Robert and Michelle King are among
the greatest writers to work for television this decade. Rather than work in
the confines of cable or streaming, they seem most comfortable in the broadcast
venue, pushing the limits of the network, satirizing the more critically
acclaimed series that constantly get nominated over them at Emmy season, always
trying to see what they can get away with. Those who recognize them solely for
their extraordinary drama The Good Wife (and
its equally powerful spinoff The Good
Fight) probably would have pegged them to go into supernatural territory
with their next work, Evil. But
they’ve always had a taste for the bizarre: in 2016, almost as if in
preparation for the insanity that was to come, they created Braindead, a stunning satire which put
the blame on partisan gridlock on parasitic aliens burrowed into our lawmakers
brains. It couldn’t gain traction on the Tiffany network, and was canceled
after one season.
If anything, they seem willing to
delve deeper into in Evil. Katja
Herbers plays Kristen Bouchard, a clinical psychologist who works for the
district attorney, testing the sanity of serial killers. She gets called in by
David Acosta (Mike Colter, Lamont Bishop in The
Good-verse) a priest-in-training for archdiocese on a case where it seems
that one of her killers might be possessed. Things spiral, and she gets fired,
and in order to pay the bills (she has four daughter, and her husband is out of
the country mountain climbing, she starts to work with Acosta, and his tech
expert Ben (Aasif Mandvi, tweaking his
comic persona just enough) to try and prove that there are possessions or
miracles out there.
If you’ve been watching TV for any
amount of time, you’re no doubt thinking ‘X-Files
ripoff.’ But there are very distinct differences. First of all, all the
people involved, even David, are inclined to be skeptical. For another, the
series is far more ambiguous about the paranormal than the X-Files ever was. In
that series, the biggest obstacle was why Scully wouldn’t believe what she was
seeing; in this one, everything that has happened so far, can be explained by
science and social media.
Most importantly, there is the
religious aspect. Any long time viewer of The
X-Files knows that any time the series even mentioned ‘God’, it was a grind
to get through. In Evil, much of the
best part comes from the back and forth between David and Kristen. Kristen has
a daughter who has a heart defect, who might die before she’s twenty, and she
tells David, if she thought prayer worked, she’d be doing it all day long. But
when she asks him why good things happen to bad people, David doesn’t even
pretend to have all the answers. He offers to pray, but its clear he has his
own doubts.
Now, lest you think Evil is somber going, let me assure you
this series is really funny. Kristen is being visited by a demon named George
who seems determined to torture her, partly with violence, and partly with
psychological back and forth. (The series also plays this with ambiguity; it
could be a demon visit, or it could just be a recurring nightmare.) Mandvi is
also very good as a tech expert, who is clearly working for the church just to
pay the bills. But if there’s someone whose presence alone makes this series
worth watching, it’s Michael Emerson. Ever since we first became aware of him
playing a serial killer on The Practice, almost
all of his character he’s played on TV are either outright villains or
characters with darkness in the souls. Here, playing Leland, Emerson may
literally be the devil, someone who even if he isn’t demonic is clearly a
sociopath. Emerson’s characters have all had restraints before; Leland has
none, and whenever he’s on the screen, no scenery is safe. I know it’s early,
but I think there’s a good chance he’ll be on the shortlist for Supporting
Actor this year.
Evil
is by far one of the most engaging broadcast series I’ve seen in a very
long time. It looks at theological questions in a way that most cable and
streaming still won’t touch, and it plays on the madness in the world in a way
that will frighten some and strengthen others.
Will it last on CBS, a network that prefers the safe procedural to the
groundbreaking series? I don’t know. But then again, this is a show where
miracles may happen.
My score: 4.5 stars.
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