Keck a second time, after Rowan has learned that her beloved mother’s cancer has returned, her submissive act isn’t so successful.

Men, amirite?īut when we interact with Dr. For instance, Rowan has to keep her cool for the sake of her Alpha Male boss’s ego and thus her job, even when he takes over her surgery and almost kills a kid because he refused to listen to her advice. For the time being, her primary conflict is only the eternal struggle that is being a Woman at Work. She’s a doctor who chooses to live on a boat like some kind of “ dropout.” (That’s the “Uber man’s” word, not mine.) But Rowan is happy on her boat. We first meet Rowan, brilliant pediatric surgeon and daughter of an adoptive single mother, on her boat where she lives - this is how we can tell that she’s a little bit different. (The character’s name is Rowan, and so I’ll refer to her as Rowan, but just know that in my head she will probably still be “Alexandra Daddario.”) We follow three separate character threads that weave together by the end of the episode, the most important of which is that of our protagonist, Alexandra Daddario. Having set the appropriately spooky tone with a decrepit mansion, a wild-haired catatonic woman, and a syringe full of thorazine in the cold open, the main job of “The Witching Hour” is to set the board for the rest of the series.

Oh yes, there is also some shoe-horned feminism which I’m choosing not to let bug me. The Mayfairs are doing real witch shit like spawning demons (potentially) and giving mansplainers magic aneurysms. These are not Glendas or Halliwell sisters fighting the forces of evil. For two, it’s nice to see witch content today that gets back to the more depraved tropes of the genre. For one, I’m always happy to see a show taking full advantage of the high-camp aesthetics provided by the Catholic church (if I took one positive thing from seven years of Catholic school it was a deep appreciation for ceremonial melodrama). I am, however, optimistic, as “The Witching Hour” included many of my favorite supernatural things. I wasn’t sure how Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches would measure up against the unholy three-ring orgy that was Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire, and after finishing the pilot episode, I’m still not sure. Photo: Vulture Photo: Alfonso Bresciani/AMC

Anne rice the witching hour series