To assert that we are living in an era of great television is an understatement. Not since the last ‘Golden Age of Television‘ in the early 2000s has there been such an abundance of wealth on our viewing screens.
From science fiction epics like “The Expanse” to true-crime dramas such as “True Detective” to documentaries galore running on streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu, the American viewer has never had such an array of diverse and high-quality choices in televised entertainment. It’s a feast for the eyes that the makers of these programs perhaps dreamed of when they were in high school in the early 1980s and cable television was in its infancy. Certainly, no prior generation could have imagined it.
However, like everything else in America these days, the offerings on TV are heavily impacted by our relentless and intensifying cultural warfare.
While the political right maintains an impressive and indeed rather frightening media ecosystem of cable television networks, conservative magazines and newspapers, talk radio empires and a rapidly proliferating universe of right-wing news websites, one of the depressing features of our present predicament is the fact that popular entertainment remains largely in the hands of the self-identifying ‘cultural left-wing‘.
THE LEFT’S LOCK ON POPULAR CULTURE, UNDER STRAIN
You’re not going to see too many contemporary Westerns on prestige television. ‘Deadwood’ was the last major Western to debut on cable TV, and it was a darkly nihilistic take on the Old West very much at odds with the positive image of brave sheriffs and heroic pioneer families held dear by American conservatives (and many Americans in general).
You’ll find a Catholic news network, but no one is pumping out movies-of-the-week depicting the lives of saints. Traditional religious attitudes and practices appear in some programs, but these are more the exception than the rule (a recent noteworthy exception was ‘Midnight Mass‘, which doubled as a very bloody horror tale).
Instead – judging by what I see on the streaming networks to which our family subscribes and the programs my adolescent children watch – the run of programming largely reflects the increasingly diverse and socially liberal norms of the coasts. An increasing number of programs feature major plots or sub-plots focused on ‘social justice’ themes, and LGBTQ+ characters and sub-plots have become quite common.
These trends are by no means entirely bad. We have become a more racially diverse and socially variegated society over the past 50 years and, in fact, we have always been a more varied society than what was reflected in cinematic entertainment. If contemporary television did not reflect that reality, it would be doing us a disservice. Programming as near-monolithically white and conservative as it was in the 1970s would be both out of touch and an inaccurate depiction of ‘reality on the ground’ for much of the country.
Nevertheless, the socially and ideologically progressive bent of the bulk of cable TV (and, it must be said, network TV) programming comes with two major downsides. First, programs’ liberal biases tend to alienate large segments of the viewing public. Evangelical Christians, Mormons, traditional Roman Catholics, orthodox Jews, and politically conservative members of racial minorities find much of this content off-putting.
We’re talking about roughly 40% of the country here. And a much higher percentage than that are not buying into the whole kit and kaboodle of contemporary progressive attitudes. Note: see Nov. 2021 elections.
The cable networks and streaming services have proved that their business models work. Internet cables are overflowing with content. More original programming is being produced than at any time in history and there is clearly a huge appetite for television. But this phenomenon is also part of what’s driving Americans apart. Liberals drink the Kool Aid of undiluted progressive ideas and narratives, while conservatives watch to be entertained, but are disgusted and put off by much of what they see.
STUCK IN ONE PERSPECTIVE
The second major downside is integrally related to the first. By placing an emphasis on secular, left-leaning narratives, cable television’s content, while providing a variety of perspectives from the viewpoint of race, gender and sexuality, nonetheless delivers a fairly limited philosophical viewpoint. The history of the world prior to the mid-19th century, and it might be argued, the late 20th century, is left either deliberately vague or is there to be critiqued. What, if anything, should be venerated in the past is unclear.
Furthermore, while prestige television producers devote plenty of viewing space to science fiction on the one hand and magic and the occult on the other, precious little time is allocated to the religious beliefs and practices observed by millions of Jews, Christians and, it must also be said, Muslims, who now outnumber Jews in the United States by nearly 2-to-1.
It’s in bridging this philosophical divide while, at the same time, delivering smart, funny and jolting entertainment that ‘Evil’ and its writers set themselves apart.
SHINING A LIGHT ON THE DIABOLICAL
Created by the famed husband-and-wife writing team of Robert and Michelle King, the respected show-runners of ‘The Good Wife’, its spin-off ‘The Good Fight’ and ‘In Justice’, the central concept of ‘Evil’ is to posed to viewers by way of its characters via the implied question: “What is the nature of evil?” and to suggest some answers.
Neither the question nor the possible answers are treated abstractly. Rather, evil is portrayed as a real force operating actively throughout society with the aim of causing chaos, suffering and iniquity.
In many episodes, evil manifests itself through mundane human motivations with no link to the supernatural. Emotions such as envy, pride, greed and revenge play a prominent role across multiple storylines with their effects minutely observed and dissected.
At other times, evil is supernatural in origin, emanating from a vast, unseen domain outside normal human perceptions, but acting through and upon individuals with devastating impact. In engaging the supernatural both as a concept and as a reality, ‘Evil’s’ writers and performers treat the weird as seriously as they do the mundane.
The premise of the show is simple. A skeptical forensic psychologist is hired by the Catholic archdiocese of New York to join a team of ‘assessors’ tasked with determining whether certain troubling phenomena are natural or supernatural in origin. Her assessment team includes an expert in digital technology and chemistry who was raised Muslim, but is an atheist, and a committed Catholic seminarian.
The first season of ‘Evil’ is mostly episodic in format. In each episode, Dr. Kristin Bouchard, the protagonist, and her colleagues are sent to investigate some strange phenomena or person.
DIVING INTO THE ANOMALOUS
In roughly half of the storylines, the evil or strangeness is found to have a natural origin. A young woman presumed to have been raised from the dead six hours after her supposed brain death is found to have been in a deep coma brought on by a rare medical condition. A murderer claiming to be possessed by demons turns out, in actuality, to be garden-variety sociopath faking possession to get a reduced jail sentence.
In other episodes, the source of evil or weird phenomena is harder to pin down, but there is a clear suggestion of malign, supernatural forces at work. A construction worker has visions of what he believes to be the Archangel Michael, but the entity may actually be demonic in origin. In another episode, a weirdly masked girl at a children’s Halloween party convinces the other children to explore a dangerous, partially caved-in crawlspace, with unsettling results. Her identity is never revealed.
“Evil’s” show-runners are at home with the ambiguous, the anomalous and the partially explained. The narrative seems to argue that both natural and supernatural evil are real, but prone to disguising themselves behind masks and illusions to better achieve their aims.
You’re not likely to bump into the Devil walking through Park Slope, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t lurking around the corner. It’s okay if you don’t believe in angels and demons, but don’t imagine that their existence or non-existence is contingent upon your belief in them. If they do, in fact, exist, then they do so well outside of your ability to process their reality.
A DISTILLATION OF DARKNESS
One diabolical force in ‘Evil’ is very clearly defined: the show’s principal antagonist, Dr. Leland Townsend, an insurance adjustor turned fraudulent psychiatrist (his credentials are fake) who is obsessed with influencing others to commit evil acts.
If the show-runners of ‘Game of Thrones’ gave the world Ramsay Bolton, a character aptly described by droves of film fans as ‘the most despicable and depraved villain ever to appear on screen’, then Robert and Michelle King appear bent on giving that distinction a run for its money with the character of Leland Townsend, as played by Michael Emerson.
In season one of ‘Evil’, Leland provided false testimony in criminal court, helped a serial killer get released from prison, influenced a group of ‘incels’ to become self-trained assassins and wormed his way into Kristin Bouchard’s family by dating her mother. By the end of season two, Leland had engineered the murder of several tourists to drain them of their blood, decapitated and ate his demon psychotherapist, faked his way through an exorcism, and engaged in acts of ritual cannibalism.
With these preliminaries out of the way, I must confess that I await Season Three of ‘Evil’ with a certain mixture of anticipation and dread. Can the character of Leland Townsend get even worse? You bet he can!
As stomach churning as Leland’s antics frequently are, one of ‘Evil’s’ principal pleasures – and the show has many, which I will enumerate in a moment – is the way in which it portrays some of the worst acts of evil precisely as antics. Which is to say, horrible acts are frequently depicted as the frustrated actings-out of emotionally stunted adults stuck in permanent adolescence. Transgression is childish. It’s even absurd.
Which is not to let villains off the hook. Far from it. But to condemn them doesn’t preclude the show’s writers from revealing the foibles of the wicked in much the same way as the foibles of the good. If wickedness be unmasked as the lowest form of comedy, does it not lose some of its glamour?
THE ANTICS OF THE DEVIL
The insight that associates the diabolical with the clownish goes back to the early Middle Ages. Works on the occult and demonology written between the 7th and 15th centuries frequently began by addressing readers with a formulation that might be paraphrased as “the purpose of this work is to inform you of the antics of the Devil“.
The folk culture of medieval Christianity regarded Satan partly as the source of all bad actions, and partly as a figure of fun. The Devil was a supernatural buffoon who could occasionally be bested by clever human beings and would ultimately be defeated by God at the end of History, his power revealed to be a sham. The Devil’s greatest power was the ability to deceive. The evils he worked revealed a childish and a petulant mind.
This high medieval spirit is very much alive in “Evil”.
Throughout Season 1, Kristin Bouchard is terrorized at night by a grotesque, horned demon named George who creeps into her bedroom – and her bed – like a serial sex offender, babbling suggestively and promising to inflict all sorts of horrors on her. Convinced George is a figment of her imagination, Kristin asks her therapist to instruct her in the practice of lucid dreaming so that she can break George’s power by ‘taking control’ of her dreams. In the season finale, she turns the tables on George and stabs him. He vanishes.
George is pretty darn scary, and the directors of ‘Evil’ use every horror movie trick in the book in terms of mood lighting, creepy shadows, and changes in focus to bring out George’s intimidating qualities. George is as funny as he is scary, though. He has great one-liners and a surprisingly post-modern sense of humor. But his power turns out to be an illusion. Anyone wise to George’s tricks and capable of self-command will know him for a buffoon.
There are many other touches of medieval earthiness in ‘Evil’. Leland’s aforementioned demon therapist is an actual flesh-and-blood devil in one of the show’s more daring touches of weirdness. The anomaly works precisely because it is an anomaly. The demon therapist character appears briefly with a blast of shock value and humor and is whisked out of the narrative just as quickly. Exasperated with his therapist’s demands, Leland chops of the demon’s head and cooks him. ‘Tastes a bit like goat,’ remarks a dinner guest at Leland’s apartment, blissfully unaware of the dish’s origin.
In another story arc involving Kristin’s daughter, Lexis, who was conceived at a shady fertility clinic, Kristin becomes concerned that Lexis is developing a body-image problem after she obsessively watches the YouTube videos of a ‘style influencer’ who targets teen girls. However, Lexis’ body-image concerns revolve around a tail which she had sprouted from the small of her back, and which only she and viewers can see, the tail being invisible to the show’s other characters.
It is a testament to the genius of Robert and Michelle King that they’ve manage to infuse the show’s scripts with the sensibility of a medieval mystery play while combining that perspective with the defiantly worldly social consciousness of the “The Good Wife”.
It’s a combination that you wouldn’t think would work, and yet it does, often brilliantly. ‘Evil’ succeeds by walking that narrowest of all possible lines, both dramatically and philosophically, that separates the cultural sensibilities of blue and red America.
RESPECT FOR OPPOSING SENSIBILITIES
‘Evil’ stands out by offering respect for elements of both the conservative and the progressive perspectives on reality. God and the Devil exist, but so does racism and exploitation of the poor. Large corporations can symbolically turn workers into zombies through overwork and harsh working conditions. But finding solutions in the occult can prove hazardous.
The Catholic Church has been rocked by many real scandals. But it is also a living spiritual tradition that can boast many dedicated religious orders who live with integrity. Turning the other cheek can be nearly impossible, but is essential for personal salvation. Passivity in the face of violent aggression is not an option.
The vast majority of corrupt and narcissistic individuals are in all likelihood driven by natural, rather than supernatural, motivations. But it’s not impossible that a tiny minority of them are literally in league with Satan or other sinister forces with supernatural origins. Reality exists in the space between contradictions.
I could go on, but you get the gist. No matter where your politics or cultural sensibilities lie, you’ll find respect for at least some of them in this horror TV show that is as smart as it is entertaining.
Look for ‘Evil’ on Paramount+ streaming service.
Season Three should be out in late 2022. I can’t wait.
Greymantle
