TV Review - Evil (2019)

I love Robert King and Michelle King. The husband-and-wife duo created The Good Wife (2009), which to me still stands as one of the best TV dramas of the past 20 years. The spin-off to that 2009 show, The Good Fight is also really good, even though the last season didn't wow me as it did in its initial seasons. I was really excited to see this series, which they've also created, but I have to admit that this show is just silly. It feels like BrainDead (2016), which is the show that the Kings made that incorporated science-fiction elements. It didn't quite work because I felt like it added a metaphor on top of a show that didn't need it. It was great that the duo brought genre elements to CBS prime-time. Unfortunately, genre is clearly not their forte. They're good at legal and political drama that adding the layer of sci-fi is not like icing on a cake. It became like adding dirt on a cake. This series doesn't add sci-fi, as much as it adds fantasy elements, specifically the existence of demons. Otherwise, it would be a legal drama, but the fantasy stuff feels like metaphor or a layer that subtracts from the experience rather than enriching it.

Katja Herbers (Westworld and Divorce) stars as Kristen Bouchard, a forensic psychologist who typically helps prosecutors with their criminal cases. She's married. Her husband is currently out of the country. She has four daughters. She used to be a mountain climber and she's a former Catholic. Her mom who occasionally babysits seems like she's former Catholic too. Kristen's mom wears leather and goes out late. After losing her job with the prosecutor's office, Kristen is approached for another gig.

Mike Colter (The Good Wife and Luke Cage) also stars as David Acosta, a man who works for the Catholic Church. He's studying or is in training to become a priest. His current job is an assessor for exorcisms. He basically investigates cases to find evidence of demonic possessions or ghosts of some sort. He's also on the hunt for miracles. His motives for doing so might have to do with lost loved ones, which the show hasn't explained yet.

David crosses paths with Kristen as both work a murder case. David believes that the murderer is possessed by a demon. Kristen doubts it and thinks the murderer is simply insane or faking demonic possession. He offers her a job and she accepts. From that point forward, they approach each case from two opposing perspectives. He's a believer in the supernatural and she's a skeptic. This approach was the same as the hit series The X-Files (1993). Like that 1993 classic, it comes down to how interesting the week-to-week cases are and if it can weave together an interesting mythology to bind it all together. So far, the week-to-week cases aren't all that compelling. The mythology could be compelling, as it involves Kristen being haunted by two demons, one that invades her dreams and one that invades her waking life.

Michael Emerson (Person of Interest and Lost) co-stars as Leland Townsend, another forensic psychologist who has a history with David. He seems very antagonistic, purposefully annoying, trying to undermine and possibly even scare Kristen. David refers to Leland as a demon. Whether he means that Leland is an actual creature from Hell or if he's just a regular person who does malevolent or wicked things, it isn't clear, but Leland lives to torment David and now Kristen at every opportunity he gets. He does something in the first episode that should get him put in jail, but the show brushes past it. It also doesn't make sense why Kristen wouldn't get a restraining order against him, but otherwise his role here feels really contrived.

Leland would be the aforementioned demon that haunts Kristen in her waking life. There is another demon though that haunts her in her literal dreams. Yes, Kristen has literal nightmares where she is visited and tortured by a literal creature from Hell, which calls itself George, played by Euan Morton. Yet, George comes across as more mischievous. Yes, George physically threatens her with sharp objects and even threatens by putting a knife to her daughter's throat, but George isn't like Freddy Krueger in that it's real and has the power to actually harm her. As such, the Kings are content with having George be silly and do things like piss in a corner and spitting sadistic banter.

George's first appearance is creepy and a little terrifying, but, quickly he becomes a source of comedy. The Kings might want him to be a darkly humorous presence for now. They might want to build a false sense of security that George is just a figment of Kristen's imagination, until they make him capable of doing actual physical harm or just mental harm. There might be a twist or some kind of switcheroo where all of sudden we learn that George is real. So far though, the cases investigated have turned out to be mostly explained through science and not religion.

Going back to the week-to-week cases, I hope the Kings take any and every opportunity to challenge the church and its positions on things. There is a great scene in the second episode where Kristen and David have a really good conversation about prayer and miracles. Kristen says that miracles are God picking winners and losers. She says that it's not that miracles happen. It's that they don't happen for certain people. The question is why don't all people who pray get miracles. Why do some people get them and some don't? She applies logic to David and he can't defend it.

I would hope in future episodes, we see Kristen challenge David on gay marriage or the pedophile priest scandal. Yes, in the third episode, Kristen asks David about those things, but they don't delve into it. It's not as if this series is going to become like Spotlight (2015) and they're going to start weeding out crimes of the church. It's also not as if this series is going to do anything to address the homeless LGBTQ youth who often are kicked out due to religious teachings. I would hope that they have a conversation about abortion and if David thinks women who have abortions are going to Hell. What would his stances be as a priest if this issue came up? I hope the show doesn't shy away from those important questions. It just seems though that the series is more concerned with creeping the audience with supernatural scares rather than just exposing the real ones. One thing is for sure the Kings like opening title sequences where objects explode.

Rated TV-14-DLSV.
Running Time: 1 hr.
Thursdays at 10PM on CBS.