neXt Review: Case #4 (Season 1 Episode 4)
neXt Season 1 Episode 4, “Case #4,” tackles a hot-button issue but doesn’t seem to be aware that it’s doing so.
It makes a certain amount of sense that a procedural — which is what neXt is at its core — would want to tackle an episode that is on the heartbeat of the moment. It’s not difficult to imagine that a similar episode would have come up on Person of Interest or Elementary.
It’s the type of thing that Law and Order is infamous for: rip something from the headline and make an engaging hour of television out of. You can definitely see neXt attempting something similar to that. The rise of white supremacy over the last few years is a burning topic of discussion and you could theoretically mine solid material from that.
The problem is that “Case #4” hardly seems aware that it’s doing that. It’s about this white supremacy on a base level but it doesn’t have anything to say about it. It’s almost incidental to everything that’s happening. It almost feels like they were used on this episode just because it needed a large force to act as an antagonist here.
At the same time, you can understand why the show would use this group as a threat. White supremacists are people that most don’t have any ingrained sympathy. We’re not going to be on their side at any point during the episode and there’s also this built-in danger that comes along with them.
Again, the issue is that there needs to be a bigger reason for using that group. White supremacists are too much of a threat in real life to be used this flippantly. They can’t just be a nameless force pounding at the door. The show could use them if it had anything to say about them but it simply doesn’t.
The episode doesn’t want to engage with where things are at with them as a country and that’s what is inexcusable here.
It doesn’t want to have any kind of analysis over things like how there’s usually not a combative police presence with white supremacists protests. It lacks the sophistication to really dive into those beats effectively. It doesn’t have any interest in going into the sociological aspects of this. They’re just there to be there and that is, at best, extremely weak.
Beyond even that aspect of it, the writing isn’t particularly. Nothing is resolved and no arcs are completed; it’s just fairly messy all around. We had the complaint on previous episodes that the FBI section of the show feels extraneous but maybe it should have remained that way because this doesn’t seem to be where its talents lie.
It seems designed to be an episode that tears everything, but it has to be too early in its run to do this kind of episode. After only four episodes, it can’t have enough to warrant the kind of splitting apart at the seams that the show is already threatening to do here.
Overall, “Case #4” doesn’t really inspire confidence for what the rest of the show will bring.
What did you think of this episode of neXt? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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neXt airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on FOX.
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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.