Evil 1.9: The Deposition

As is well known, the creators of Evil - Robert King and Michelle King - achieved their greatest previous success with The Good Wife, which would be up there on any all-time Top 20 network television series list, maybe higher.  For that matter, Mike Colter, who plays the leading role of David in Evil, played a leading role in The Good Wife, too.  In episode 1.9 of Evil, we get the most explicitly legal episode.  It had the least amount of logically inexplicable demons and supernatural about it - little more than a cat, and even that is debatable.  That was one reason I liked it the best of any episode of Evil so far (though, actually, I admit to liking the supernatural at least a little).

David and the Church are being sued by the woman that David, against Kristen's best advice, performed an exorcism on a few episodes back. In 1.9, she must figure out a way to outwit the sharp attorney - Ms. Lemonhead - played by Jennifer Ferrin, a fine actress who had a great role in Hell on Wheels, in case you remember.   (By the way, giving characters crazy but suitable names was another characteristic of The Good Wife.)  Kristen succeeds (always well played by Katja Herbers, but I don't think she was in The Good Wife), with the help of the Church's attorney, Renée (played by Renée Elise Goldsberry, who also was in The Good Wife), who, guess what, has the hots for David (another characteristic of The Good Wife, but I'll stop doing this).  But most of these scenes do take place in a series of legal depositions.

And, then, in a very nice wrap-up, Renée not only gets David and the Church off the hook, but her desire for David would have kept him from being killed.  She seduces him when he has a meeting at his church.  That meeting would've been shot up by the sicko that Leland has been training to do this.  Fortunately for everyone - except Leland, who's infuriated by this result - the sicko kills himself rather than opening fire in the church.

This leaves open the question of who, exactly, is Leland?  He has some connection to the 60 daemons - he gets one of them, apparently, to train the kid to kill.   So this makes Leland, what?  The Devil?

We'll just have to see.  And now that I'm all caught up, I'll try to review each new episode of Evil on a more timely basis.

See also: Evil: Incubus Mystery ... Evil 1.2: Miracles and Racism ... Evil 1.3: Possessed Alexa ... Evil 1.4: Raising the Ante ... Evil 1.5-6: Seeing Red ... Evil 1.7-8: Sigils and Weight

Evil 1.2: Miracles and Racism

A really excellent second episode of Evil on CBS last night, confirming what I thought after the debut of this series last week: it's the best new series I've seen so far this season on network television.

The subject of the episode was miracles, in particular the miracle of a young woman declared dead coming back to life.  As we saw last week, our characters are unafraid to confront the most profound problems.  Kristen Bouchard (very well played by Katja Herbers) spotlights perhaps the key problem with belief in miracles: why do they "happen to some people and not to others".  This an especially crucial problem for her, and not just professionally: we learn in the same conversation with David Acosta (also very well played by Mike Colter) that Kristen's young daughter may have a heart valve condition that could kill her before she reaches the age of twenty.

Meanwhile, the pendulum between spirit and science swings back and forth, just as it did last week. Kristen's daughter sees George the demon!  Evidence, then, that he's real?  It might seem so, until Kristen learns that he's a character in a horror narrative that is streaming ("streaming," her daughter corrects Kirstin, not on television) and that Kristen has seen and her daughter and the other kids regularly watch.  This pendulum between occult and mundane keeps us on our toes about what is really going on.  In the centerpiece story, the young woman who comes back to life is African American, and our investigators discover that she was pronounced dead too soon, because the hospital tends to do that with African Americans.  Her coming back to life was not a miracle, but "implicit racism," as David aptly puts it.

Speaking of good acting, Evil also features Michael Emerson (from Lost and all kinds of sometimes great series) as Leland Townsend, who is a fit evil antagonist for Kristen and David.  He's a psycho, David explains, who "wants to kill hope".

I noticed something else about Evil last night.  Its creators are Michelle King and Robert King.  They were the creators of The Good Wife.  This makes me hope that Evil will be even better than just sometimes great.   I won't let Leland kill that hope.  Indeed, his complex character enhances the possibility that this hope will be fulfilled.

See also: Evil: Incubus Mystery