Prodigal Son: Pilot Recap
“My Boy” count: 3
“I’m not your son” count: 1
“Remember… we’re the same” count: 2
I’ve been eagerly anticipating PRODIGAL SON since the first trailer came out. Why? Michael Sheen was hot off of his GOOD OMENS success, milking the Aziraphale/Crowley fandom for all it was (and is) worth. And honestly, good for him. The dude’s in his 50s. As admired and established as he is, I doubt he ever thought he would reach peak Tumblr fame, like Misha Collins or David Tennant circa 10th Doctor have.
And how better to keep a firm grasp on that fame than by playing a. Playing a. My brain wants to say serial killer, and yes, that’s what his character, Dr. Martin Whitly, is. But he’s not HANNIBAL’s cool-calculating-Hannibal-Lector type (more on that later) or a threateningly-charismatic-while-cavalier-about-violence type, like MINDHUNTER’s Ed Kemper. He’s sort of a creepy-warm-irreverent-goofball type? A creepy, warm, irreverent goofball who is really obsessed with his son. Type.
The first trailer was something to behold. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch it here.
I mean. OH MY BOY.
So when the pilot episode finally came out this week, I broke plans with friends to go home and watch it. Because friends are (usually) forever, and this show will probably only last one glorious season.
Tom Payne plays the prodigal son, Malcolm Whitly.
David Giesbrecht / Fox
The plot of this episode is pretty simple. Smash cut: flashback. It’s 1998, and wee Malcolm Whitly (Kasjan Wilson) is having a vaguely threatening father-son moment with his dad, notorious serial killer The Surgeon, who is in the process of getting hauled off by the cops. Michael Sheen is doing his best to pull off the Just For Men situation the makeup artist put him in for this scene and, actually, he almost does it. Smash cut: It’s 2019. FBI profiler/Serial killer’s son Malcolm Whitly (Tom Payne) is a real wild card. He gets fired by the FBI for being a real wild card (and definitely gets some scenery caught in his teeth on the way out) and then, after a night terror, which is par for the course for this character, gets hired by an old pal in the NYPD to help them solve a high-profile murder.
We meet the usual cast of NYPD characters, the insofar useless-except-for-hugs lady cop Annie, the tough, sarcastic cop JT, and Gil, an old friend of Malcolm’s who has a cool car and is also played by Lou Diamon Phillips.
A woman is dead. She’s rich and white, and one of two other rich, white women who have been murdered recently. As Malcolm does his thing at the crime scene (which is so derivative of SHERLOCK and HANNIBAL’s Will Graham it almost hurts) he realizes the murderer is a copycat of his dad and—WAIT WHAT. His dad?! Who, through a series of flashbacks and dream sequences, we see Malcolm vowed never to see again? THAT dad? Hoo boy.
And the audience goes, “oh yeah,” and realizes that people love thin, white, handsome, damaged men with haunted eyes in long jackets who solve murders in crazy ways… but don’t ever tell them they’re crazy.
Malcolm comes home to his apartment, and his mother, Jessica (Bellamy Young), is there. She’s wasted-yet-prim, super-hot, offers him tons of pills, and tells him she had her maid wipe down his bed restraints. They also both affect two of the WASPiest accents I’ve ever heard outside of satire.
After his mom leaves, he opens his secret DEXTER box of dad-orabilia and considers.
Getting back to the case, Malcolm, Annie, and Gil are at the Medical Examiner’s office (featuring my favourite ever trope which is the quirky coroner, played expertly by Keiko Agena), where they figure out who the killer is because all of the three women go to the same dom (as you do), a guy named Nico. So they head to his place
What happens in Nico’s apartment is nothing short of iconic. I do not use this term lightly (even though I tend to use it a lot). It turns out Nico isn’t the murderer at all, but has been used by the murderer as a honey trap for women. And he’s strapped naked to a chair. And he’s chained by his wrist to a bomb. And the real killer escapes. I don’t even want to give away any spoilers for this scene because it’s so stupid and incredible, but I will. Malcolm decides he needs to axe-chop off Nico’s hand to free him from the chair, actually. JT, instead of stopping him or coming up with a more rational plan, actually runs to the freezer to grab ice trays and a cooler to freeze Nico’s hand. I’m not kidding. Watching Nico run screaming from the exploding building in his panties with a bloody stump is one of the finest pieces of comedy ever aired on television.
What follows is the laziest pun ever written, where Malcolm meets Annie outside of the building, holding the cooler, and says manically, “I gotta give them a hand.” *hold for applause*
Tom Payne and Michael Sheen in “Prodigal Son”"
David Giesbrecht / FOX
But now we know Nico isn’t the killer, so Malcolm has to face his fears and visit his father to really get to the bottom of everything. And it turns out, Dr. Whitly is kind of obsessed with his son, and with reminding him that… they’re the same.
Dr. Martin Whitly is definitely creepy with his Angela-Lansbury-esque knowing smile (you know the one). And when his son smash cuts into his HANNIBAL-style cell (complete with books, drawings, and a Persian rug) they have some creepy vibes together. Father and son, reunited at last, and we’re reminded, a couple of times during the episode, that Dr. Whitly believes he and his son are the same. Which is why I’m mentioning it a couple of times in this recap.
Okay, now to my point about HANNIBAL (a lot of this show is based on HANNIBAL). But remember the scene in HANNIBAL where Will is visiting Hannibal in the psychiatric hospital and their reflections overlap in the cell’s glass and it’s a tiny bit heavy-handed but we all allowed it because we loved the show and it took about 3 years to build up the characters’ relationship to the point where we could visually represent them as being the same? Malcolm and Martin are like that, except without any of the character development.
Malcolm whips through his father’s drawings and patient files, knowing the serial killer must be one of his father’s former patients and deduces the 40 files down to two murderous possibilities. Looking like he wants to take his son to a murder-themed father-boy dance, Martin is amazed by his son’s abilities, and, frightened of losing him again, offers Malcolm the name of the killer in exchange for the promise of more visits and the possibility of solving more murders together. Did his father orchestrate the whole thing? Ya, for sure he did. But he denies it.
The rest of the episode is… fine. Malcolm confronts the killer at some rich person gala that his mother is attending that none of the viewers could ever relate to (because all thin, white, handsome, damaged men with haunted eyes in long jackets who solve murders in crazy ways must also be impossibly rich). He acts really, really hard, like harder than anyone has ever acted, and the serial killer doesn’t kill him even though he admits to being The Surgeon’s prodigal son while weeping (yes he says “prodigal son”) because the killer is shot by the cops before he gets the chance.
The episode ends with Gil’s revelation that it was Malcolm who called the police on his father all those years ago—and saved Gil’s life as the responding officer to what they assumed was a child’s prank call. But that’s not the creepy part. The episode ends with Michael Sheen looking into the camera, smiling, and saying, “My boy.”
Okay, give me a second.
When I was younger, I loved the movie WILDE. I even have an Oscar Wilde tattoo. No joke. The film stars Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde, and, coincidentally, Michael Sheen as Wilde’s one-time lover Robbie Ross. Anyway, Oscar, in the film and in THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, used the phrase, “my dear boy” and “my boy” pretty regularly. It was a thing, and fine during that time period, and what I associate it with. But it also… has a sexy connotation.
Like.
It’s a bit predacious in 2019. And I get it. Martin is a serial killer. He’s a predator. But the whole, weird, unsettlingly sexy connotation of calling his son “my boy” just. Yikes. And part of me wants to believe that the writers/showrunners wanted to capture the old fashioned, aesthete aesthetic with Michael Sheen’s character, but it also makes one want to dry heave a little.
Que the shippers, I guess? Michael Sheen still wants those Tumblr notes, ya’ll.
What happens next with these two goofballs? Find out by watching every Monday on FOX. Which honestly, you should. (Watch it so it doesn’t get cancelled, I’m begging you, I need this.)