‘Friday the 13th’ Series ‘Crystal Lake’ Is Everything Wrong With Film-to-TV Adaptations

The series’ version of Pam is a single mother in early-’70s Crystal Lake, NJ, the small town where the eponymous camp is located. Played by Linda Cardellini, whose casting as a woman who’s equal parts loving and driven by repressed rage is Crystal Lake’s one stroke of genius, she cooks at the camp and the local school by day and cares for Jason by night. Her boy is a sweet preteen who has physical differences (his head is large, bald, and lumpy) and is prone to seizures. Fiercely protective, she enrolls him in Camp Crystal Lake in order to keep him close by, even though the cruel campers ostracize him. But Pam’s helicopter parenting backfires when he disappears in the lake as the two counselors who are supposed to be supervising, Claudette (Danielle Kotch) and Barry (Phoenix Parnevik), sneak off to snog. Jason’s only friend, an empathetic fellow outcast named Grace (Gwendolyn Sundstrom), stumbles upon the couple and freezes, transfixed. By the time Pam realizes something is wrong, Jason has vanished.