The Exorcist (Season 1 and 2)
Dec. 23rd, 2017 12:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWord of mouth (or rather, digital tales) about this show sounded so intriguing that I marathoned it in recent weeks. Background re: personal knowledge of original text - I had read Batty's original novel decades ago and seen the movie on tv, then, ten years ago, on one unforgettable occasion in the Hollywood Cemetery with bitterbyrden. (Still qualifies as the most thematically awesome surrounding to watch a horror movie in that I've ever experienced.) Emotionally, while I think both book and movie are intelligent horror avoiding the claptraps many subsequent imitations fell into (especially of the misogynistic type), I didn't and don't love, and don't have the urge to rewatch. Which is why I hadn't planned on watching the tv show until the above mentioned buzz started from various sources. As it turns out, though, I have opinions on the original movie/book's characters based on those old viewing/reading experiences which cause a few nitpicks on what otherwise I've found to be a well-made, often moving show with characters that made me care deeply for them, and quite a few comments, though its narrative, on the present day.
Speaking of the present day, since the tv show is set in it I at first wondered what kind of "based on" we were dealing with re: the source material - a modern day adaption of the charactes and some of the plot a la Bates Motel or a sequel to the movie/film (which for example Buffy started out as), or something with no connection at all in terms of content and characters (as Frozen is to Andersen's story The Snow Queen)?
The answer turned out to be both/and to two of these possibilities, something indicated as early as the pilot since there's a scene where Father Tomas, one of our two leads, while looking for something else comes across an old newspaper report on the events of The Exorcist the movie, indicating we're in the same narrative universe. The first season also replicates and twists to some degree the original novel's set up and some of the characters - there are actually two Exorcists in the story, the grizzled Exorcist veteran (Father Merrin/ Father Marcus) coming to the aid of the younger priest who never did an exorcism before and doesn't believe in the existence of demons befoe encountering the mother and daughter troubled by one (Father Karas/Father Tomas); the younger priest is having a crisis of faith, has a backstory guilt involving his sick mother (Karas)/grandmother (Tomas) which the demon exploits; the existence of the demon and the need to help the possessed serves to reaffirm the younger priest's calling after he confonts his fears and weaknesses. And of couse: the main possessed person of the s1 tale is a female teenager (though Spoiler is considerably older than Regan - who was, I dimly recall, 11 in the book, 12 in the movie).
At the same time, since this is a tv show hoping for more than one season, the fate of neither priest is that from the movie... in the first season. I'll talk about more spoilery theme variations and contrasts below the cut. Above spoiler cut, let me add that while the first season was good, the second one was great, and I suspect that has to do with it being entirely its own thing. Both s1 and s2 present the viewers with troubled families to empathize with, and I did, but the s2 one made me care more. The show took its time there to build up an increasing sense of wrongness until revealing the truth, and endear the various family members (it's a foster family, btw, which is important both thematically and to the plot) to the audience so that you desperately want them to come out of this okay. And while both seasons are unmistakably those of a horror show based on a horror movie famous for some truly gross scenes, the second one struck me as having more confidence in itself and knowing it didn't have to deliver a bloody shock per episode, which the early first season did. Psychological horror is always what works strongest for me anyway, and while both seasons have it, the second one, again, has it more.
Another reason why I am impressed by the show: the way it deals with grief and trauma - both short term and long term - and with family dynamics, both the positive and the negative. And the way it manages both the deliver tropes while (largely) avoiding clichés, and doesn't ignore this is not a story set in the 70s. In both seasons, there are gay and bi characters important to the story, one of whom is one of our two main leads. It delivers both critique of the Catholic Church as a corrupted institution and positive depiction of various dedicated individual members of the clergy to whom their faith is quintessential (not just our two leads). The female characters in both seasons contribute as much to the plot as the males. (And yes, they interact with each other.) And the casting doesn't ignore the various ethnicities of the US, again, especially in s2.
Now, the possibility that Geena Davis' character in s1, Angela, might be a grown up Regan did occur to me a while before the show revealed it, if only because Angela jumped awfully quickly to the conclusion one of her daughters might be possessed and was so vehement to dismiss medical alternatives. And the show otherwise was good enough with its characterisation that I didn't assume it was just sloppiness in order to get Tomas and Marcus involved faster. The confession still made for a powerful scene. As far as Angela/Regan herself is concerned, I was okay with subsequent developments, twists and turns for the rest of the season, including the ending. However. Much as I like Sharon Gless, what the show did with Chris O'Neill, Regan's mother, made for one of those few nitpicks. Loss of working opportunities or no, I just can't see the Chris from the movie and book to react to the loss of her career by exploiting the horror her daughter (and she herself) went through by making Regan do a tour of the talkshows. No way, no how. (Also, the fact that the dedicated mother in the original Exorcist was a divorced film star avoided clichés about single mothers, actresses and then some.) It puzzled me why the show would go there until I realized the probable reason - Angela/Regan needed to be estranged from her mother at the start because otherwise both her husband and her daughters would have known what had happened in her childhood and would have reacted differently to what was going on. Which made it an example of Doylist plot needs overriding Watsonian characterisation integrity, and it's never good when that happens.
My other nitpick caused by my familiarity with the source material isn't really a nitpick but more of an observation. The way Father Karas in the book and movie eventually manages to save Regan, to exorcise and defeat the demon is by offering himself as a host, then, as soon as the transfer is happening, with his last self-determined action throwing himself out of the window of the house in whose top floor they're in. He basically offers both his life and soul to save Regan's life and soul, which also brings his crisis of faith/reconnecting with his faith to a very passion (in the medieval play sense) like conclusion.
Now, the tv show offers us not one but three variations of this plot point. Angela/Regan, in order to save her daughter, offers herself two thirds in to s1, spends two episodes as a supervillain, but in the finale is saved by a mixture of Tomas' and her family helping and her own strength; when she manages to literally destroy her old tormentor in her mental landscape which is that of her childhood, it's a most satisfying moment. She emerges from this physically shattered but alive and reunited with her family. I was more than okay with Angela/Regan surviving, instead of dying, as Karas had done, because if she'd died, especially died while possessed, it would have felt like a mockery of all the agony everyone in the original story had gone through (including herself).
Then, in the second season, come the finale episode, we revisit this plot point from two different angles. This time, Tomas does make the offer in order to save the main possessed person of the season - but that person offers their own life instead and commits suicide-by-cop (or rather, by-other-exorcist) in order to defeat the demon. It works, character wise, for everyone involved, though I couldn't help but feel law of tv versus law of finished story in book and movie also kicks in. I.e. Tomas is one of two main regulars, therefore he needs to survive. Since unfortunately he has the weaker development in s2 (s1 already showed us Tomas' weaknesses are pride and his need for approval; s2 repeats this again), it could threaten to turn his story into a shaggy dog tale, never quite coming to a good (in both narrative and actual sense) ending.
Fortunately, the other lead, Marcus, benefits from not sharing his movie counterpart Merrin's fate of being killed two thirds into the story. (He gets excommunicated instead, which doesn't prevent him and Tomas from continuing to team up.) Marcus plays into the scarred hero with past trauma trope, of course, but as opposed to many a variation of this theme the show is careful to show him caring about the people he tries to save (so you never get the impression he does it simply for his own antiheroic satisfaction or Because A Man's Gotta Do etc.). Similarly refreshing is that while he has issues galore, issues about his sexuality aren't among them. (Post-being defrocked, we see him tentatively eying a man in a bar in s1, and in s2 there are some lovely scenes in which he's gently flirted with - and exchanges a few kisses with - another man. Also in s2, we see in flashbacks he was attracted to a woman but due to then being a priest back then didn't do anything about it. Lo and behold, a male bisexual character in a genre tv show who is also this show's tough-guy-with-trauma character.)
(Meanwhile, both s1 and s2 have young lesbian characters in important roles who are notably not the ones possessed by a demon at any point. This show knows which subtext to avoid, is what I'm saying. S2 also verbally mentions the "homosexuality is the devil's work" inclination of various people from different faiths and soundly rejects it.)
Something else this viewer was pleased by: the writers remembering the Catholic clergy does not solely consist of priests. S1 has a middle-aged nun, Mother Bernadette, as an important character (and one capable of exorcism, albeit in a different approach to the one taken by Marcus, with whom she has a few delightfully sarcastic exchanges on the subject), S2 has Mouse, ex-nun-gone-rogue-exorcist and played by Zuleikha Robinson whom I remember from Rome. I got pretty fond of both characters. Though it made me sigh that Mother Bernadette and the nuns from her order were depicted in pre-Vatican II habits. Look, I'm Catholic. I come from a very Catholic town. I've met a lot of nuns in my life. Not a single one of whom has worn the pre-Vatican II habit which is CONSTANTLY on tv and in the movies, no matter when said movies or tv shows are set. (Laudable exception: Dead Man Walking, in which Sr. Helen Prejean doesn't wear a habit at all and when a man bitches at her because of this points out what the requirements these days are. (Sister Hildergard in my Kindergarten was the same, also wore a cross and otherwise "civilian" clothing. Sister Erika wore a habit. But not a pre-Vatican II one!) I guess that's because that movie was made with input of the real Sister Helen Prejean. Anyway. When will I ever see nuns with post Vatican II habits in an American tv show/movie otherwise?
On to more serious considerations again. The s1 conspiracy subplot culminating in an assassination attempt on PopeFrancis Sebastian was a bit of a let down, because frankly, I thought that was a lousy idea for the big corrupt demonic conspiracy to have - they should know this would just make the Pope a martyr and reaffirm people's faiths. It would have made more sense, thought I, if they'd tried to possess the Pope in order to continue infiltrating the Church on top levels and use the hierarchy to their benefit. Come s2, this was satisfyingly dealt with by showing more and more upper church officials being revealed as indeed part of the conspiracy (and hiding each other's misdeeds), and the metaphor was pretty obvious there.
Also: the s2 episode where our valiant duo comes across a case of fake possession because the mother does that Münchhausen-by-proxy thing to her own daughter was both thematically necessary in various ways, making the point that you don't need the devil to have parents abusing their children, that you really need to test for alternatives and be sure before you perform something as gruesome as an exorcism, and that the potential of abuse there is tremendous if you don't pay attention. (Not to mention it reminded me of a rl story that I came across online last year of a mother having brainwashed her daughter to believe she had various illnesses from toddlerdom onwards.)
In conclusion: I'm glad I managed to watch the show before the year ended. (Not least because I see it has been requested for Yuletide.) If you can stomach horror, go and do likewise, each season has only 10 episodes. :)
bitterbyrden. (Still qualifies as the most thematically awesome surrounding to watch a horror movie in that I've ever experienced.) Emotionally, while I think both book and movie are intelligent horror avoiding the claptraps many subsequent imitations fell into (especially of the misogynistic type), I didn't and don't love, and don't have the urge to rewatch. Which is why I hadn't planned on watching the tv show until the above mentioned buzz started from various sources. As it turns out, though, I have opinions on the original movie/book's characters based on those old viewing/reading experiences which cause a few nitpicks on what otherwise I've found to be a well-made, often moving show with characters that made me care deeply for them, and quite a few comments, though its narrative, on the present day. Speaking of the present day, since the tv show is set in it I at first wondered what kind of "based on" we were dealing with re: the source material - a modern day adaption of the charactes and some of the plot a la Bates Motel or a sequel to the movie/film (which for example Buffy started out as), or something with no connection at all in terms of content and characters (as Frozen is to Andersen's story The Snow Queen)?
The answer turned out to be both/and to two of these possibilities, something indicated as early as the pilot since there's a scene where Father Tomas, one of our two leads, while looking for something else comes across an old newspaper report on the events of The Exorcist the movie, indicating we're in the same narrative universe. The first season also replicates and twists to some degree the original novel's set up and some of the characters - there are actually two Exorcists in the story, the grizzled Exorcist veteran (Father Merrin/ Father Marcus) coming to the aid of the younger priest who never did an exorcism before and doesn't believe in the existence of demons befoe encountering the mother and daughter troubled by one (Father Karas/Father Tomas); the younger priest is having a crisis of faith, has a backstory guilt involving his sick mother (Karas)/grandmother (Tomas) which the demon exploits; the existence of the demon and the need to help the possessed serves to reaffirm the younger priest's calling after he confonts his fears and weaknesses. And of couse: the main possessed person of the s1 tale is a female teenager (though Spoiler is considerably older than Regan - who was, I dimly recall, 11 in the book, 12 in the movie).
At the same time, since this is a tv show hoping for more than one season, the fate of neither priest is that from the movie... in the first season. I'll talk about more spoilery theme variations and contrasts below the cut. Above spoiler cut, let me add that while the first season was good, the second one was great, and I suspect that has to do with it being entirely its own thing. Both s1 and s2 present the viewers with troubled families to empathize with, and I did, but the s2 one made me care more. The show took its time there to build up an increasing sense of wrongness until revealing the truth, and endear the various family members (it's a foster family, btw, which is important both thematically and to the plot) to the audience so that you desperately want them to come out of this okay. And while both seasons are unmistakably those of a horror show based on a horror movie famous for some truly gross scenes, the second one struck me as having more confidence in itself and knowing it didn't have to deliver a bloody shock per episode, which the early first season did. Psychological horror is always what works strongest for me anyway, and while both seasons have it, the second one, again, has it more.
Another reason why I am impressed by the show: the way it deals with grief and trauma - both short term and long term - and with family dynamics, both the positive and the negative. And the way it manages both the deliver tropes while (largely) avoiding clichés, and doesn't ignore this is not a story set in the 70s. In both seasons, there are gay and bi characters important to the story, one of whom is one of our two main leads. It delivers both critique of the Catholic Church as a corrupted institution and positive depiction of various dedicated individual members of the clergy to whom their faith is quintessential (not just our two leads). The female characters in both seasons contribute as much to the plot as the males. (And yes, they interact with each other.) And the casting doesn't ignore the various ethnicities of the US, again, especially in s2.
Now, the possibility that Geena Davis' character in s1, Angela, might be a grown up Regan did occur to me a while before the show revealed it, if only because Angela jumped awfully quickly to the conclusion one of her daughters might be possessed and was so vehement to dismiss medical alternatives. And the show otherwise was good enough with its characterisation that I didn't assume it was just sloppiness in order to get Tomas and Marcus involved faster. The confession still made for a powerful scene. As far as Angela/Regan herself is concerned, I was okay with subsequent developments, twists and turns for the rest of the season, including the ending. However. Much as I like Sharon Gless, what the show did with Chris O'Neill, Regan's mother, made for one of those few nitpicks. Loss of working opportunities or no, I just can't see the Chris from the movie and book to react to the loss of her career by exploiting the horror her daughter (and she herself) went through by making Regan do a tour of the talkshows. No way, no how. (Also, the fact that the dedicated mother in the original Exorcist was a divorced film star avoided clichés about single mothers, actresses and then some.) It puzzled me why the show would go there until I realized the probable reason - Angela/Regan needed to be estranged from her mother at the start because otherwise both her husband and her daughters would have known what had happened in her childhood and would have reacted differently to what was going on. Which made it an example of Doylist plot needs overriding Watsonian characterisation integrity, and it's never good when that happens.
My other nitpick caused by my familiarity with the source material isn't really a nitpick but more of an observation. The way Father Karas in the book and movie eventually manages to save Regan, to exorcise and defeat the demon is by offering himself as a host, then, as soon as the transfer is happening, with his last self-determined action throwing himself out of the window of the house in whose top floor they're in. He basically offers both his life and soul to save Regan's life and soul, which also brings his crisis of faith/reconnecting with his faith to a very passion (in the medieval play sense) like conclusion.
Now, the tv show offers us not one but three variations of this plot point. Angela/Regan, in order to save her daughter, offers herself two thirds in to s1, spends two episodes as a supervillain, but in the finale is saved by a mixture of Tomas' and her family helping and her own strength; when she manages to literally destroy her old tormentor in her mental landscape which is that of her childhood, it's a most satisfying moment. She emerges from this physically shattered but alive and reunited with her family. I was more than okay with Angela/Regan surviving, instead of dying, as Karas had done, because if she'd died, especially died while possessed, it would have felt like a mockery of all the agony everyone in the original story had gone through (including herself).
Then, in the second season, come the finale episode, we revisit this plot point from two different angles. This time, Tomas does make the offer in order to save the main possessed person of the season - but that person offers their own life instead and commits suicide-by-cop (or rather, by-other-exorcist) in order to defeat the demon. It works, character wise, for everyone involved, though I couldn't help but feel law of tv versus law of finished story in book and movie also kicks in. I.e. Tomas is one of two main regulars, therefore he needs to survive. Since unfortunately he has the weaker development in s2 (s1 already showed us Tomas' weaknesses are pride and his need for approval; s2 repeats this again), it could threaten to turn his story into a shaggy dog tale, never quite coming to a good (in both narrative and actual sense) ending.
Fortunately, the other lead, Marcus, benefits from not sharing his movie counterpart Merrin's fate of being killed two thirds into the story. (He gets excommunicated instead, which doesn't prevent him and Tomas from continuing to team up.) Marcus plays into the scarred hero with past trauma trope, of course, but as opposed to many a variation of this theme the show is careful to show him caring about the people he tries to save (so you never get the impression he does it simply for his own antiheroic satisfaction or Because A Man's Gotta Do etc.). Similarly refreshing is that while he has issues galore, issues about his sexuality aren't among them. (Post-being defrocked, we see him tentatively eying a man in a bar in s1, and in s2 there are some lovely scenes in which he's gently flirted with - and exchanges a few kisses with - another man. Also in s2, we see in flashbacks he was attracted to a woman but due to then being a priest back then didn't do anything about it. Lo and behold, a male bisexual character in a genre tv show who is also this show's tough-guy-with-trauma character.)
(Meanwhile, both s1 and s2 have young lesbian characters in important roles who are notably not the ones possessed by a demon at any point. This show knows which subtext to avoid, is what I'm saying. S2 also verbally mentions the "homosexuality is the devil's work" inclination of various people from different faiths and soundly rejects it.)
Something else this viewer was pleased by: the writers remembering the Catholic clergy does not solely consist of priests. S1 has a middle-aged nun, Mother Bernadette, as an important character (and one capable of exorcism, albeit in a different approach to the one taken by Marcus, with whom she has a few delightfully sarcastic exchanges on the subject), S2 has Mouse, ex-nun-gone-rogue-exorcist and played by Zuleikha Robinson whom I remember from Rome. I got pretty fond of both characters. Though it made me sigh that Mother Bernadette and the nuns from her order were depicted in pre-Vatican II habits. Look, I'm Catholic. I come from a very Catholic town. I've met a lot of nuns in my life. Not a single one of whom has worn the pre-Vatican II habit which is CONSTANTLY on tv and in the movies, no matter when said movies or tv shows are set. (Laudable exception: Dead Man Walking, in which Sr. Helen Prejean doesn't wear a habit at all and when a man bitches at her because of this points out what the requirements these days are. (Sister Hildergard in my Kindergarten was the same, also wore a cross and otherwise "civilian" clothing. Sister Erika wore a habit. But not a pre-Vatican II one!) I guess that's because that movie was made with input of the real Sister Helen Prejean. Anyway. When will I ever see nuns with post Vatican II habits in an American tv show/movie otherwise?
On to more serious considerations again. The s1 conspiracy subplot culminating in an assassination attempt on Pope
Also: the s2 episode where our valiant duo comes across a case of fake possession because the mother does that Münchhausen-by-proxy thing to her own daughter was both thematically necessary in various ways, making the point that you don't need the devil to have parents abusing their children, that you really need to test for alternatives and be sure before you perform something as gruesome as an exorcism, and that the potential of abuse there is tremendous if you don't pay attention. (Not to mention it reminded me of a rl story that I came across online last year of a mother having brainwashed her daughter to believe she had various illnesses from toddlerdom onwards.)
In conclusion: I'm glad I managed to watch the show before the year ended. (Not least because I see it has been requested for Yuletide.) If you can stomach horror, go and do likewise, each season has only 10 episodes. :)
no subject
Date: 2017-12-23 12:37 pm (UTC)I am NOT going to read this now -- we are behind on our VCR'ed episodes and I do NOT want to be spoiled. I'm bookmarking it to return to later, when we've caught up.
Considering I'm actively reading Last Jedi spoilers, and won't see the movie until the day after Christmas -- that tells you something!
Also: I am not at all slashily inclined, and I confess to slashing Marcus and Tomas.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-23 03:11 pm (UTC)re: Marcus/Tomas: I can see it, though I can also be persuaded that it's a fraternal relationship. What can't be disputed, imo, by the end of the second season is that they love each other, in whichever fashion.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-23 05:03 pm (UTC)Now I want to watch the rest. But M is kind of focused on holiday films (in a broader sense) at the moment, and as we watch this one together . . . *is impatient*
no subject
Date: 2017-12-23 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-25 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-23 08:36 pm (UTC)I'm glad you liked it. I bloody love this show.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-25 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-23 08:49 pm (UTC)ETA: Further googling reveals that technically, all nuns are cloistered. Or rather, nuns who aren't cloistered aren't nuns, they're sisters. Anyway, Mother Bernadette's nuns seem to be cloistered.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-25 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-24 11:43 am (UTC)I read The Exorcist in the 70s -- I was possibly too young, but my Catholic great-aunt had a copy and I used to share her room when we visited Florida -- so my memories of it are fuzzy. I saw the movie much too late, on the other hand, for it to make a major impact.
I agree with you that I warmed to the characters more in s. 2, though my husband felt the opposite -- but he'd seen the movie multiple times, so felt more connected to Angela/Regan and her family. Also, I came in at episode 2 or 3 that season, when he convinced me to watch.
I was concerned, until that very last scene, that perhaps Ben Daniels was leaving the show, though I could certainly enjoy a partnership between Tomas and Mouse. I doubt we'll get another season, though, as they showed the series straight through -- I'm fairly certain they aired an episode the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, which usually networks don't do if they believe in a show. But I live in hope.
http://deadline.com/2017/12/the-exorcist-finale-spoilers-season-3-disney-fox-deal-john-cho-alfonso-herrera-ben-daniels-1202227377/
no subject
Date: 2017-12-25 03:35 pm (UTC)What I thought would happen re: Marcus was that he'd take a time out, so to speak, and be with Peter for a while, experience the life he never had, until plot would dictate his return at the start of the next season, so I was surprised we didn't see Peter in that tag scene.