Lots of Spoilers
I don't know the work of novelist Patricia Cornwell. But she's written something like 29 books about Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner detective. Quincy, but super dark.
Y'all know I love me some Jamie Lee Curtis, and she co-stars and produces, and is the primary reason I tuned in. It didn't hurt that the show features Bobby Cannavale and Ariana DuBose, who I also like a lot. And Nicole Kidman, about whom I am ambivalent, as the eponymous Kay Scarpetta.
I just finished the eighth and final episode of Season 1, and... It was fine?
Here's kind of what I think...
Someone really loves those 29 books. I believe they take place over time with characters aging and growing. And someone came up with the idea that you could combine the action of an early book with a newer book (publishing wise, the first came out in 1990 and the most recent is like 2025). So, we'd get some origin story for Scarpetta and her first case and jump to "where is she now?" We can keep the story of the younger woman and pair it with the current version.
How much of this is based on the books in practice? I don't know. But it has a real feel of fan service for Cornwell fans, which should be in the millions of readers by this point. And I get it. "Her first case is coming back to haunt her" is hardly something new.
They have a whole separate cast for what I'm guessing takes place circa 2002 based on what is happening with computers. And it's refreshing that Kidman is willing to admit she's in her late-50's and lets someone else play a younger version of herself. And it's kind of wild how well the performers seem to echo each other with these characters.
After the jarring first episode where I was like "that's supposed to be young Bobby Cannavale?" (it is, in fact, his son, but is not a Kurt/Wyatt Russell-like-clone) and "oh, we're going to keep doing this?" I got over it and enjoyed the two timelines in concept.
But... it also just doesn't have a lot of exposition to explain what is happening.
Why does the *entire* Commonwealth of Virginia have one medical examiner? And why is it a 35 year old? Especially one who seems like she'd interview a bit like a block of wood? Why is it just her? Where is her staff? Why is it like this? Why not make her the examiner for a small city?
What you will hear is that even if you don't find the mystery/ mysteries compelling is that the character work is great - and that's largely true. The cast is stacked.* Kidman, Curtis, Cannavale, DuBose plus Simon Baker, Tiya Sircar. In the past we get Rosy McEwen as Kay, Jake Cannavale (Bobby's son) playing that analog, and Amanda Righetti - who really tunes into the same energy as JLC.
But in acting as fan-service, it can feel a bit like when I watched that one X-Men movie where they went to Egypt and fought Apocalypse. A lot was happening, and it probably meant something to people who got the references. But piling in and then *front loading* the interpersonal problems of the extended Scarpetta family is a lot. Some (see: me) might say it's too much. Everyone feels like they're competing to be the main character, and the titular main character is maybe the dullest one of the bunch. Maybe have one or two characters with an issue? And build from there?
If there's an ocean roiling inside of Kay Scarpetta, and the show sure tells us there is but not why, she mostly just seems like a dismissive asshole in the scenes played by Kidman. And I feel I have to say - and it pains me as someone who doesn't want to point out anything about someone's appearance - at this point Kidman's extensive botoxing, etc... is not helping matters.
And, look, no one is as much themselves (usually as much bad as good) as they are with family. And that's what the show is showing. But the mysteries each character presents about themselves feel unmoored or like (my favorite phrase offered up by pal Marshall) "novelistic nonsense".
In this case it's the stuff we accept about characters in books that is meant to give them depth, but feels oddly contrived. Lucy's wife died so she's created a perfect 1:1 AI simulacrum of her on her home PC. It's an AI that remembers and feels and has memories of everything from before her death - and it's si-fi novelistic nonsense. Kay's husband - Benton Wesley - has a secret dungeon sad room with a chair in it where he goes to feel sad? And the movie keeps suggesting there's something profoundly wrong with him, but they never say much about what it is - other than maybe he'll go bang his hot. much younger co-worker (that she wants this is never in doubt for some reason).
There's plenty more like that. Pushy secretaries you should just fire. Horny cops. Locking suspects in trailers and until you don't and assuming people won't lawyer up.
I guess... you have 8 episodes - each near 52 minutes or so, and this show felt like it wasn't moving forward, it felt like it was meandering back and forth over the same territory over and over, without a clear idea of what it was looking for or where it was going.
I really, really hated the bit at the end that Lucy is so fraught she decides "I'll join a cult". Like - that had no set-up, no nothing. Especially for a smart, former FBI agent - it just felt like "here's her deal for next season".
I also don't understand why the show felt it necessary to insert a confusing professional situation where Scarpetta takes a job under someone who doesn't like her who also seemingly still wants her job? And is sabotaging her? Like - none of that made any sense and didn't go anywhere, and I assume happened in the books but here it's a massive distraction.
The murder mystery itself is just confusing.
I blame this in part to how much time is spent on the family melodrama and trying to determine what mattered and what didn't (spoiler: it all matters so none of it matters). It also features some dead ends and dog-leg turns to nowhere. In the end, there's literally two clues that matter, and one of them is figured out in five seconds by someone well outside of law enforcement. And the second set of murders just decides to solve itself more or less, which is just some writing, I guess.
This show had the biggest, dumbest red-herring of all time with the falling space lab that felt as out of place as The Great Gazoo showing up on Flintstones. I was so not clear on what year this was supposed to take place that there were labs making synthetic organs in space for profit. Also, I don't know how to explain to the show what happens to space debri on re-entry, but human remains do not come down intact - usually burning up in the atmosphere, let alone if a cylinder collides with the Earth what those G-Forces would be - and what they'd do to the local area. (Hilariously, just next to where Scarpetta lives! Out of all the places it could land on this whole big planet! And she's already looking for the killer of the space murderer's girlfriend? jfc, show.).
You can't just introduce sci-fi bullshit into your show (space labs, fake skin, AI dead people) and it not matter.
For good or ill, I locked David Hornsby at the start said "huh. So, he's a suspect. He's way too big of an actor for this role." and then the show prayed I forgot about him, but I didn't. Just kept wondering "where's Rickety Cricket now?" 20 years of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia will do that.
But that should tell you how good I thought the main characters were in general. Despite the nonsense, I hung in for eight episodes. The characters may have all had too much going on, but I mostly bought it all.
But, man, I hate to bitch, but... I have no idea why the big secret was that Scarpetta killed the OG murderer (did we ever get an identity on that guy? Like... a name? A face?). Like, no one would give a shit if a law-enforcement person, or anyone else, killed a guy while in the line of duty or trying to save someone's life.
After something like four episodes of build up, I had to triple check that what I saw on screen is what happened. When "I ran to save someone, the guy tried to kill me but I killed him instead" was the big reveal, all of the pieces just felt diminished for the time spent on *the (unnecessary) lie*.
Also, her fake story was *fine* if she wanted to not have it derail her career, which it absolute might not have. In fact, it might have made her a hero.
Anyway - I am not shocked to see that the show is hovering at about 54 on Metacritic, especially as critics all came down around "meh", with just a few good and a few bad. It's just trying to do too much, and not committing to any one thing (the users in the reviews complaining about the show being woke can shove it up their ass and get out of their basement). And I think the biggest challenge is that if any of the characters got bumped off or did a horrific heel turn, I'd just shrug and say "well, now that happened, because why not. We already have space labs falling intact from 200 kilometers up and fully aware, possibly suicidal, AI dead-wives hanging out with the family."
What's surprising to me is that this is based on beloved books, so I have to assume it's a lot of pieces from a lot of books, all distilled down and probably making the readers of those books a little cross. Also, it's got directors as illustrious as David Gordon Green involved, but still every episode kind of feels the same. The show creator, and I assume runner is Elizabeth Sarnoff, who was on Lost for 91 episodes and Barry for 32 episodes. But she has writing credits all over this show. So. I don't know. It's not like Lost isn't known for losing its way.
*not an intentional pun, but there you have it.
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