Editorials
Short-Lived TV Series “Special Unit 2” Is an Underprized Horror-Comedy
“DARWIN WAS HALF RIGHT.“
Back in the spring of 2001, this curious intertitle greeted anyone who tuned in for the premiere of Special Unit 2. The mid-season replacement aired right after Star Trek Enterprise on UPN, and it joined the likes of WB castoffs Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Roswell. Unlike the now-defunct network’s other genre offerings, Evan Katz‘s series was distinctly a comedy. From start to finish, Special Unit 2 is not only a whimsical tale of good versus evil, it reminds us that humor is often the key to comprehending the horrors of day-to-day-life.
Set in Chicago, a street cop named Kate Benson (Alexondra Lee, Paranormal Activity 4) learns that monsters do exist after all. Or, as the covert division Special Unit 2 prefers to call them, “Links.” After she’s partnered with hothead Nick O’Malley (Michael Landes, Final Destination 2), Kate’s brought up to speed on how to deal with these “missing links” between animal and man. They come up against various otherworldly threats such as a fear-eating scarecrow, wall-dwelling ghouls, and sisterly gorgons. It’s never a dull day at Special Unit 2.
The X-Files forever changed how scripted television does horror. Older entrants like Kolchak: The Night Stalker paved the way, but Chris Carter made the template that modern shows follow when it comes to investigating the paranormal. Special Unit 2 doesn’t deal with aliens (or vampires, as the mere thought of their existence is “ridiculous”), but its two main characters are absolutely caricatures of the iconic Dana Scully and Fox Mulder.
Heading up this colorful cast are Kate and Nick, two good-looking twenty-somethings with complementary personalities. They first meet during a rash of gargoyle-related abductions. Kate Benson, tolerably skeptical about everything in life but the supernatural, is always sensitive to things that go bump in the night. Everyone around Kate always discounted her suspicions until she found a home at Special Unit 2. From the red hair, to the occasional bout of academic insight, she’s the Scully in this duo. Nick, on the other hand, is a crude echo of Mulder. While Fox had his fair share of skin rags, Nick is hardly shy about what he did after hours. In truth, O’Malley’s overt sexuality is a cover-up for a rather horrifying past that’s touched upon from time to time.
In a smart move, the writers never tried to force a romance between Kate and Nick. Their winsome chemistry comes from a playful revulsion towards one another’s quirks and life choices. At any cost, they always have each other’s backs when the going gets tough. Like when Nick attends Kate’s disastrous high school reunion, he recognizes how selfless his partner is even after being humiliated by her classmates. And Kate puts herself in harm’s way to save her friend when his obsessions and loyalties get the best of him. As much as they are considered an ersatz Mulder and Scully, Nick and Kate’s steadfast friendship is a large part of why fans can look past the show’s other flaws.
In charge of this troop of misfits is Special Unit 2’s boss, Captain Richard Page (Richard Gant, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday). He’s the stern fatherly figure that his employees never asked for. And when Captain Page isn’t handling Nick and Kate, he has to contend with the office gnome. Not a metaphor seeing as gnomes reasonably exist in this universe. Due to his penchant for robbery, Carl (Danny Woodburn, Death to Smoochy) is bound to helping Special Unit 2 until further notice. For all that necessary Link background, the team looks to resident biologist Sean (Sean Whalen, 3 From Hell) in the first season, and then to his eager replacement, Jonathan (Jonathan Togo), in the second. Last, but not least, Pauley Perrette (The Ring) has her job cut out for her as Special Unit 2’s overworked PR manager, Alice.
Aside from its most obvious muse, Special Unit 2 enthusiastically takes cues from Buffy, CSI, and The Matrix. It was a post-Y2K world where trance music, pop culture laden wit, and wire-fu were all used un-ironically. Slow-mo fights, dance club stakeouts, and celebrity references weren’t uncommon in the series. This all might seem like a demonstration of the show’s low originality, but Special Unit 2 was really a clever send-up of the time period.
Over the span of nineteen episodes, Special Unit 2 created an offbeat collection of beasts and frights rooted in both ancient folklore and modern culture. The episodic format of the show allowed for many single-use yet memorable adversaries. One minute mermen are targeting virginal maidens, the next a monster composed of liposuctioned body fat is looking for its next meal. It may seem as if the majority of these Links are too disposable, but there was a hint of an overarching story and a potential Big Bad. Unfortunately, the show was canceled before the writers could revisit that budding plot. Still, this sundry gang of imaginative creatures will speak to those who like hands-on visual makeup and charmingly dated special effects.
The writing was breezy and tongue-in-cheek; episodes were easy to jump into without needing too much prior knowledge. Critics at the time were unimpressed only because they took the show at face value. In hindsight, they realize Katz had crafted a misjudged, low-stakes satire of action and horror movies. Special Unit 2 isn’t great television in the conventional sense, but it is a perfect time capsule of an era where small-screen horror was approachable, weird, and just plain fun.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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