The Alienist Review: Many Sainted Men (Season 1 Episode 7)
On The Alienist Season 1 Episode 7, “Many Sainted Men,” the team gains valuable leads as some of the darker impulses are explored.
More so than most of the previous episodes this season, “Many Sainted Men” seems primarily occupied with pushing the plot so that it delves deeper into its characters. It does this while also seamlessly weaving themes that very often are smartly left as subtext.
It’s a particularly busy episode but that isn’t strictly a bad thing in this case. There’s not a moment that feels wasted or extraneous, instead, they are all pushing towards something definable, in one way or another.
Whether it’s Kreizler stabbing murdered child because he wants to know what it feels like or Byrnes (Ted Levine) describing the way that law and order actually works, they’re all interconnecting blocks that link together and build off each other.
The true beauty of this episode is the way that small character moments feel so integral to an arc but also strangely confined to that specific moment.
A fascinating thing this episode does is how it has two separate, disparate themes that alone would be fine, but together within this episode give it a nice sense of syncopation.
In one breath, it offers up the idea that Native American traditions are being used to commit these murders and, in another scene, brings up the idea of the rich in New York taking possession of anything that they deem fit to appropriate.
“Many Sainted Men” also definitively proves, once and for all, that Sara Howard is the single most important character on this show. Dakota Fanning continues to play that character with such an unnerving grit and inalienable strength, even in moments that she is clearly terrified to her core.
Although, the fact that the series believes it has to have some form of violence against her, even in a small way, is a baffling decision for it to make. It feels like an attempt to bring a female character down a peg that it believes to be as too strong. Hopefully, that’s not the case because, if so, that’s a pretty inexcusable move.
In a similar vein, the persistence of peripheral characters in teasing Moore about his possible rape by a child prostitute feels incredibly gross. This is something that The Alienist needs to immediately address. It’s an abhorrent violation of the character to leave this as just another secret that he needs to uncover at some point.
On a lighter note, The Alienist has finally learned the one section of the series to cut down on: the Isaacson brothers, who we continue to not care about in the slightest. It’s never worked in the past when the series has tried to shine a light on their off-time and it wisely has stopped doing that. Hopefully, it’ll stick for the rest of the season.
The Alienist took some time to figure out exactly what it wanted to be, but it has finally gotten a solid grasp on it with its focus on character.
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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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.