, a suave guy who works his way through women like there’s no tomorrow. He’s part of Alpha Gamma alongside his charismatic friend Blaise, who also wants to sleep with him. This Spring Formal is overseen by CeCe, who’s poring over every extraneous detail.

Caroline is on the verge of becoming President here, but there’s a big problem. Rourke has shown up with Caroline’s rival for the Presidential vote, Jenny Davenport, as his date. When Caroline shows to confront Rourke, he’s too busy watching as a bunch of kids are being hazed. One of them, Scott Russell, is hit in the back of the head and knocked out.

Back in the present, the students are questioned about the ongoing investigation into Scott’s injuries. Scott’s dad is a congressman, and he’s looking to push anti-hazing legislation, hence Caroline’s issues. However, he’s confident that Blaise is a good kid to be around Scott.

In this adaptation, the parents are still around and Sebastian’s step mother, Claudia, flirts a little with him in the car on the way home. Turns out Caroline is watching from the window. Inside, Caroline has a proposition for her step-brother.

After all the hazing, Caroline and Lucien both want to preserve their power, so the attention falls to the Vice President’s daughter, Annie Grover. Caroline wants him to seduce Annie and get her to pledge for Delta Phi. In exchange, she agrees to let him sleep with her for up to an hour.

Annie arrives on campus, while Blaise speaks to Rourke about his plan. He rebounded on Jenny in order to get back with Caroline and he’s convinced that she’s eating out the palm of his hand. As for Cece, she ends up meeting Professor Chadwick, who she’s going to be the TA for. She rambles on about her story, including having a rhinoplasty and her woes for not being able to sort her internship out. She even gets down on her knees and pleads with him. Eventually he concedes and it sets their affair up for the future.

Meanwhile, Lucien tries his hand with Annie but she immediately has her defences up. Their conversation is broken by a bunch of subplots in the middle of this, including a frat party where Caroline calls out Rourke for the Scott incident, and a newspaper headline doing the rounds, written by Beatrice, who gives all the details about how awful the Sorority House are. 

The Episode Review

Gone is the sultry, seductive tone of the movie, and the dangerous in Dangerous Liaisons and instead we get this sanitized, weird Gossip Girl-esque drama that serves to flesh out more of the world and include a whole bunch of walking cliches and tropey teen drama that doesn’t feel anything like Cruel Intentions.

Cece is probably the biggest character assassination here, as she’s gone from this innocent girl caught in the crossfire of a dangerous game between siblings, to a sorority sister with a ton of power. She’s no longer innocent to the world around her and a girl who needs moulding. The reason her character worked so well in the book/movie is because she really was the embodiment of geeky innocence.

The editing is also horrible here too with Annie and Lucien’s conversation, which should flow like poetry, broken up with these “subplot breaks” as we jump to various characters that really detract from the meat of this story.

But then this is created by the pair who destroyed I Know What You Did Last Summer so I guess I’m not really surprised that they appear to have butchered another IP. Lets hope the episodes ahead improve because…yeesh.