The Alienist: First three episodes combined

Hello there, 

as is tradition on this blog I am posting a combination article now. I hope that I have posted an article about the original xfiles by the time this gets on!

 

The Alienist

The boy on the bridge s01e01

This is a netflix original, while I am still not sponsered by Netflix at all, I took it on me to review the episodes while I still have to review the mist in its completion and also that startrek thing.

But here we go then. The episode starts with a boy witnessing a dead body at a for me unknown location in New York city in the eighteenhundrerds. Blood dripping everywheere. There is our main guy an alienator gets a boy in his house in need of a shrink.

The boy was the one that witnessed alll of it so our main guy that sends an illustrator so the alienator can see what our boy has seen/ this is how he gets involved with the police investigation of the murder.

There is alot of backstory involved in this series and such. Not all is explained in great detail but some of them are and I'm not going to get into it now. 

But the alienator gets a bit to much into the investigation as he takes it upon himself to find the killer, the police is to inadequate to do so. Even going so far to exhume bodies of a similar case that seem unrelated to what has happened now

My opinion, on this episode is that it is generally just weird to land into this established world but that it seems like at least for me it is guiding me properly guiding in the established universe while moving up the plot. Meaning that it doesn't seems to be dragged down by the backstory while not being able to continue the story, I give this episode a 7/10

The alienist season 1 episode 2

A fruitful partnership!



This episode, I have watched it in parts so I am sorry where I butcher the storyline on some fronts more than usual.

As I have not stated yet this episode is more and more talking rather than the previous episode I reviewed but honestly it has a bit more exposition and changes perspective. This episode is enterly some sort of a planning episode for the alienist to inspect the murders of children that have been taking place in the previous episode.

The alienist puts together a team of, for that time period, foresensic specialist and the artist who was summned in the last episode and ofcourse madame secretary. He does this kind of by inviting them do a dinnerparty and also gets permission from the mayor to conduct his investigation independant from the police.

After this dinner, the dinner the person who drew the corpse in the first place goes into the brothel where the children are being sold for purposes I wont disclose here. And here he starts asking questions which doesn't go well with the mob guy that runs the place. And so he gets drugged.



In a room with a child he gets the effects of the drigs and bribes the child that has been assigned to tell him everything about a murder victim and gets robbed by the child because he is weak. Corrupt cops get shown and stuff and ending it is kind of messed up ending in what seems like a rape scene.

My opininion about this episode is that it is fucked up. The more you watch this the more it goes to the ending the more fucked up it gets and by that I mean that it gets quite disturbing. And I am not talking that the story takes place in the US and the people we see happening seem to have the english Stiff upper lip but about this prostitution of children part.

This show is kind of disturbing. For the slow moving plot I give this episode a 5,5/10 but for the disturbing levels of this episode disturbingness I give this episode a 9 out of 10. It is not yet the disturbingness of like the reputation of a Serbian film.

The alienist season 1 episode 3: The silver smile

Finally some speed in this series but in my opinion not enough to cover as much story as the series wants to do if you catch my drift.

The story starts the morning after the previous episode after the cartoonist got raped in that whorehouse with children he has been drugged and the next morning he cannot remember anything tough. As he has been drugged by the rape drug!

He's alright tough having been found by a personell member of the alienist and brought back to his house, he leaves while angry because questionings is awkward for him after such a night and then he goes back home where his granny resides asswell. Now because he came home the morning after shes gonna have him married.

Also in the beginning of the episode (in series most of the time there are multiple storylines present at once. ) there is a rich family that is informed that their son might be on the lose again and that he has been spotted in the derelict house and just might be involved in the first murder that kicked off the series.

The episode moves further with the investigation continueing because the cartoonist remembering a hint. That the first boy went willlingly with a rich man with a silver smile. They track down the prostitute that said it and they get some exposition of this world they are in.

They then discover another murder has taken place (of the tipgiver perhaps) arriving to the scene before the police does, ofcourse not officially and when the police finally arrives they have to flee and might be catched in the next episode because they dropped something. Now the showmakers have caused some drama to make things more intresting by making the main characters ending up in a fight.

Noteworthy events: In what seems to be a public bathhouse a young boy sent awway while in the corner a guy is sitting and smiling.
Something else is that the black guy had a talk with the alienist about a trail for the murder of his parents?

My opinion about this episode is that it is boring as ever! But it finally gets to be a little entertaining and it is not because of the drama between the main cast at the end of the episode. It is because finally in this episode we can have some masterfully crafted suspense about who the murderer is. Is it the son of the rich people's son that has committed everything?

What about the guy in the bathhouse what is he upto? Or the female butler of the alienist that is now seen stroking organs or a drawing of one of the murder victims? Is she family? Is she a part of the murders or are there multiple murderers? It is because of this that I say that it is getting intresting in this series. I give this episode a 6 out of ten for not moving to fast but still succeeded at making it intresting!