After It All

It starts with something beautiful. A child, excited by her mother's face, secretly thrilled to be allowed contact with the magic of an Iphone. A father, looking over his daughter's head and into the mother's eyes, both wearing the secret smiles of people who have established something very near telepathy in their relationship. The mother, exotic accent hinting at a backstory we've not yet heard, nervous and proud and wistfull all at once. We watch these three, playful and joyous and vibrant, and we smile. The mother is far away, having traveled to Los Angeles for an audition. Perhaps she will win the part, and perhaps not. But, watching her with her family, we are unconcerned. These are good people. They'll be fine. And so the mother dresses and leaves the hotel and we know she is set to have an exciting day and a good life. Until, of course, it all goes to shit.

Chris Carter, the man behind The After, is an iconic creator of television. Rightly so. The X Files, wildly inconsistent as it was, remains one of the most influential programs in the history of the medium. This show, which is a "television" program in the loosest sense of the word, has a chance to be his best work since Scully and Mulder hung up their guns.

First, Amazon clearly spared no expense in bringing Carter's vision to life. Yes, this is a pilot and pilots are always higher-budgeted than the following episodes. But I can't imagine Carter even signing on without assurances that he'd be free to indulge some of his wilder ambitions. There is a shot involving two helicopters that, while not Michael Bay levels of technically polished, is probably right up with Game of Thrones as a piece of television-cost CGI. Pretty damn good, in other words. The entire production looks great, was clearly shot on location, features a ton of extras, and is generally presented with a pleasant crisp professionalism. Carter has never been one for Fincher-esque visual poetry, but he's become more than adequate as a pure filmmaker. That said, his choice of settings (parking garage anyone?) does allow for some lower-cost bottle scenes, which in turn frees up money for, I dunno, a freaky blue demon or something.

We'll come back to the monster, but first let's talk about design. Does anyone else think that the LA we see here is just a tiny bit off? Not 100 yrs from now, but maybe 20 or 30? Endless glass-and-steel towers knifing through the sky, sleekly minimalist fashion, hypermodern accessories etc. The effect is subtle, but Carter is setting us up. This isn't our world, not quite. We see it subliminally, hear it in the whine of sirens and the growl of…. something. It is a waking nightmare, close enough to believe, far enough that we don't know what's coming. Carter is a master of disorientation. By establishing these thoughts in the audience early on, he is saying one thing; There are no rules. Buckle up.

A show like The After is all atmosphere and action in the early going. Good characters, if we have any, are bonuses. So far, there are no bonuses on this show. Everyone is flat, defined by one or two Twitter-bio character traits. Late in the episode, three Hispanic characters arrive and are such brutal caricatures that it made me actively angry. Long term, the success of this show will be determined by whether we can be made to care about any of our merry band of misfit heroes. Signs are good. Yes, everyone is flat, but the actors range from acceptable to quite good, and they all are written with something resembling recognizable motivations. Nobody does anything egregiously stupid (aside from the most pointless nude-scene in the history of television, but I'll put that down to a ratings grab and move on), which is a refreshing change for this kind of thing. I wish that Carter hadn't gone back to the noble, wrongly accused inmate trope, but the dialogue is good enough and the actor sufficiently intense that it isn't glaring. Best-in-show probably goes to the clown, who I'm sure has a name I should remember, but whatever. Oh, and the demon. He gives good glare.

Wait, there's a goddamn demon? Oh riiiight. Yep, little blue dude who shows up, takes a shotgun blast at close range, hisses, does some weird transformation stuff, then scuttles off. And, of course, cut to black right as he enters the treeline.

Going into this episode, my biggest fear was that it would turn out to be another The Event, ie an expensive, ambitious, completely shitty adventure series with no perspective, personality, or ultimate idea what it wanted to be. I forgot who I was dealing with. Consider the myriad sci-fi event shows that've sprung up over the last decade. The first half of this pilot would fit, comfortably, in any of them. Yes, the execution is superior, but the concepts (urban setting, pretty people, vague shit-hitting-fan something happening) are entirely familiar. Thing is, Chris Carter isn't imitating anyone. They all grew up wanting to be him, to create the new X-Files. He's better than the entire wave of creators behind The Event, Zero Hour, Fringe, Sleepy Hollow, and yes, even Lost, because in a very real way they're all his creative children. I'm not saying that The After is perfect, because judging that from a pilot alone is idiotic. But it is enormously confident, the product of a writer let completely off the leash for the first time in a long time. It's exciting and fresh, ballsy enough to demonstrate in the first fucking episode that yes, there's magic in this world. Buckle up.