All bad guys love chess!
It’s strange to see a show still making the kinds of mistakes that genre television generally shook off during the 1990s. This problem isn’t restricted to Alphas, of course. You see a lot of shows that seem to have missed lessons learned by the likes of Buffy and Deep Space 9 before they went on to become the mythic epics of the present day.
The thing that boggles my mind is how a team of writers could fail to have absorbed these lessons, while there are shows like Breaking Bad, Dexter, True Blood, Battlestar Galactica, Lost, and so on that are great from the opening scene on.
I mean, a villain obsessed with chess? Is that the best these writers can come up with? Don’t tell me that no one in the room pointed out how trite a move that was. Is it so far from their mind to build a metaphor around Othello? This is, after all, a story about the goodly Doctor changing sides. And while we’re at it, what kind of hardcore determinist lives his life with a game metaphor? Marcus Airs could’ve been “post-traumatic war guy” with an eye for tactics and strategy. War is very different from a game, where a sense of nonchalance overpowers what should be very serious business for the character. The coin was a nicer symbol, as Marcus is perhaps the only person on the planet who can affect chance so accurately.
From here, the plot moves along a bit and we discover Marcus was trying to escape the Compound because of what they were gonna do to him. Great! Just the kind of juicy plot stuff that’ll make me feel like this isn’t a stupid one shot… and then we find out they were trying to remove his power and failing that, kill him outright. Boring! I saw this already with the X-men, back when Professor X and Magneto were playing chess… Do these writers really think this would go unnoticed?
Dear Alpha Writers: You’re writing a superheroes show! You’ve got a responsibility to be sufficiently different from what came before lest you risk insulting the intelligence of your audience. But don’t take my criticism to be as harsh as it seems so far. I see the great things you’re doing just as plainly.
Beginning with the first few minutes in the Alpha’s new Queens headquarters, we get a stream of great characterization for the whole team. This characterization and overwhelming teamfulness persists throughout the episode, leaving me with the feeling that these are characters I will grow to love. Sure, the characters are still basically speaking their personality – you know, “’m nerdy, autistic, and funny.” “I’m conflicted between being my own person and conceding to my family.” etc. — but that’s expected, and perhaps even necessary at this early stage. If Alphas go into Betas next year, we’ll have the privilege of the deeper jokes that tickle our memory bone. And I hope they get there.
The ending was another nice touch was, where Marcus Airs (who turned out to be just as much a puppetmaster as last week’s puppetmaster), proves to Dr. Rosen that he really is on the wrong side. Marcus was unarmed and he was still assaulted with deadly force. My guess is that Rosen will try to second guess what he knows to be the truth for a few more episodes, but we’ll eventually see him and his team “take over the board.”
Oh, and the Doc is an alpha. Cool.
Have any of you readers begun to formulate theories about where this season is headed? Don’t try not to blurt them out!
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.