Prodigal Son 1.10: The Reward

Prodigal Son 1.10 - the Fall finale - just on Fox TV tonight was good and atmospheric, with a potent mix of Christmas cheer and horror, even though it didn't move the story forward very much.

Probably the biggest piece of news, in the long run, is that Bright's mother Jessica is offering the public a big reward for anyone who can find out more about her husband's final victim.  When the series returns in January, that offering should lead to all kinds of provocative stories as people who want to claim the reward come out of the woodwork and do their own sleuthing or lying.

The other step forward is a little more information about the Junkyard Killer.  He has a psycho grandmother.  Ok.  He also looks a lot like Martin Whitley.  Is Whitley indeed the Junkyard Killer?  No, he's in shackles behind bars.  So why does he look like his mentor?  I guess he grew similar facial hair to emulate Dr. Whitley.   Whatever is going on, whatever the Junkyard Killer's true identity, there's a lot more connection between him and Dr. Whitley than we now know.

I was glad to see the FBI brought into this episode.  Do we know if any of Martin Whitly's victims were from out of state?  If  so, then the FBI would have a vested interest in this case.   We know that it's already on their radar.   In fact, they were involved in tonight's episode because they're already hunting for the Junkyard Killer.

So, as head into the Christmas break, there are a lot of ingredients on the kitchen table for this odd and pretty interesting, often compelling network drama.  I'll definitely be back in January with reports on how it goes.

See also: Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer ... Prodigal Son 1.2: Dreams or Memories? ... Prodigal Son 1.3: LSD and Chloroform ... Prodigal Son 1.4: Ainsley ... Prodigal Son 1.6: Bad Boy ... Prodigal Son 1.7: Apprentices ... Prodigal Son 1.8: The Mentee ... Prodigal Son 1.9: Freud and Eve

Prodigal Son 1.9: Freud and Eve

A hot and powerful Prodigal Son 1.9 last week, with lots of sex and death - or, as Freud, mentioned by Bright at the beginning of the episode, would have put it, libido and thanatos.

The libido comes in the form of a sex club, and in the budding relationship between Bright and Eve.  The thanatos comes in the form of the dead bodies that result from the sex club - which Bright and his team investigate - and what Bright almost does to Eve.

The first - the sex club and the investigation - are a good, standard, sex-oriented police story, which includes Bright almost in bondage to one of principals of the club.  The second is much more serious, with lasting consequences for Bright and Eve.

First, Bright, on his first date with Eve, profiles her, which results in her leaving in tears.  But she shows up later.  They have good sex together - presumably, we saw only the aftermath - but when Bright wakes up, with Eve sleeping on his shoulder in bed beside him, things take a turn for the worse.

Bright after awakening goes into his dream state, imagining the woman whom his father killed - the oft-mentioned girl in the box.  Bright breaks away, but she - the hallucination - comes after him.  Bright takes a knife and waves it at her--  but it's Eve, who has awoken, not the hallucination.

Not good for their relationship, to say the least.  Bright has shown himself to be more dangerous than damaged goods.   Bad news for the relationship, good news for the continuing narrative, which continues to get more compelling with every episode.

See also: Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer ... Prodigal Son 1.2: Dreams or Memories? ... Prodigal Son 1.3: LSD and Chloroform ... Prodigal Son 1.4: Ainsley ... Prodigal Son 1.6: Bad Boy ... Prodigal Son 1.7: Apprentices ... Prodigal Son 1.8: The Mentee

Prodigal Son 1.8: The Mentee

Prodigal Son 1.8 brought us the story, in Ainsley's apt words, "the mentee" - of the Surgeon, that is, and not just another apprentice.  Paul is the most developed psycho we've seen so far, and holds at least some of the keys to Bright's past.

Paul confirms what Bright dimly remembers about the last girl his father killed. Gil now acknowledges her likely existence, and admits that he may have wrong to dismiss her as just a Bright nightmare.   Paul gives Bright that elusive bracelet.  And, as a demonstration of his power, escapes the police and Bright, and ends the episode fully at large.

Before we go any further, I have a feeling - not yet quite a theory - about that girl.  I'm wondering if she may be yet alive.  And someone that we already know.  A really wild possibility would be Eve.  No evidence at all about this - as yet.

Back to the mentee.  A big question is whether he's working, has been working all this time, with the Surgeon, or is doing all of this on his own?  As I mentioned in my review of last week's episode, a similar issue arose in The Following.  When you get to such high levels of murderous psychosis, it's not always clear who is calling the shots.

It's also not impossible that Paul drew Martin into the serial killer game.  An important question is exactly when in Martin's life did he start his killing?  Before or after he became a surgeon, or maybe during his training.  Before or after he married Jessica?

We're getting some answers, but each time we get one some more questions arise.  A good place to be in series about serial killers.

See also: Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer ... Prodigal Son 1.2: Dreams or Memories? ... Prodigal Son 1.3: LSD and Chloroform ... Prodigal Son 1.4: Ainsley ... Prodigal Son 1.6: Bad Boy ... Prodigal Son 1.7: Apprentices

Prodigal Son 1.7: Apprentices

An outstanding, even pivotal episode 1.7 of Pivotal Son last week, in which all kinds of alliances are revealed and created.

The big one features Bright handing over a scalpel - aka knife, weapon - to his father, the Surgeon, unshackled in his prison cell.  He does this at the insistence of his sister, Ainsley, who has come with her cameraman to interview her father.  The cameraman gets stabbed by a psycho on the loose in the prison.  It's a serious wound, and only Dr. Whitly's expertise can save him.

Which he does, and then returns the weapon to Bright, which instantly turns Ainsley from a staunch critic to a devoted fan.  It was no surprise that the Surgeon somehow set all of this up.  The fun was seeing it unfold and learning how that happened.

The key is that the Surgeon has apprentices, students, in and out of prison.  This has suddenly thrown Prodigal Son into The Following territory, and that's exciting and desperate terrain.  A group of psychos following a sinister master can do a lot more damage than the master himself, especially when he's locked up for life in prison.

One question, though, is the how the prison stabber could have had precisely enough prowess with the scalpel to wound the cameraman exactly the way the Surgeon wanted it.   But that's a small quibble to a generally eye-opening episode that really moved the series along,

Tonight's episode will be on in less than an hour, and I'll be back with a more timely review.

See also: Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer ... Prodigal Son 1.2: Dreams or Memories? ... Prodigal Son 1.3: LSD and Chloroform ... Prodigal Son 1.4: Ainsley ... Prodigal Son 1.6: Bad Boy

 

Prodigal Son 1.6: Bad Boy

Prodigal Son 1.6 brought Ainsley much closer to her dad - at least, much closer to interviewing him - which is good (for her, contra her mother's reservations, and for the overall narrative).   But Bright had little do with this, and instead was focused on the murder of a guy, and the murderer, who turned out to be the guy's young son.

This bad boy story - literally a boy, not figuratively - has been popping up a lot on television, most recently on Evil.  Fortunately, the episode on Prodigal Son had a much better ending than the one on Evil, which I guess is why they call the series Evil.  But I gotta say that, in addition to not being a big fan of this evil with a small "e" child motif because I don't like seeing kids in that position, the set-up and solutions are usually obvious and even trite.

In the case of Prodigal Son, it was obvious as soon as Bright talked the boy with the rabbits that there was something not right with the kid.  And it also was obvious that Bright was turning a blind eye to this, because he himself was the edge of being a very bad boy when he was younger.

That said, Prodigal Son still has an excellent set-up, with memorable characters propelled by strong acting.   Ainsley's arc is slowly taking off, and when it gets higher in the sky, we should be in for some real revelations.   One of the problems with these network shows which try to balance continuing stories with separate episodes is that, the more intriguing the continuing story, the less patience you have for the separate weekly storylines.   My recommendation to Prodigal Son - spend less time on them and more on the underlying tale.  It's almost impossible to pack as much wallop in a new story that will conclude in under an hour than you can in the longer-range story unfolding on our screen.

See also: Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer ... Prodigal Son 1.2: Dreams or Memories? ... Prodigal Son 1.3: LSD and Chloroform ... Prodigal Son 1.4: Ainsley

 

Prodigal Son 1.4: Ainsley

The big step forward in Prodigal Son 1.4 is Ainsley coming to see her serial killer father at the very end of the episode.  He was certainly very happy about that, favoring her and us the audience with one of those Michael Sheen smiles.  As for Ainsley...

Well, we really don't know much about her.  She's played by Halston Sage, who did such a good job on The Orville.  So that in itself makes her character Ainsley ipso facto appealing.  In fact, that's one of the calling cards of Prodigal Son, with Sheen and Sage joining with Tom Payne and Lou Diamond Phillips to make one four-of-a-kind powerhouse of a leading cast.

But what's Ainsley's story?  Unlike Malcolm, she was apparently untouched by her father's psycho killings and her mother's acquiescence, which we also received confirmation of, tonight.  If it's indeed the case that Ainsley was shielded from what her parents were doing, that gives her a unique advantage in this narrative, a blank-slate counterpoint to Malcolm and everything he remembers, almost remembers, and one way or another knows.

But I have a feeling Ainsley knows more than that.  Her father's smile, I think, was more than just the smile of a father who is psycho glad to finally see his daughter again.  The bad good doctor likely knows something about Ainsley, someone we in the audience don't yet know, that is vitally important to his and this story.

Prodigal Son is already showing itself to be a complex drama with a lot more people in motion than just the son.

See also: Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer ... Prodigal Son 1.2: Dreams or Memories? ... Prodigal Son 1.3: LSD and Chloroform

 

Prodigal Son 1.3: LSD and Chloroform

Well, the two biggest stars of Prodigal Son 1.3 - the two biggest factors in moving along the story - were LSD and chloroform.   That is, two very different kinds of drugs.

LSD is responsible for the murders that Malcolm and the team investigate.  The psychedelic drug magnifies fear, among other things, which proves to be the source or at least the accelerant of the killings.  Let me say here that I'm liking almost everyone in the team - not only Gil and Dani, but even the skeptical J. T., who had a good conversation with Malcolm in this episode.  The only member of the team I don't like is Dr. Tanaka.  It's not the fault of the actress, Keiko Agena.  It's the fault of writers and the producers, who keep giving her needlessly stupid lines, attempting to be funny, and therein annoying. Actually, I'd guess that's ultimately the fault of the network people, who think a narrative this serious and sometimes horrifying needs to be leavened with some lame comedy.  My unasked-for advice: keep the character and throw out the "comedy".

Chloroform, the anesthetic, provides the big punch in the underlying continuing story of this series thus far.  I said last week that I suspected Malcolm's mother of maybe being the real killer.  Episode 1.3 pretty much rules that out.  But under self-administered chloroform, Malcolm remembers - likely not dreams - that his mother had something more to do with his father's killings than just abhorring them.   We earlier get a strong scene of Jessica talking to her husband Martin in prison.   She was clearly unnerved, to say the least, by what she discovered her husband was doing.  The question is: when?   Malcolm's chloroformed memory suggests that his mother knew something, knew a lot, long before she turned her husband in to the police.

I'm glad I'm caught up now with this series.  I'll be reviewing it now on a much more regular basis.

See also: Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer ... Prodigal Son 1.2: Dreams or Memories?

 

Prodigal Son 1.2: Dreams or Memories?

Been a busy two weeks - listening to final mixes of my new album - so I'm just getting around to watching and reviewing the second episodes of some of the promising new series that debuted last month.

Prodigal Son is one such series, and its second episode was even better than the first.  The continuing background story deals with a question all of us have encountered: is it a memory of something that really happened, or a dream?  I first dealt with this question years ago, when I received a phone call in the middle of the night, fell back asleep, and wasn't sure the next morning if I had dreamt that call or it was real.  I realized that, as the day went on, my memory got even more clear.  That meant, I thought, that I had really received the call.  And, when I spoke with the person who had called me, I confirmed that  I had.  In contrast, I noticed that my recollection of dreams got more fuzzy as the day went on.   So, I had come up with a way to distinguish between the two: memories stay clear or get clearer, dreams fade away (though you might have a memory of the dream, which stays clear).

Malcolm, of course, doesn't have such a method.  His serial-killer father says Malcolm just dreamed about the girl in the box.  We the audience have seen that the father is lying.  But Malcolm doesn't yet know that.   Why would the father lie about that particular murder?  I'm thinking to protect his wife - Malcolm's mother - who was the one who killed the girl in the box, and maybe did some of the other murders.  We'll have to see about that.

Meanwhile, the crime Malcolm cracks in the second episode is a good one, involving snakes and atropine among other things.  I really like this series, and I'll be back soon with reviews of third and ensuing episodes.

See also: Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer

 

Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer

Continuing my sampling of new shows on traditional network TV, my wife and I tried Prodigal Son, which debuted on Fox earlier this week.  We're going to keep watching it.

It continues a now well-established tradition on network television: the serial killer, and the hunt for (usually) him, well represented by everything from The Following to Criminal Minds in recent years. Prodigal Son offers a new twist: the father (Dr. Whitly) is the serial killer, and his son Malcolm is with the police (first the FBI, now NYPD) hunting them down.  Malcolm good at it because he may have inherited some serial killer tendencies himself.  Or, at least, he understands them not only from knowing his father all too well, but because he feels them from the inside out, i.e., in himself.

The cast is outstanding.  Malcolm is played Tom Payne (no relation to the patriot, and spelled differently, anyway), who played no less than "Jesus" (or, to be clear, someone by that nickname) on The Walking Dead.  His father is played by Master and Johnson's Michael Sheen.  And just for good measure, Malcolm's sister Ainsley, a broadcast reporter, is played by Halston Sage, who was great on The Orville (and now we know why she suddenly left that show).  And, hey, Lou Diamond Phillips (last seen by me in Longmire, a great series) is Malcolm's superior, and goes back a ways with both Malcolm and his killer dad.

The first episode was fast, suitably complex, and surprising at times - like when Malcolm chops off a guy's hand to keep him from getting blown up by a bomb he's strapped to.  The family dynamics are effective - Malcolm doesn't want to even see his father, but he's drawn into seeking whatever guidance on serial killers he can get from him (my wife said this reminded her of the Silence of Lambs motif).  More than enough to keep anyone with a pulse's interest.

I'll be back with another review soon.