The Alienist Review: The Boy on the Bridge (Season 1 Episode 1)

The Alienist Season 1 Episode 1, “The Boy on the Bridge,” establishes a tone and aesthetic, but that alone may not be enough going forward.

An adaptation of the book by Caleb Carr, The Alienist feels a bit like if Penny Dreadful met Hannibal, but took the literary and supernatural elements out of the former and the antagonism, quirk, and subversive eroticism from the latter, and also has bits of True Detective thrown in for good measure.

That’s not to say that it’s not interesting in its own right.

A lot of the premiere rests on the gothic vibe of New York in the late nineteenth century and, for this episode, that’s enough to sustain it. In fact, the premiere largely teases and toys with a lot of the ideas or themes that it hopefully wishes to tackle as the series goes along.

The most primary of these is likely to be state of criminal pathology as it stood at the end of the 1900s in the form of the titular Alienist, Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (played by Daniel Bruhl). The overall reaction to Dr. Kreizler and the way that most, outside the principal cast, view him as essentially a witch doctor is an interesting conceit, if somewhat half-baked in this first episode.

In a time when people looked to mental health professionals like him as a way to take people who don’t fit within a normal set of behavior or ways of thinking, Dr. Kreizler gets to step in and openly rebuke it, informing any and all that there are no magic cures to the mind.

Similar to that of Hannibal, the series will be able to have consistent conversations on psychology and finding people who do wicked things, but while The Alienist has taken out a lot of what made those conversations especially interesting on Hannibal, it adds to it a type of eighteenth century perspective that could prove to be quite fascinating in its own right.

Ironically enough, a major way that “The Boy on the Bridge” does not work at all is the anchor for the novel, John Moore (Luke Evans).

This is particularly curious given how Moore, in the novel, is the anchor for the reader. He’s the one who we’re seeing all of this through and Dr. Kreizler is the one who feels more enigmatic and mysterious.

On this, however, the opposite is true: Dr. Kreizler is the one who we feel is really guiding us through the story and Moore feels more like a necessity of the plot rather than someone who it’s enjoyable to spend time with.

This cannot be said of the final third of this trio, Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning), who at every point of “The Boy on the Bridge” feels entirely like an indomitable force of nature that is here to be loud, fierce, and to look within her cabinet of cares and find it scarce and bare.

On a show that very often feels muted and plays within a wide palate of grays, Fanning walks into every scene with presence and, quite frankly, volume. Few performers can walk in a way that has an actual voice to it and Fanning is one.

Overall, this is a solid premiere with a lot of promise.

What did you think of this episode of The Alienist? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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The Alienist airs Mondays at 9/8c on TNT.

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