Evil Doesn't Have Any Answers For You
The four-season Paramount+ show asks: How do you stay good in a world gone evil? If only there was an easy solution.
It’s summer! The sun is shining. Hot people are wearing sleeveless shirts. Frozen margaritas are plentiful. No better time than to close the door, turn off the lights, and watch a terrifying and genuinely unsettling television show about the worst side of humanity.
For the last four years, every time a new season of Evil is out, I absolutely lose my mind Devon-ing the show. It’s one of my favorite things on television maybe ever, and sadly, this is the last year I can say, “You will not believe what demonic shit Christine Lahti gets up to this week on Evil!” The show has been a hidden gem on Paramount+ that is thankfully getting some more attention now that the first few seasons are on Netflix. So I am once again asking my fellow Americans for your support watching Evil before it goes off the air.
What is Evil? I can hear you asking. The marketing for the show is…. a bit vague. Most of the ads are the main characters looking very serious while creepy angels and demons kinda just hang out around them.
The premise of the show is that a skeptical forensic psychologist, Kristin, is hired by the Catholic Church to investigate possible supernatural incidents. She’s teamed up with a devout priest-in-training, David, and a contractor, Ben, and the three of them look into all sorts of cases— hauntings, demons, resurrections, miracles— all sorts of fun stuff. The set up is very X-Files, there’s the central relationship between the skeptic and the believer (who also have a will-they-or-won’t-they complicated by the fact that both of them are married, one to a human man, and the other to Jesus). There’s all sorts of creepy demons who are definitely giving Buffy-era prosthetics (which you know I’m nostalgic for). And the show has a lot of laugh out loud moments such as:
It’s just an amazing blend between horror and comedy and mystery that we really don’t have enough of on TV right now.
The theme at the center of Evil is, well, evil. Why are people evil? Where does evil come from? How do we stop evil? How do we all prevent ourselves from doing evil? These are questions that in real life don’t have easy answers. And what I want to highlight about what makes this show so special is how in engaging with these big ideas, it leaves so much moral gray area.
There’s many representations, especially in the horror genre, of the good vs. evil fight that basically frames the nice Catholic demon hunters against the forces of pure darkness. Religion is good, demonic stuff is bad. But the show Evil argues that religious people as well as non-religious people are flawed human beings— and that everyone is in a battle for their souls, whether they believe in the concept of souls or not.
All of the main characters of Evil are tempted to do bad things in ways that feel grounded and justifiable, in the way that real people would give reasons for the bad things they do. Kristin is threatened by evil forces to the point where violence and murder seem like the only option to defend herself and her family. The oppressive rules and archaic thinking of the Catholic Church push David into being tempted by a sexual relationship with Kristin despite the damage it would cause to both of them. Kristin’s mother Sheryl, who is, let’s just say “very willing to engage with her dark side,” does her evil actions because of a #girlboss career ambition. All the characters genuinely cross the line into evil behavior at one point or another during the series, in ways that are pretty shocking for the “good guys” of a TV show. But these are people, not saints! Even the Catholic Church, who the main characters are employed by, is portrayed as a quite flawed institution that has just as much sexism, bureaucracy, and secrecy as the demonic groups— it’s not like just being religious is the magic solution to making you a better person. Evil always will be a temptation for any of us and life will always be a push-and-pull between our better and worse impulses.
Besides not portraying religion as a cure-all solution for all moral problems, the show also leaves a lot of other questions unanswered. The weekly debate of “Is this weird shit they’re investigating supernatural or scientific?” pretty much is never fully resolved. A typical episode of the show will present the weird shit: A woman believes she’s possessed, a student believes he saw an alien, there’s potentially a portal to hell underneath an elevator, stuff like that. Kristin will give the scientific explanation (The woman is schizophrenic, the student saw something that wasn’t there, the hotel is creepy but maybe a portal to hell is a stretch, etc.). David will be more open to the supernatural/religious explanation. There’s evidence in both camps… but by the end of the episode, the show usually doesn’t land on either side.
This is markedly different from The X-Files where whatever conspiracy theory Mulder had was 9 times out of 10 correct and Scully pretty much always had egg on her face. In our current conspiracy-driven culture, having the fringy nutjob being constantly proven right is… not as fun. Sometimes the lack of closure in these cases can be a bit frustrating as a viewer, but Evil was created by Robert & Michelle King, who also created other outstanding procedurals such as The Good Wife, The Good Fight, and Elsbeth, so obviously if they wanted to create a satisfying resolution to a case-of-the-week, they’d do it. The truth of things though is that in both science and faith, there are questions like “Are we alone in the universe?” and “Is God real?” that we’ll never know the explanation for. So by leaving these stories open-ended, the show lets the mystery be.
Not to mention— Very often in the cases they’re assigned to investigate, our team loses! Or people die! Or whatever good deed they did gets immediately undone! As somebody who worked on a network procedural where pretty much every time the team caught the bad guys, it’s pretty revolutionary to see a case-of-the-week show where the good guys get their asses kicked so frequently. I actually think it’s pretty inspirational to see the team still get up and face the day despite all the awful shit that happens to them and the people they care about. Unfortunately, evil is one of the base forces that form the world we live in. We’ll never be able to eradicate it in our lifetimes, let alone in 44 minutes. In a thesis that reminds me a lot of the last episode of another great show, Angel, all we can do is fight the good fight, but we’re never going to really win.
The concept of faith is something I’ve always been really interested in. I grew up Jewish but I’m a pretty secular person who no longer practices most of the rituals I grew up doing. I often go back and forth on big religious concepts and whether I believe in them or not, and I think I especially get upset when organized religion is used to justify cruelty, or prejudice, or violence— the ongoing situation of Israel’s large-scale destruction in Gaza being a perfect example. But on the other hand, I also see how much good it can do to believe in something larger than yourself, and to have that spiritual community.
One of my best friends from growing up was a staunchly devout Catholic who is currently in school to become a Dominican Friar (he will probably not read this article as he barely uses a computer). This was a friendship that was very complicated for me (in fact, I wrote a whole script inspired by it) and something that always struck me was how even though our political beliefs were extremely extremely extremely different, there was actually quite a lot we agreed on. We both saw the economic inequality, environmental destruction, and dangerous technology of the world and agreed they were serious problems. We just disagreed on what the solutions were. But even amongst our differences, I do think at his core he is a person that cares about the people in his life and wants to make the world a better place, in his own way. So I really appreciate the representation of Kristin and David on the show coming from different backgrounds but still finding common ground. Despite not agreeing on what they believe the answers to life’s problems are, they’re still able to work together and do their jobs with the best of intentions.
As the world seems to get more evil every day, it’s easy to fantasize about there being an easy magic bullet to make the bad guys go away. It would be nice, honestly, if all it took to get rid of our demons was an exorcism. That’s why it’s so meaningful that the show is committed to really displaying the difficulties and endless toiling it takes to be a good person. Unfortunately, we probably will never find out if there’s a God, or aliens, or demons, or a code to the universe. We’ll never get an explanation for any of it. So how do we stop evil?
The only answer: We get to work.
What Else I’m Watching:
Evil, Season 4
Mary & George, Season 1
The Bear, Season 3
Sex and the City, Seasons 4 & 5
The Departed
Twisters
Inside Out 2
Midnight Run
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