“Live” – aired on June 24, 2018
Written by: Michael J. Ballin & Thomas Aguilar
Directed by: Edward Ornelas
Grade: 1,5 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
Boy, did Instinct dip into the grab bag of mediocrity for this particular outing, or what? (Hint: the correct answer is not “or what.”)
After the episode opens with the discovery of a dead woman named Charlotte in a cinema seat, we move on to a pretty entertaining scene in which Lizzie meets with Dylan and Julian at a bar. The twist is that she did not let them know that she had invited both, so the two men are bewildered to see each other when they arrive. Lizzie’s intention is to put “everything out in the open.” She wants Dylan to know that she already met Julian, that she knows Julian is his super-secret-spy friend, and makes sure that Julian knows that Dylan knows that she knows. Get it? “No lies between us,” she insists. She also pulls the episode’s best line when Dylan wants to know who came to who first: “‘Who came to who first’? What are you, 12?” (Insert fist-pump gif on behalf of Lizzie).
Once that scene is over, “Live” goes downhill fast, in a series of rushed, contrived, and disjointed events that mark a low point in the series, probably the lowest since “Secrets and Lies,” on the heels of an otherwise-solid run of episodes as of late (except “Bye Bye Birdie”). It almost feels as if the showrunners received the news that Instinct was renewed for a second season right before the filming of this penultimate episode and changed the menu at the last minute by slapping together a hodgepodge of events that move at warp-speed nine without much build-up via coincidences that defy plausibility, including “the kiss” at the end (more on that later).
Both having left the bar, Dylan and Lizzie arrive to the theater to check out the crime scene where several officers and forensics had already begun investigating. They are taking pictures and looking for clues. Yet, somehow, they all missed the trail of blood that Lizzie discovers in the walkway by the corpse. The writing is not stellar here, unless we are to believe that the most incompetent crime-scene officers on earth work for the NYPD, except for Lizzie who immediately informs them of her discovery: “There is a trail of blood coming from the exit. She wasn’t murdered in here.”
Lo and behold – more uses of “lo and behold” to follow – the projector starts running again and the screen shows the actual murder. As Dylan watches it, he does not neglect to describe to Lizzie (and to us) the intentions of the murderer in making them watch the gruesome act. Reminiscent of the opening scene of “Pilot,” there is a fatuous dark-red-blue-ish tone to the smoky murder sequence which aims to function, I reckon, as a visual storytelling vehicle to complement the gloomy nature of the act. Instead, it is so overloaded with distorted colors that it only serves to drown the intended tension.
Next, Dylan and Andy are at home getting ready to welcome Maddie (Onata Statler-Aprile), the 12-year-old daughter of a friend of Andy. She asked him to take care of Maddie while she goes on a cruise for some “me” time. Andy, the magnanimous friend that he is, did not refuse the single mom’s request. If you remember, the last episode ended with Dylan and Andy deciding to have a kid. Lo and behold – I warned you to prepare for lo-and-behold mentions –, “Live” conveniently paves the way for their parenting skills to get tested immediately when Maddie gets suspended from school after getting caught (allegedly) bullying another kid online.
This forced B storyline falls flat for the most part due to mediocre dialogues and a subpar performance by Statler-Aprile who previously shined in What Maisie Knew (2012). Maddie tells Lizzie at the precinct (yes, Dylan brought her there, long story – or no story) that she is innocent. Yet, she will not snitch on Mia, the girl that she believes to be the miscreant. She fears that Mia will make her life miserable. Furthermore, she actually likes the boy she has allegedly bullied, but her friend Zoey, you see, told her that she would receive a bad rating on “ChitterPix” if she liked “just one guy.” Thus, if she “flirts around,” she will get “more guys” to like her (or something), because this is how that online domain apparently rolls.
This teenage-problem-explanation scene lasts gratuitously long and it is hard to get invested in Maddie’s flow of superfluous information delivered in a lusterless tone (token appearance of a tear does not help). A film/TV expert could probably come up with dozens of much more poignant scenes (or dialogues) than this one when it comes to online bullying or teenagers’ obsession with social popularity. This particular B story gives the impression of being tossed into the hour, just so that Maddie can be used as a plot device for Dylan’s blue-hued-epiphany moment, thus killing two birds with one stone, simultaneously solving the case and overcoming the problems that Dylan and Andy are experiencing in their effort to connect with a teenager.
The A story features a draconian professor, a teaching assistant with an inferiority complex, and bunch of students whose fervor to please their professor supersedes all else. It’s essentially the classroom version of a cult to which Charlotte had belonged. This set-up helps to reduce the list of possible suspects to Mosher and his students. In the cliché of all clichés, he also happens to be sleeping with his students. We know this, because Lizzie and Dylan conveniently walk over to his desk and check out his computer while he stands there**. Lo and behold (again), they discover the clip of him having sex with Charlotte. His explanation is laughable: Charlotte made a “film about “subverting the male gaze.” Oh-kay.
**As a professor, I can guarantee you that nobody gets to look at my computer without my consent, unless they have a warrant.
Other than Mosher, a student named Henry (Andrew Burnap) becomes a possible suspect when he is caught by Dylan and Lizzie during his re-enacting (with a female student) of the exact same scene as the one in which Charlotte was killed. Yes, it also includes the smoky look and the distorted colors. Dylan says to him, “Some of your colleagues suggested that the film in which Charlotte was killed was very similar to your own work.” Excuse me Dylan? Did you not just witness Henry’s work, seconds ago? Was that also not you watching Charlotte’s murder in the beginning of the episode? The two are virtually the same. Hello?
That scene ends with a sequence that reeks of daytime soap-opera drama. Henry looks nervously at Dylan who throws him back an accusatory stare and we fade to a commercial break. How did Dylan and Lizzie catch him in the act by the way? They were walking through the campus after their talk with Mosher – I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say, toward Henry’s dorm – and, lo and behold, loud screams from the building right next to where they happen to be walking fill the air. Just like that, they run inside the building and bust the very Henry whose name, lo and behold, came up for the first time during their interrogation of Mosher moments earlier.
He is brought to the precinct and questioned in an interrogation room with a wall décor that would make the owners of plush homes in Potomac Manors, MD, envious with rage. Burnap’s performance as Henry leaves a lot to be desired as he keeps switching from looking guilty one minute to secretive the next, but failing to convey either effect. Reg Rogers, playing Professor Mosher, is the only guest star of this episode who adequately fills the screen, which is a shame because Instinct has, until now, benefited from worthy guest-star performances.
Spencer (David Corenswet), to whom the arrogant Mosher refers as his “talentless” T.A., turns out to be the killer. We know this before the climactic scene because Spencer, in one of the most vacuous moves of all times by an evildoer, recites to the camera the very quotes that Mosher used to humiliate him in class, while the whole precinct is watching the broadcast of him getting ready to end Henry’s life. How did this dude become a T.A. with an I.Q. like that? Or, did I simply miss the part where he revealed his plans to spend a substantial portion of his life in jail?
Speaking of the climactic scene, in which the screen is engulfed once again in the dark-red-blue-ish smoky tone, Lizzie and Dylan stop Spencer from killing Henry just in the nick of time. Dylan distracts Spencer with his psyche-chatter (haven’t we seen this before?) while Lizzie approaches and tackles him down.
The last bit of the outing begins with a sweet conversation between Dylan and Andy. As I begin to think – and hope – that the episode has reached its end, the image on my screen switches to Julian surprising Lizzie by the river as she finishes her exercise routine. Following an extremely mundane dialogue that contains no more than three or four sentences each, they begin to passionately kiss each other. Huh? I guess I should not be surprised that, in an episode during which writers apparently decided to toss aside their prudence, they would also dismiss their common sense. Julian and Lizzie have literally seen each other four times so far (three of them, under not-so-pleasant circumstances), each meeting lasting no more than a minute or two. Yet, they become a romantic unit in the blink of an eye with zero build-up.
Look, I have no problem with the two of them hooking up. I like both Bojana Novakovic as Lizzie and Naveen Adrews as Julian. I do, however, regret ham-fisted narratives that don’t do such characters (and actors) justice, especially when those narratives border on implausibility in the name of artificially accelerating plot-advancement and at the expense of interpersonal dynamics. Even Inara George’s wonderful song “Stars” playing in the background cannot sweep under the rug the far-fetched nature of this wait-what moment. With two talented actors like Novakovic and Andrews, a fleshed-out build-up to the two of them finally plunging into romance could have generated a much more electrifying first-kiss moment by the river. Instead, we experienced a reverse-engineered ploy at the eleventh-hour without having had any time to invest ourselves in the relationship. What is next? One will cheat on the other and they will break up within the first 10 minutes of the next episode? Note: that was a rhetorical question.
I am hoping for a more arrayed finale to close out season 1.
Last-minute thoughts:
– Zack has lately been reduced to the role of a line filler. I wonder if he will stick around for season 2.
– The theater where Charlotte’s body is found by Travis looks like an artifact from the 1920s. Nice touch.
– Travis is played by Danny Flaherty who also played the recurring role of Matthew Beaman, son of Stan the FBI guy in The Americans.
Until next episode…