It’s been a while since I blogged about a new television show just because it was so unpleasant I had to share. Generally, I like to like things. This week, though, I stumbled over a new show that’s souring my whole afternoon, and so I’m sharing.
On paper, I can sort of see why Past Life is appealing. It’s a procedural format with the standard quirky lead characters, it’s got a healthy undercurrent of fantasy – or at least, mysticism – and a strong whiff of inoffensive spiritualism, complete with pseudo-scientific terminology. It’s Fringe without the horror/scifi genre atmospherics, Medium without the strong lead character and slowly developing confidence in clairvoyance, and Cold Case without the historical backgrounds. It’s a lot of “without”s, but with very few added elements to fill the resulting voids. This in itself is not that remarkable, and helps Past Life descend into the ranks of “meh” without distinguishing itself as especially poor. These things, however…
Past life regression trauma looks like this. Convicing, no?
1. The fantasy/pseudo-science is insultingly ill constructed. Reincarnation is the essential underpinning of Past Life, with the fictional premise that people can access their former selves through regression and those regressive traumas can be used to solve crimes committed in previous lives. The pilot episode begins with a teenage boy shaken into some disturbing memory of his past life, and then jumps straight into gumshoe, sort-through-the-case-files detection, with nary a hint of wonder or curiosity about, say… how reincarnation happens? Are you actually all those previous people, or do they just live in your brain with you? Why people aren’t constantly experiencing regression trauma, if reincarnation is real? I’m not saying fantasy always requires real-world explanations, but it needs to be detailed and internally coherent enough to at least create an illusion of plausibility. Also, how could a mother with a disturbed son happen across reincarnation as a possible explanation?
2. It’s narratively lazy. That plot I explained in the previous point – solving crimes through past life regressions – is not the most obvious procedural premise. You’d think it would require a reasonable amount of set-up, some healthy suspicion about the idea, at least a sense that its practitioners are mavericks intent on bucking the system. You’d be wrong. The pilot episode introduces a cop to the team of past life specialists, whose purpose is ostensibly to ask the audience’s questions, to be skeptical, to doubt. His doubting lasts approximately five minutes before the cop is swept away into the bland flood of reincarnated murder victims, completely shortcutting the whole world-building process.
The doubting cop, eagerly searching for reincarnated murder victims
Even worse, the procedural details are lazy! The show is set in New York City, and to identify the reincarnated murder victim, the detective picks up on the detail of a building with a red light on the top. He quickly points out could be almost anything in New York City… but only a few things in Washington, DC. Why Washington, DC? Who knows! Presumably, it could also be any of the millions of tall buildings across the world, but no! It’s the Washington Monument! Case solved!
3. Richard Schiff. Why is he in this show? I know this is primarily my own nostalgic love of The West Wing surfacing and unfairly coloring my criticism here, but Toby Ziegler, why on earth are you hanging out with these people who believe in reincarnation? He looks unconscionably erudite standing next to the two main leads, totally unbalancing the otherwise uninterrupted atmosphere of goofy spiritualism. Really, as bad as the rest of Past Life is, Richard Schiff was the nail in the coffin for me. Heh, coffin. ‘Cause, you know, they’re dead…
Seriously, that right there was the most entertaining part of watching Past Life.