We are in the penultimate episode of a
series advertised as an edgy historical serial-killer story so
frenetic only a city like Gilded Age New York could even keep up with
it, and in which three people (two prongs of which have known each
other for years) find themselves racing to invent criminal profiling
as they hunt for a brutal serial killer who forces them to face their own demons. Watching “Reqiuem,”
would you know it?
We know adaptation is a tricky
business; to make changes is to risk the story. But the novel came
out so long ago that several period pieces and serial killers have
lapped it. At this point The
Alienist’s greatest tension
isn’t in its plot; it’s telling the best story out of the story it has to tell. It’s succeeded at this, on and off, particularly when the characters were allowed to breathe. But faithfulness to the
plot means the show has had near misses with several opportunities
for a more surprising, and maybe more relevant, narrative.
Things it’s touched on: Immigrants so
systemically and casually victimized their grievances are heard if
they demonstrate en masse. The rich at play in a city where they own
the police and avoid any consequences for their actions. Misogyny so
stifling it breeds psychosis. Entrepreneur criminals, untouchable so
long as the right people make money. Oligarchs dictating
governance. Police corruption so systemic that real reform is only
possible via tearing it down and starting over. All those are great!
Good grace notes for any period piece. In a narrative that clearly
wants to point directly at the present, they feel necessary; maybe
the problem was that these grace notes were sometimes more interesting
than the main plots they served. The center cannot hold, and we’re
quickly running out of time to make it interesting.
It doesn’t help that this episode is
a bit perfunctory, despite frantic editing and a dozen plot points
that can feel like stalling. (We know Cyrus isn’t really going to get revenge on Connor before the
inevitable reckoning next episode.) Despite Kreizler grieving on the
periphery and the rest of the team closing in on the killer, nothing here really connects. It’s the kind of episode where our
heroes race through montages highlight their mounting desperation and
the killer’s rising bloodlust, and your first reaction is, “….why does this killer look so much like Fred Andrews?”
And this time out, the most interesting thing is some of the subtext that emerges from the show while it’s almost too busy to notice.
This past is meant to resonate; it’s why we instantly
understand the relative contexts when a smug government employee
talking about suspect contact between a grown man and a preteen girl
smarms, “Personally I never gave much credence to the
allegations,” and “I’m sure you appreciate that girls of
that age have vivid imaginations.” (There’s even some bonus
anti-Semitism, in case you weren’t clear that we should find his
views abhorrent.)
But when we meet her, the woman in
question is framed as willfully ignorant, even defensive, of the man
who sought her out—less like a victim who doesn’t yet have a
vocabulary for the uncomfortable dynamic from her childhood, and more
like someone who loved the attention, who says her parents made the
dreaded False Allegation against some socially-awkward guy who just
didn’t know how he came off. This refrain is as familiar as the government
man’s smarm; the purpose of it, coming from her and not from someone out ot discredit her, is muddier.
It touches on insidious, prevalent, and
often accidental subtext when talking about this sort of grooming.
And since we know none of her warm assumptions are true—and we’ve
seen almost none of the killer to understand how exactly he reels his
victims in—we’re left with a muddle. (The story seems to have
stumped itself about all this, as well; Marcus asking “And all
these years later, why do you think a grown man would befriend a
twelve-year-old girl?” is as close as he’s come to sounding
judgmental, but he also seems at a loss.)
And, of course, there’s Sara.
Sara spent significant screen time in
the early episodes announcing at length to our heroes that she was a
Strong, Independent Woman Of Today and could handle corpses,
descriptions of sex, and other unsavories. Things improved as we were
shown, and not just told, who she was: her strengths, he faults, her fears. But the show’s initial
framework remains—we’re meant to understand she insists on
independence at all costs.
Given that Connor has never been more
than a caricature of evil snapping at our heroes’ heels, it’s weird
how little the team has discussed the danger he poses. Sure, maybe Sara
never told the others about Connor’s office harassment (she was
already fighting to be taken seriously), but John apparently still
hasn’t mentioned to the others that Connor lured him into an alley to
beat him up, which seems like it would be relevant. However, there’s no hiding that Connor broke into
Kreizler’s house and murdered one of their friends. (And that’s not even mentioning the serial killer who tried to kill John recently; the reason, presumably, they’re investigating in a group.) So, if there’s a reason people on the team are
going home alone, that is now a plot point, not a setup for something
else, and we need to hear the reasons why.
Since we don’t get any reason, and given Sara’s early
speeches, Sara staying behind to lock up alone at night and getting threatened by Connor has some very sketchy subtext.
Obviously Connor’s terrible, but we’re also meant to understand this
as an inevitable escalation of his earlier harassment, for which she should somehow have been prepared. She should
have known, is the subtext. What did she expect if she insisted on
walking alone, is the subtext. Of course he was going to find her, is
the subtext. It leaves an unpleasant aftertaste; however
unintentional that subtext is, the show made space for this
scene when it has no effect on the wider story and plenty else is getting skimmed over. We already know
Connor’s terrible; this scene is telling us something else, and
nothing about it is good.
This show has always been a case study
in adaptation, tone, and execution; not for the first time, it’s
failing more than it succeeds. Maybe part of the reason the show
isn’t as engaging as it should be at this point is that, rather than dread, we have a sense of foregone conclusions. Several aspects of this episode needed something more than what
the novel provided. But this is a series for which faithfulness
supercedes possibility, and it’s too late to change that now. The
bones of this story provided all the necessary architecture to draw an unsettling, compelling line from the past to the present. It
has one episode left to get there. Godspeed.
Stray observations
- The funeral poem is “When I am
dead, my dearest,” by Christina Rossetti, which is a lovely poem
that inadvertently exposes some weaknesses of characterization. Is
that a sentiment Mary would have enjoyed? Is that a sentiment
Kreizler felt and asked John to read? Did John take it on himself?
I’d guess the latter, if you pressed me, but only because John Moore
is Full Gothic Heroine whenever the plot requires. Otherwise, there’s
no sense of the personal behind this choice, and it’s very strange to
realize that at this point in the show. - In the same vein as the victim-blaming
stuff from this episode, which is a weird tangle: Does the fact that
Mary is canonically an “Indian lass” exist as an
intentional point of conversation within a story in which Native
Americans are positioned as inspiring our killer’s atrocities with
their own? (We have now seen much more Native American miscellany
than anything relating to his father; our prevailing image of his
backstory is definitively one and not the other.) - ASMR Grief Counselor Roosevelt is my
least favorite one. - Emboldened American Hero Out To Stop
Corruption At All Costs By Making Announcements About It In Front of
Old-School Cops in Bars Roosevelt is a close second. - Marcus, pointing at the piece of paper
where the ADDRESS field appears clearly: “And this over here.
Near the top of the page?” - Boy, Mary sure did die just to make a
man sad, didn’t she? I will never understand how this plot point
wasn’t reconsidered in the wake of…everything that’s happened
culturally since 1994. (The music when Kreizler was wandering the
house was nice; silver linings, I guess.) - Surreal beat of the week: Someone told
Ted Levine to grab an off-camera extra, drag him into the frame as if
into existence, slap his chest, and shove him out again, and he did
it. He did it with a completely straight face.