The Sinner might very well be one of the best detective shows on a nonprime network. If you watched it on Netflix, it’s easy enough to forget, but this is originally a USA network show, somewhere you normally might find something blandly inane like Suits. The Sinner stands out, there and in general.
Granted it had a good start. In fact, subsequent seasons have not lived up to the excellency of the first one, since the first one drew directly upon a source material of a novel, a foreign novel, no less, meaning a certain thematical darkness and a proper dimensionality to the characters. An award nominated first season featured an award nominated star turn from Jessica Biel, who has subsequently served as an executive producer. But the show cleverly enough didn’t drag out the same story, it was made as an anthology instead. Each season featuring a new story, united in mood, tone and the lead detective Ambrose, played to perfection with the sly squinty reticent charms of the one and only POTUS Whitmore, who has aged very well and now seems primed for a role like this. Season two to be fair was something of a wash. Great cast, great performances, but storyline has proved to be so unmemorable that having watched it and even having attempted to jog memory with an online summary, I can’t possibly tell you what it was about. At the same time I can absolutely and in some detail recollect season one. So there’s that. Season three is a different beast altogether. One that has potential to stick to memory if for no other reason than its assured boldness of doing a show about while male privilege in this fraught day and age. In a positively brazen turn, the season concentrates on Jamie, a man who (seemingly) has it all, a perfect job, family, abode, looks, charm. And yet, apparently, as some sort of midlife crisis, finds his life lacking excitement and meaning and goes to some terrifying lengths to find it. This includes rekindling an old connection with a college buddy, played to a creepy perfection by the always great Chris Messina. In college the two went too far in their adolescent admiration of Nietzsche, something most adults grow out of. But since midlife crises are, by nature, a form of regression, Jamie craves that specific brand of madness. And so like a top he starts spinning out of control and it’s up to the weary and limping but still at it Ambrose to arrest that motion and/or that man. Jamie is played by an actor I normally wouldn’t buy in a role like this for the sheer reason of being too freaking pretty, but here somehow he made it work, utilizing his ridiculously good looks as just one more aspect of a charmed life that no longer seems to hold any charm. I am not familiar with whoever played the wife and didn’t especially care for her, she didn’t have much to do besides doing a form of increased incredulity. But Ambrose (you go, you sexy GILF, you) does get a very compelling love interest in a local artist who seems as drawn to abyss gazing as he is. The interesting thing here is that it isn’t really a mystery show, it’s more of a dark psychological crime drama, it’s about pinning the characters against them and playing it up for all it’s worth. And on that note, the ending is an absolute doozy, who knew Ambrose would go there. Whew. Abyss gazes back indeed. So is it relevant in the hyperwoke era of MeToo, radical feminism and general demonization of conventional/toxic masculinity to watch a show about two middle class white men battling their demons and each other? Yes, very much so, not to mention it’s positively refreshing. Plus the story goes outside of gender confines to encompass that certain something that’s almost but not quite a nostalgia for youth, the time of heightened emotions and emotional extremes. It deals with the inability to accept the life going on after the Melencampian thrill of living might be gone. The craving of excitement that gets so thoroughly washed out by maturity. It’s about testing boundaries, self and societally imposed, about looking for morality and higher power and meaning and hitting the walls of one’s existence in the most tragic, hubristic, desperate ways. It’s a test for both Jamie and Ambrose. Or what they’ll do, how far they’ll go. Granted most would just get a young mistress or a sports car, but what sort of a show would that make. So yeah, The Sinner is good, well done, well acted, aptly named and well worth a watch. It’s the closest US tv will probably ever come to Scandinavian Noir. And it has been renewed for season four. Something to look forward to.
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