Full disclosure: I've only seen this one episode of The Gates, but I think that qualifies me as an expert because it's at least half an episode more than anyone else bothered to watch. Ha ha! From what I can gather, it's about this gated community where monsters live, sort of like an expanded version of The Munsters but with more soap opera histrionics. Naturally there's entirely too many scenes of people standing around with their mouths hanging open in shock over some minor plot twist, but the real problem with this show is that the whole thing feels like they just made up as they went along. For example, the big crisis in this episode happens for a stupid, easily avoidable reason (this dumb twat forgets to take the medicine that keeps her from accidentally killing people), and then it's solved at the wave of a dick by some magic gobbledygook falling out of someone's ass. Let's face it, when you've got this much crazy shit going on in one show - vampires, witches, voodoo, a cute redhead who can steal your life force - there's no fucking rules whatsoever and you can pretty much decide what's actually possible from minute to minute, flip-flopping as often as you like whenever you write yourself into a corner or don't feel like thinking too hard. That means that it doesn't matter what happens, because you can always invent some backdoor cheat to get out of anything, up to and including killing off super important characters and then just having them pop back to life whenever you feel like it and/or they agree to stop asking for more money per episode. And if it doesn't matter what happens on your show, why, pray tell, should anyone bother watching it? Especially if it's on pussy-ass ABC and there's no chance that any of the top-notch hotties you roped into it will get naked?

On the plus side, I doubt this one will be coming back next season, so it looks like Syfy will finally have some new filler for that troublesome 3-6 AM block.