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The Alienist episodes 1-4
I've already watched the whole first season (and really liked it!) but ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija and scioscribe are watching it now, so I'll pace these posts to their watching so they can participate in the discussion. No spoilers beyond the discussed episodes, please!
So basically this is a moody, atmospheric psychological thriller set in late 1800s New York. A serial killer is leaving mutilated corpses of young male prostitutes, and between the nature of the victims and institutional corruption in the city, the police are doing nothing. So a group of outsiders set out to conduct their own investigation and find the killer themselves.
The murder plot is probably the part that I'm least interested in; I'm mostly here for fascinating character dynamics (which really reward rewatching, btw), the gorgeous and seedy recreation of Gilded Age New York, and the show's nuanced portrayal of various dysfunctional coping mechanisms for disability and trauma. Despite being dark, bloody, and violent, it's overall an optimistic show (at least I'd consider it so) with a lot of empathy for its flawed and complicated characters.
There is a really great twist in episode 4 that's worth being unspoiled for if you enjoy watching unspoiled, because it was such an "Oh!" moment and beautifully recontextualized all of a particular character's scenes that came earlier, as well as being a masterclass in misdirection and putting something in front of the viewer in a non-obvious way. This twist is discussed beneath the cut, along with various other spoilers from the first four episodes.
And yes, I started watching it because of Daniel Brühl (the actor who played Zemo), whose puppy eyes and prickly/empathic character in this show are worth the price of admission alone. Other enticements: a female character who is basically 1800s Peggy Carter, crimefighter Teddy Roosevelt, and a plausibly diverse 19th-century New York, as well as some very catnippy and painfully twisty character dynamics.
I do have a couple of content warnings if you want to watch: The entire plot deals with the murders of cross-dressing child prostitutes, so there is a ton of content dealing with that - though much more sympathetic to the victims than I was expecting going in - and there is also a (non-graphic) male-on-male gang rape that is passed off as a joke by the show. It was an ugly misstep in a show that is otherwise, on the whole, more conscientious than usual for the genre about having sympathy for its characters. EDIT: Also I was reminded in comments that this show has graphic animal harm, including discussion of killing cats/dogs for fun and animals being killed onscreen.
I should probably start out by introducing the cast. Our main set of investigators are prickly, acerbic proto-child-psychologist Laszlo Kreizler (endlessly gentle and sympathetic with his child clients, a complete asshole to adults); his easygoing college BFF John Moore, an artist and newspaper illustrator; Sara Howard, the first woman on the New York police force, ignored and disrespected by her colleagues; Jewish proto-forensics specialists Marcus and Lucius Isaacson; and a varied cast of their relatives, enemies, servants, and love interests. The main five are assembled by Roosevelt, at this point a police commissioner, to investigate the murders off-books, driven mainly by Laszlo's urge to get justice for the murdered kids and protect the other children of the city.
The characters, especially the main three (John, Sara, and Laszlo) are a wonderful jagged-edged mess of traumatized people with unhealthy coping mechanisms. John's fiancee left him for another man, and he now hires prostitutes to talk about cuckolding him while fucking him. Sara is not merely dealing with childhood trauma but also ongoing trauma from being abused by her male co-workers. Laszlo is obviously dealing with some source of trauma that causes him to hold people at bay with vicious verbal abuse, and the source of this (more or less) is the thing that comes out in the fourth episode: he's disabled. One of his arms doesn't work. This is the thing that the show does a masterful job of hiding, because it's not actually hidden - after the reveal, the show deals with it no differently than before - it's just that Laszlo works around it so gracefully that you usually don't notice, which in my experience is perfectly consistent with how people with that sort of disability deal with it. There are circumstances where I don't think "sudden surprise disability reveal" would work and in fact could be quite offputting, but in this case it's perfectly in keeping with the worldbuilding that the characters either ignore it or don't notice it until Sara has a visible "bzuh?" moment when Roosevelt brings it up. This was also the point when both Rachel and I tumbled to it and then had to go back and rewatch all his scenes. Laszlo is a very well-put-together, cultured, genteel mess, but it's not clear exactly why, until the arm thing comes out and all of a sudden the exact triggers that set off some of his earlier behavior are much more comprehensible.
There's a ton of plot crammed into the show's 10-episode first season. Without going into a full summary, I'm finding that rewatching is incredibly helpful for catching plot stuff I missed the first time around, as well as a lot of nuances of character interaction that I completely missed or misinterpreted the first time.
Talk about your favorite parts in the comments! Come talk to me about Daniel Brühl's marvelous puppy eyes and Sara's on-point 1890s wardrobe. Or any other thing you want to mention!
But no spoilers beyond ep. 4, please. I'll screen any comment that reveals anything, because I don't want to spoil my co-watchers. I'll have a wrap-up post at the end of the season to talk about the season and character arcs overall.
rachelmanija and scioscribe are watching it now, so I'll pace these posts to their watching so they can participate in the discussion. No spoilers beyond the discussed episodes, please!So basically this is a moody, atmospheric psychological thriller set in late 1800s New York. A serial killer is leaving mutilated corpses of young male prostitutes, and between the nature of the victims and institutional corruption in the city, the police are doing nothing. So a group of outsiders set out to conduct their own investigation and find the killer themselves.
The murder plot is probably the part that I'm least interested in; I'm mostly here for fascinating character dynamics (which really reward rewatching, btw), the gorgeous and seedy recreation of Gilded Age New York, and the show's nuanced portrayal of various dysfunctional coping mechanisms for disability and trauma. Despite being dark, bloody, and violent, it's overall an optimistic show (at least I'd consider it so) with a lot of empathy for its flawed and complicated characters.
There is a really great twist in episode 4 that's worth being unspoiled for if you enjoy watching unspoiled, because it was such an "Oh!" moment and beautifully recontextualized all of a particular character's scenes that came earlier, as well as being a masterclass in misdirection and putting something in front of the viewer in a non-obvious way. This twist is discussed beneath the cut, along with various other spoilers from the first four episodes.
And yes, I started watching it because of Daniel Brühl (the actor who played Zemo), whose puppy eyes and prickly/empathic character in this show are worth the price of admission alone. Other enticements: a female character who is basically 1800s Peggy Carter, crimefighter Teddy Roosevelt, and a plausibly diverse 19th-century New York, as well as some very catnippy and painfully twisty character dynamics.
I do have a couple of content warnings if you want to watch: The entire plot deals with the murders of cross-dressing child prostitutes, so there is a ton of content dealing with that - though much more sympathetic to the victims than I was expecting going in - and there is also a (non-graphic) male-on-male gang rape that is passed off as a joke by the show. It was an ugly misstep in a show that is otherwise, on the whole, more conscientious than usual for the genre about having sympathy for its characters. EDIT: Also I was reminded in comments that this show has graphic animal harm, including discussion of killing cats/dogs for fun and animals being killed onscreen.
I should probably start out by introducing the cast. Our main set of investigators are prickly, acerbic proto-child-psychologist Laszlo Kreizler (endlessly gentle and sympathetic with his child clients, a complete asshole to adults); his easygoing college BFF John Moore, an artist and newspaper illustrator; Sara Howard, the first woman on the New York police force, ignored and disrespected by her colleagues; Jewish proto-forensics specialists Marcus and Lucius Isaacson; and a varied cast of their relatives, enemies, servants, and love interests. The main five are assembled by Roosevelt, at this point a police commissioner, to investigate the murders off-books, driven mainly by Laszlo's urge to get justice for the murdered kids and protect the other children of the city.
The characters, especially the main three (John, Sara, and Laszlo) are a wonderful jagged-edged mess of traumatized people with unhealthy coping mechanisms. John's fiancee left him for another man, and he now hires prostitutes to talk about cuckolding him while fucking him. Sara is not merely dealing with childhood trauma but also ongoing trauma from being abused by her male co-workers. Laszlo is obviously dealing with some source of trauma that causes him to hold people at bay with vicious verbal abuse, and the source of this (more or less) is the thing that comes out in the fourth episode: he's disabled. One of his arms doesn't work. This is the thing that the show does a masterful job of hiding, because it's not actually hidden - after the reveal, the show deals with it no differently than before - it's just that Laszlo works around it so gracefully that you usually don't notice, which in my experience is perfectly consistent with how people with that sort of disability deal with it. There are circumstances where I don't think "sudden surprise disability reveal" would work and in fact could be quite offputting, but in this case it's perfectly in keeping with the worldbuilding that the characters either ignore it or don't notice it until Sara has a visible "bzuh?" moment when Roosevelt brings it up. This was also the point when both Rachel and I tumbled to it and then had to go back and rewatch all his scenes. Laszlo is a very well-put-together, cultured, genteel mess, but it's not clear exactly why, until the arm thing comes out and all of a sudden the exact triggers that set off some of his earlier behavior are much more comprehensible.
There's a ton of plot crammed into the show's 10-episode first season. Without going into a full summary, I'm finding that rewatching is incredibly helpful for catching plot stuff I missed the first time around, as well as a lot of nuances of character interaction that I completely missed or misinterpreted the first time.
Talk about your favorite parts in the comments! Come talk to me about Daniel Brühl's marvelous puppy eyes and Sara's on-point 1890s wardrobe. Or any other thing you want to mention!
But no spoilers beyond ep. 4, please. I'll screen any comment that reveals anything, because I don't want to spoil my co-watchers. I'll have a wrap-up post at the end of the season to talk about the season and character arcs overall.
no subject
(Also I just put up a new post for the next four episodes!)