Marti Noxon

Devil assumes a darker form in teen-angst "Point"

Something teenage this way comes.

"Point Pleasant," a slice of the supernatural from a former executive producer of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," invites sympathy for the devil’s daughter.

It also tempts the writers to explore current social and political battles involving religion, or at least religiosity, in the context of a teen thriller.

The question is whether a deadly serious approach to adolescent alienation can be as compelling as the playful, witty and ironic version. How will "Pleasant"-ville stack up next to Buffy’s Sunnydale?

I already miss the latex.

Premiering Wednesday (8 p.m. on Fox’s KDVR Channel 31) with an overwrought score, bountiful Christian imagery and a cast of buff and beautiful young adults, Marti Noxon’s "Point Pleasant" is not just supernaturally charged but preternaturally dark.

Anyone with apiphobia, the fear of bees, is hereby warned from the pilot episode.

When a storm washes a comely young woman ashore in the sleepy New Jersey beach burg of Point Pleasant, there’s more than wet T-shirts to consider. Turns out Christina Nickson (Elisabeth Harnois) is the spawn of Satan. Her father was the devil, her mom was a nice Jersey woman who sang in the church choir.

Christina is torn. She possesses the good heart of a mortal woman but is also possessed by the dark side of the family, with powers for evil that she is just beginning to recognize. Her immediate goal is to locate the mother she never knew, a Point Pleasant native who left behind a picture of herself. Meanwhile, a cabal of sinister middle-aged men observe her actions from a distance and seek to destroy her before her identity as a "child of darkness" gets out.

No monsters, no hell-mouth, just soap-operatic crises of conscience plus some startling special effects. Christina’s back- and-forth between Good versus Evil will infect the town, but likely won’t be one for television record books.

Gee, she seems nice: Christina can ignite a deadly fire from yards away, just by thinking incendiary thoughts about another girl who dates the boy she likes.

She can mentally seduce a young man and emotionally unbalance the whole village. She can unlock secret passions and repressed urges in even the most down-to-earth, seemingly well-adjusted townsfolk - including the clueless family that takes her in.

Christina at first feels omnipotent, then she cries when witnessing her powers in action.

She looks angelic, but behaves very, very badly.

She has a downright saintly side, and yet she might be the proverbial root of all evil.

Wait, I’m picking up a message from the dark side: Haven’t we seen this somewhere before - wasn’t this the third season of "Buffy," when the Slayer was infected with demon blood? In fact, didn’t this dichotomy surface with a certain regularity in "Buffy"?

The underlying theme of "Point Pleasant," like that of "Buffy," is that it’s a struggle to gain control of adolescent sexual and emotional impulses.

Lacking the ironic humor of the Slayer and heavy on the sort of lust common to daytime TV, this Good-versus-Evil tug of war is set in a Fox hour that seems less an original take than a cross between "Melrose Place" and "Rosemary’s Baby."

That said, the series is one of the more promising midseason entries for Fox’s most desired junior demographic. With "The O.C." as a lead-in, the whole evening of "Peyton Place"-redux for the new millennium could click.

The series gets a double pump this week: Part 1 debuts Wednesday following an extended one-hour version of "American Idol." Part 2 follows, in the regularly assigned slot, Thursday at 8 p.m.