Oscar Picks

Evil (2019-2024) 4 Seasons

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I am so excited. I have to renew my Paramount+ subscription because Evil is back. The official start date is May, 23,2024.

I hope there are other Evil fans out there. It is a disturbing show about three people tasked with analyzing odd/supernatural/demonic situations for the New York Archdiocese. One is an adorable mother of three girls, who is a psychologist and a lapsed Catholic. Another is a handsome man, who is a prospective priest. And the last is an atheist/lapsed Muslim who looks at goings on from a tech angle. These three are played by Katja Herbers, Aasif Mandvi and Mike Colter

Along with the three main characters are lots of wonderful character actors with recurring parts like Christine Lahti as the girls Glamma, Andrea Martin as a nun who is single-handedly taking on evil and Michael Emerson as a proponent of that evil. These three are the stand-outs of the show, especially Emerson

I love this show and am so excited that it is back. It had been on hiatus since 2022.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Hi! Wow, I am currently binge-watching this series on Netflix and came here to see what others thought about it... only to find that nobody ever responded to your original post on this! I'm flabbergasted!

I have one main question. I'm near the end of season 2 right now (Episode 12, "D is for Doll"), and I may have missed something important. It involves Sheryl, Kristen's mom (played by Christine Lahti). I realize she started getting involved with Leland and then got a little caught up in his evil side of things... but then broke up with him when he bluntly said he'd been using her.

Seems like I blinked and then she's all over the place and I have no clue how or why or what she believes. She's got an Eddie doll she sacrifices money to. Then she's tied up in the world of Edward Tragoren (played by Tim Matheson), but I'm not sure how that got so weird. What the heck was going on when Leland and Edward injected her with something that seemed to paralyze her (like they'd paralyzed Dr. Autrey)... but then she's okay and doing the semi-evil bidding of Leland and/or Edward? She doesn't exactly act possessed or controlled, but clearly she is.

Anyway, that's the question that brought me here, so I hope you get a notification of my comment here and can answer my question! Back to bingeing!



I could've sworn there was another thread, and that I posted in it, but I haven't found it.

Anyway, yeah, watched this when it was brand new and followed it the whole way, even subscribed to Paramount+ a couple of times to watch the newer stuff.

It's...weird. It's good. I like it a lot. But at a certain point I had to just accept that it wasn't going to be as clear or straight-lined as I "wanted" it to be. It was going to have weird curveballs, do things just because they were interesting, and so on. It also gets a bit better as it goes (the first season is just okay, IMO).

Lovely imagery, though. Kinda reminded me of Hannibal (the TV show) from time to time in that regard. And there were a few things in the finale/last season that I really liked.



The Adventure Starts Here!
I don't recall why I started watching it--probably that Netflix suggested it to me. Once I was deep into the first season, I did a little sleuthing to be sure that it had a proper series finale/ending and wasn't just rudely canceled mid-story. I was satisfied enough by what I found out to continue watching.

I'm still not sure what's up with Sheryl (Rad-G, ha ha). I might have blinked and missed that she purposely decided to follow Leland and his ilk, and her actions seem to waffle between good and evil, so I'm never quite sure what her true motives are. And that whole bit with her and Dr. Autrey being injected with something and paralyzed still has me confused... because a scene or two later, Sheryl is up, walking around, and doing Edward's bidding for no truly discernible reason.

Her character is the only perplexing part of the show to me. I am, though, aware that the writers are being pretty coy about which way we should be thinking about all these supernatural-type sightings by various characters. (Is Kristen just hallucinating, as she thinks? Stuff like that.) The show is an odd mix of being episodic and yet also being an ongoing story. Since I assume it originally was a show that aired, say, weekly, instead of being released all at once like Netflix-produced shows, I suppose this mix makes more sense in that original context.



I don't think you missed anything, she just doesn't have a clear compass, which is why Leland was able to manipulate her in the first place. Whether that kind of characterization is sloppy because we don't know what someone's thinking, or sophisticated because real life people are often like that, is another question.

I will say that Courtney and I had a lot of discussion, especially from season 3 onward, about what the characters actually believed at a given point. Early on they do the standard first-half-of-a-horror-film thing where all the seemingly supernatural stuff has a plausible explanation, so that the more skeptical characters can go on disbelieving. But later on stuff gets wilder and more than once we thought "shouldn't there be a scene here with such-and-such is reevaluating what they do or don't believe?" There's some of that but not quite enough. It's odd.

It gets a from me, though, just because it takes theological questions somewhat seriously, which is incredibly rare. That and it being wacky enough to always stay interesting. And, of course, the primary characters are all portrayed really well.



I believe Sheryl embraces evil. She doesn't know what Kristen knows about Leland. I think Leland is giving her some kind of creepy substance to rejuvenate her. It is all over the map and doesn't follow its own logic all the time. But it is very entertaining. I'm glad you two enjoy it.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Side note as I continue to binge this series (I'm on season 3, episode 9, "The Demon of Money")... I'm getting tired of the lighting in this show always being dark, even during the daytime (unless it is a scene outdoors). Nobody turns on the kitchen lights. David's room is horrendously dark. Ben's room is the same way. Kristen's entire house is severely underlit.

I get the ambiance they're trying to create by doing this, but it's honestly getting annoying.

One funny thing, which I assume was added once the show made it to Netflix and away from the weekly episode broadcasts: During the typical "Skip Intro" bit as the opening credits roll, another line appears, "If you skip the intro, you will be haunted." It's a fun touch.



Side note as I continue to binge this series (I'm on season 3, episode 9, "The Demon of Money")... I'm getting tired of the lighting in this show always being dark, even during the daytime (unless it is a scene outdoors). Nobody turns on the kitchen lights. David's room is horrendously dark. Ben's room is the same way. Kristen's entire house is severely underlit.

I get the ambiance they're trying to create by doing this, but it's honestly getting annoying.
I watched one episode a week, but I can see how that would be annoying. You could watch something bathed in light like a sitcom between shows. It would be like a sorbet between courses. Of those three bedrooms, I hated Kristen’s the most. I could never sleep in there. Brrrrrr!



The Adventure Starts Here!
Okay, I'm hip-deep in season 4, and Kristen is cooking in her kitchen and dancing and singing while she works. Her kitchen is lit like a dungeon basement! WHO could cook in a basically unlit kitchen?

Love this show but SOOOO tired of the unrealistic lighting in nearly every scene. /endrant



The Adventure Starts Here!
Oh, I almost forgot! One ongoing element of the show that I really love is when the four daughters all start talking at once. It's always funny and always realistic. The four girls playing the daughters do a fantastic job of making their sister relationships seem authentic, and the overlapping yapping always makes me laugh.

Also, the first time Leland has a counseling session with the big horned demon made me bust out laughing. Their snarky treatment of most of the demons keeps the show strangely delightful. And Andrea Martin is always a gift.



My favorite part of the show is the character of Leland. The writing is great and Michael Emerson is fabulous. I am not sure what else he has done but this is probably the best role of his career.



The Adventure Starts Here!
My favorite part of the show is the character of Leland. The writing is great and Michael Emerson is fabulous. I am not sure what else he has done but this is probably the best role of his career.
He played Ben Linus in the series LOST back in the early 2000s... and his role in that show was quite similar in terms of his slimy ability to make you wonder just how much of his BS you should be believing. He's fabulous in roles like that... but since I'd seen him in all those LOST episodes several decades ago, his Leland character sometimes felt too similar.

He was also in the show Person of Interest, where he wasn't quite so slimy.

I just finished the entire series a few hours ago and am sad to see it go. I was really snort-laughing at the continued text at the bottom of the credit screens telling us what would happen if we skipped the credits.

Not sure how fond I was of that "twist" ending with baby Timothy, though. I mean, c'mon. All that was missing was "The End??" at the end. I know this show stayed campy throughout its run, so I'll forgive its use of that campy, stereotypical ending.

One question lingers: Much of the time we weren't led to believe that Leland was the top dog among the demons, so although he was the bad guy we most wanted to see get his due, what happens with the other demons we'd seen throughout the series? I guess we just go on knowing that the struggle continues but our nasty Leland, at least, has finally gotten what's coming to him. And he's under the watchful eye of Sister Andrea, so we know she'll keep him in line.