666 Park Avenue was a 2012 ABC horror series starring Terry O'Quinn, Vanessa Williams, Rachael Taylor, Dave Annable and Robert Buckley, among others. It aired for a total of 13 episodes.
Based (very loosely) on a book by Gabriella Pierce, the show is about a young couple hired to be the managers of a luxurious NYC apartment complex, called the Drake. Soon enough, Jane (Taylor) starts noticing weird stuff happening and having weird dreams, and starts to wonder whether their employers, the Dorans (O'Quinn and Williams), and especially Gavin, the husband, have something planned for them...
Tropes associated with this show:
- Affably Evil: Gavin Doran, he just seems so charming and nice, right up until he has you Dragged Off to Hell.
- The Ageless: Drake resident Danielle hasn't aged for at least sixty years as part of her deal with Gavin. However, she's unaware of it; it seems he regularly wipes her memory.
- Agent Mulder: Detective Cooper seems to believe Jane when she says she was attacked by a ghost and later when she says she essentially traveled in time to 1927. His faith is proven correct.
- Apartment Complex of Horrors: The show was about a young woman discovering weird sights and happenings inside the new luxury apartment building she and her husband have just moved into. She began to develop paranoia by the season's end.
- Artistic License – Medicine: In "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?", Jane reacts with great anxiety to the nurse strapping a band on her arm to take her blood pressure (because it reminds her of being restrained during her recent repressed traumatic experience) and tells her to stop, and the nurse insists on pressing on, struggling with her, holding her down and injecting her with sedatives. In reality, this would be illegal. Jane's dissociative episode is not enough for her to be treated as mentally incompetent, and hospital workers are supposed to respect patients' anxieties and personal space.
- Big Applesauce
- Buried Alive: Brian and Louise end up walled alive in the basement of the Drake.
- Deal with the Devil: Of course.
- Decapitation Presentation: Gavin does this with Sam's head when sending Shaw a message.
- Devil-Dealer of the Week: Every episode had at least one.
- Downer Ending: Nobody who lives in the Drake and makes a deal with Gavin lives a happy life.
- Though Henry goes on to achieve all he hoped for in city hall, he's been made to forget about Jane who's pregnant with his child who Gavin plans on turning into the Antichrist.
- Dragged Off to Hell: Happens to quite a few people in quite a few interesting ways. An occupational risk when you sign a contract with the devil himself.
- The Dragon: Tony seems to act as Gavin's muscle on occasion. Though now it seems he's going to hire Kandinsky to do his dirty work for him.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Gavin and Olivia are absolutely devoted to each other, and they both loved their daughter.
- Evil Elevator: One sends Louise to the hospital in the pilot and Gavin sends a man who refused to make a deal with him down an empty elevator shaft in episode 3.
- Evil Versus Evil: Gavin versus Victor Shaw.
- Expy: The Drake seems to be one for the Bramford from Rosemary's Baby. Also the Dorans for the Castevets from the same book/movie. The use of the dragon concept and "The Drake" itself is reminiscent of the apartment building "The St. George" in the Tales from the Darkside episode "A New Lease on Life."
- Face–Heel Turn: Jane.
- Faking the Dead: Sasha/Laurel.
- Fate Worse than Death: When Gavin realizes that one of his associates has betrayed him, he traps him in an endless hallway with no way out until he cracks and confesses. And then the trope is subverted when Gavin just plain kills him.
- First-Episode Twist: Gavin Doran is an evil supernatural entity. Jury's still out on whether or not he is actually The Devil.
- Halloween Episode: Episode 5, "A Crowd of Demons". The Dorans throw a costume party, which is crashed by both a ghost who tries to kill Jane, and someone with a grudge against Gavin.
- In Name Only: The TV series has almost nothing in common with the books, which are about a newlywed discovering she has magical powers and her mother-in-law is an evil witch who is out to get her.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Danielle seems to have her memory wiped regularly for the last 60 years or so, especially after all the times she's been manipulated into killing someone for Gavin.
- Jane completely blacks out everything from when she enters the hidden stairway in the basement of the Drake to suddenly appearing in Times Square.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Jane's connection to the Drake.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Annie says this word for word when she realizes her way out of her deal with Gavin will lead to an innocent man's death.
- Jane's reaction in the finale when she realizes that the price of the deal she made with Gavin to save Henry will bring about The End of the World as We Know It.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jane makes a deal with Gavin to save Henry when he's shot, the price of which is... a new order. What does this mean? Two words; The Antichrist.
- No Body Left Behind: It seems the Drake absorbs anyone who dies there in order to hide the fact.
- Number of the Beast: The title, of course. The building's actual address is 999 Park Avenue, which is 666 upside down.
- Once per Episode: A resident of the Drake makes a Deal with the Devil, and eventually pays for it. Even the finale!
- The Place: Three guesses where the setting of the show is.
- Rewriting Reality: Annie, a journalist with dreams of making it big, makes a deal with Gavin to become a success. This manifests as gaining the ability to make whatever she writes come true. Unfortunately, this leads to the assassin she created killing her.
- Satanic Archetype: Gavin Doran is an evil supernatural entity. However, it remains to be seen if he is actually Satan, a demon serving Satan, or a servant even lower than a demon.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Whatever is in the Red Box that Shaw stole from Gavin.
- It's debatable whether Peter Kramer was evil per se or just driven crazy by the Drake, but in any case, his spirit was locked inside a suitcase, which was then locked in a storage room in the basement that was bricked shut.
- Shout-Out: Many scenes in the pilot seem lifted from either Rosemary's Baby or The Devil's Advocate.
- The birds in "Murmurations" seem to be a Shout-Out to The Birds.
- The scene in which Louise is 'attacked' by the elevator brings to mind both the Danish movie Das Lift and a death scene in Final Destination 2.
- Supernatural Proof Boyfriend: Henry Martin, to frustrating levels, but it could be argued that the Dorans are hiding the supernatural part from him because they plan to lure him in and use him for whatever purpose.
- Together in Death: Brian and Louise.
- Too Dumb to Live: Annie, literally. You have the power to write obituaries that magically come true. There's a scary hitman after you. And you don't even think about trying to write the scary hitman's obituary?
- Trash the Set: A real life example - Hurricane Sandy severely damaged the show's sets.
- Villainous Rescue: Jane is saved from Peter Kramer's ghost when the birds in the walls of the Drake attack and re-kill him.
