Debris Review: You Are Not Alone (Season 1 Episode 2)
With mystery box shows, there’s a delicate balancing act that it has to achieve, at least at first, in order for it to succeed in some way. It’s this struggle between episodic storytelling and the overarching mythology. Ideally, it should be what TV critic Ryan McGee once referred to as “the micro pushing the macro.”
There’s the serialized side of the show and then there’s the part that tells a contained story, where the latter is more important than the former. Too many shows of its ilk, like The Event, have such a densely layered mythology that is so integral that anything else falls flat.
Debris Season 1 Episode 2, “You Are Not Alone,” tries to walk that fine line and mostly succeeds. There’s sprinkling in with the larger serialized plot but the priority here is the case-of-the-week, along with the way that the characters respond to it.
It brings to mind what Debris aspires to be in a certain way — The X-Files — and what made that series work and why people still return to it. With that iconic show, there was similarly a larger mythology to it but (and this is purely subjective) the thing that most people think of and the episodes they return to are the ones that were unrelated to the larger tapestry.
A part of this is that we all know now that the mythology is nonsense but when most people look back on The X-Files, they’re remembering Mulder and Scully on a spooky investigation looking for the Jersey Devil or something of that manner. Whether or not some of those seasons were good, there is a reason that it ran for as long as it did.
The larger plot is fine but it’s the smaller stuff that provides fuel for the show. It’s the same thinking that Fringe understood, as well. Watching charismatic leads navigate an investigation and the way that relates to them personally is intrinsically more interesting than any big questions or answers could provide.
Right now, Debris is being pretty savvy at how dominant and intriguing its case is. It feels rather reminiscent to the kind of episode that we’d get from Fringe, where the incident is a bit unsettling but there is something that lends to a grounded (as grounded as is capable with this show) answer as to what is happening.
This episode also continues a thread that has started during the first episode, which is this conversation about grief and the ways that it manifests, or doesn’t, in people. We get elements of that with Finola trying to navigate with the life that her father left her after his supposed passing but is carried over with the “victim.”
It suggests a different kind of grief and longing. Eric’s life is one that is more a regret of a life half-lived and a love lost. It’s grief but one we don’t often consider.
The episode loosely draws his life to a sufficient amount. It gives us just enough to have a sense of who he is without bombarding us with everything that makes him who he is. It’s a characterization that is smart and efficient and makes us hopeful for the kind of storytelling we will get going forward.
What did you think of this episode of Debris? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Debris airs Mondays at 10/9c on NBC.
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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.