'Scarpetta' Review: A Tale of Two Timelines

So: Scarpetta. Some spoiler-free thoughts.

First, full confession. While I am familiar with the source material, truth is that I came in way too late to the Scarpetta series of novels by Patricia Cornwell to actually enjoy them—primarily because reading the first book (Postmortem, 1990) thirty-plus years after it was first published was riddled with long passages about (now) very outdated technology. It made reading the earlier books a total slog, which then put the kibosh on reading the more recent ones because they are chronological in nature.

That said, not having an intimate familiarity with the books should have made the proceedings fresher, without that nagging book-versus-adaptation comparative analysis we tend to do when watching adaptations of books on TV or in film.

The verdict? I enjoyed Scarpetta but can recognize its flaws and agree with some of the criticism leveled at it. Bias (because of my JLC super-fandom) and all.

This first season is actually adaptations of two Cornwell novels—the aforementioned Postmortem and 2021's Autopsy. Liz Sarnoff, who serves as Scarpetta’s showrunner and head writer, cleverly draws a parallel between the two pieces of source material that allows dual timelines—one set in present day, the other in 1998. Two timelines allow for two casts, and this might be Scarpetta’s greatest first season strength. Allow me to explain.

Undeniably, the present-day timeline has the stacked cast of the year—three Academy Award winners (Kidman, Curtis, and DeBose), recognizable TV talents (Cannavale and Baker), plus a few excellent character actors sprinkled in for good measure (Lenny Clarke and a fantastic Stephanie Faracy). Hell, even author Patricia Cornwell cameos as the judge who sears Kidman’s character in. But this is also where Sarnoff and company throw everything and the kitchen sink at the audience in an attempt to give all these incredible actors something to do. At times, it all feels a little overstuffed and narratively off kilter.

The 1998 timeline, by contrast, is more linear—a simpler, straightforward procedural in which younger versions of the same characters grapple with the first case involving a newly-appointed (and first female) Chief Medical Examiner, Kay Scarpetta. This is also where I’m going to give a well-deserved shoutout to casting director John Papsidera, who really nails the younger versions of the primary cast. The standout is Rosy McEwen, whose past credits include Black Mirror, The Alienist, the film Blue Jean, and alongside Julia Garner in the Rosemary’s Baby prequel, Apartment 7A. As the young Scarpetta, McEwen embodies Kidman’s ticks, tricks, and quirks to perfection. Also noteworthy is the genius casting of Bobby Cannavale’s real-life son, Jacob Lumet Cannavale, as the young Marino, Hunter Parrish as the young Benton, and Mike Vogel (Under the Dome, Bates Motel) as Bill Boltz, a city attorney. Sosie Bacon, daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, shines in the small but consequential role of journalist Abby Turnball.

Kidman is serviceable in the titular role, while Cannavale shines and Baker gets lost in the background. DeBose is good, but she’s saddled with an annoying character. No surprise, but Curtis is the scene-stealing standout—even if she veers dangerously close to her Emmy-winning character from The Bear at times. Her Dorothy (older sister to Scarpetta) is brash and bawdy, a flamboyant children’s book author who’s hot on men and cool on motherhood, which sets up much of the sisterly resentments between her and Kidman. Much of Scarpetta is an exploration of grief, with the contrast between how Dorothy and Kay each handle an early-life tragedy setting up much of the later conflict. Again, some backstage kudos to the show’s costume designer Ane Crabtree, who opts to emphasize Curtis’s cleavage to the point that her breasts deserve their own credit here. Note to Sarnoff: The winning Dorothy formula going forward is to dial down the character’s anger (which, as mentioned, dips into Donna Berzatto territory) and tap into Curtis’s sizable comedic chops.

Even when the audience risks whiplash from the myriad competing storylines and subplots, Scarpetta manages to keep itself narratively on task and together, leading to a jaw-dropping third act and cliffhanger that will likely lead viewers to tune in for the previously announced second season. Interestingly, both seasons were originally slated to shoot simultaneously last year. For scheduling reasons (likely those of Kidman and Curtis who are juggling multiple projects these days), it did not, and the second season is now slated to begin filming in Nashville later this month. That might be the biggest gift given to Sarnoff and her creative team, who can now take the show’s first season criticism and apply it to the next eight episodes.

In Praise of the Understated Excellence of 'The Middle'

I'm going to admit it: Last night's series finale of The Middle reduced me to a blubbering fool. After nine seasons and 215 episodes, the Heck family said goodbye to their viewers with a pitch-perfect, lovingly-executed swan song titled "A Heck of a Ride" that honored the show's tone, characters, and—most of all—its audience.

For the uninitiated, The Middle is a half-hour ABC sitcom that premiered in 2009 and follows the misadventures of an endearing, perpetually cash-strapped Indiana family. And although the show never achieved water-cooler status, it did achieve an enduring charm. The show boasted no major cast changes over its nine-year run, a narrative consistency that established its own sense of history, and an upbeat warm-heartedness without the saccharine aftertaste. It was one of those shows that I began watching because it was likely wedged between two destination shows and became an accidental favorite over the years.

The end was on par with any of the great series finales in TV history, with Patricia Heaton (as family matriarch Frankie) having a roadside meltdown during a family road trip to deposit oldest son Axl (Charlie McDermott) in Denver for his new job and adult life. “It’s the end of an era,” she laments. “It's never going to be the same again.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Neil Flynn's Mike (husband and family patriarch) says, as we flash-forward to the family's post-Middle lives, which leave every beloved character exactly where our hearts want them to be—especially Eden Scher's eternal optimist Sue. We even get a glimpse of a bright romantic future for her gay bestie Brad (played with such joyful zeal by Brock Ciarlelli, who has been a scene-stealing highlight over the years). The show ends with a certain character's reprisal of a beloved speech quirk, and I (literally) just sobbed.

In a world that moves so fast and in a medium that cancels shows in the space of a few episodes, the comforting consistency and longevity of The Middle is worth noting—and celebrating.

SCREAM QUEENS: A Bloody Mess of Good Fun

Comedy and horror are two distinct genres, each with its own formulas and structures, devices and characteristic stylings. Blending the two is tricky stuff and, inevitably, one genre proves dominant when this hybrid model is attempted. In the SCARY MOVIE franchise, for example, comedy is the dominant genre at play, with the laughs outnumbering – even overshadowing – any frights. Conversely, in the films of the SCREAM franchise, scares trump the laughs in equal measure. 

So when Ryan Murphy, then best known for the straightforward comedy GLEE and upfront horror of the AMERICAN HORROR STORY anthology series, announced a comedy-horror anthology called SCREAM QUEENS back in October of 2014, the passionate pop culture junkie himself had to know that successfully pulling off the feat was a tall order at the outset. Then again, maybe not, as Murphy seemed to think – with arguable arrogance or naiveté – that he was creating something new here with frequent collaborators Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan.

Expectations were high. Murphy – who had by that time developed both a passion and a penchant for successfully casting actresses of a certain age – wooed perennial scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis back to the small screen amidst negotiations of limited time on the show’s first season New Orleans set. Anticipation was also high because Murphy had proven himself adept in both genres. As the FOX and Murphy PR machines launched massive amounts of advance press – including a much-touted and successful dual AHS-SCREAM QUEENS panel at San Diego Comic Con – SCREAM QUEENS promised to be a slam-dunk. 

SCREAM QUEENS bowed on September 22nd, 2015, to decidedly mixed reviews from critics and (seemingly) lackluster ratings, attracting a disappointing 4.04 million viewers while lagging in same-night numbers behind shows on CBS, NBC, and ABC. Being beat by THE MUPPETS reboot didn’t ease what must have been Murphy’s initial pain. But Nielsen’s first delayed-viewing snapshot of the season would tell a different story, with SCREAM QUEENS realizing a 65% gain – the night’s biggest in both raw numbers and percentage according to Nielsen’s “live plus-3” estimates.

As reported by VARIETY, SCREAM QUEENS would prove to be an example of modern-day viewing habits, with only a fraction of the show’s audience watching live when it aired and viewership increasing by 189% when time-shifted viewing and multi-platform viewers for the entire season were factored in. The inaugural season ended up bringing in a total audience of about 8.1 million viewers, no doubt aided by the buzz-worthy show’s sizable social media presence.

Ratings and critical notice aside, the first season of SCREAM QUEENS was a mixed bag. The plot for the show’s thirteen-episode first season focuses on a string of gory murders plaguing the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority at fictional Wallace University, triggered by events linked to a twenty-year-old murder mystery and cover-up. Curtis plays Dean Cathy Munsch, nemesis to the sorority’s president, Chanel Oberlin (Emma Roberts). Dean Munsch wants to see the snobby sorority system dismantled; Chanel wants to rule over it with a Prada-coiffed iron fist. Interrupting this battle of feminist wills is a red devil-masked serial killer who dispatches at least one hapless cast member each episode in increasingly outlandish ways.

Murphy and company wear their horror influences proudly on their sleeves with the elaborate murder set pieces here harkening back to the high camp sensibility of the giallo films of the mid- to late-70’s. Highlights of the pilot alone include a maid getting her face melted off in deep fryer, a prank involving a spray-tan tank spiked with hydrochloric acid, and the Red Devil tooling around on a lawnmower decapitating a sorority sister buried up to her neck in the sorority house lawn. Visually, the show is a treat with garish colors and flamboyant couture that give the gruesome proceedings a highly-stylized aesthetic.

Cast is uniformly excellent, with Murphy’s knack for attracting talent on full display. Roberts seems born to play the uber-bitchy Chanel, with Billie Lourde (real-life daughter of Carrie Fisher and granddaughter of Debbie Reynolds), Abigail Breslin, and pop ingénue Ariana Grande ably rounding out her clique of Chanels. Keke Palmer (in a breakout role here) plays sassy KKT pledge Zayday Williams, while Skyler Samuels plays fellow pledge Grace Gardner, who’s drawn into a Nancy Drew-like amateur detective role as the murderous goings-on escalate. Oliver Hudson (replacing originally cast Joe Manganiello) plays Samuels’ alumni father, while Diego Boneta takes on boyfriend-sidekick duties as journalism student Pete Martinez.

On the fraternity side, Glen Powell emerges as a real breakout star playing the narcissistic dumb jock Chad Radwell, President of the Dickie Dollar Scholars; pop hunk Nick Jonas as Boone, his gay best friend and fraternity brother; English actor Lucien Laviscount as the appropriately named Earl Grey, and YouTube twins Aaron and Austin Rhodes as Roger and Dodger, respectively. Niecy Nash is the genuine scene-stealer throughout the show’s first season, her uproarious portrayal of skittish security guard Denise Hemphill marked by over-the-top shrieking, screaming, and zippy one-liners.

Interestingly, the show’s first season both succeeds and fails in the same key creative aspect: the writing. With writing duties shared and handed off between Murphy, Falchuk, and Brennan (or MFB, abbreviated), one could reasonably expect some problems with consistency. But what we get with the first installment of SCREAM QUEENS is painstaking attention to detail when it comes to character dialogue and an overall disjointed larger narrative.  MFB have an uncanny knack for dialogue, and their work here on SCREAM QUEENS is exemplary with lines that snap, crackle, and pop with the precision of heat-seeking missiles. Roberts’ lines, in particular, are razor-sharp with snarky, cringe-worthy political incorrectness. Her petulant coffee-shop rant over an incorrectly made pumpkin spice latte boils over with brilliant social commentary on millennials and entitlement. Curtis, meanwhile, is handed lovingly-crafted monologues that anchor the show’s abject silliness in weightier themes of feminism, politics, and the inherent evils of social hierarchies.

Plot-wise, SCREAM QUEENS maintains strict adherence to the slasher formula while borrowing heavily from Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE model, complete with a sizable body count that slowly narrows down the identity of the killer through a bloody process of attrition and dramatic drawing room-like denouement. One would think that such a solid (if clichéd) narrative structure would lend itself to an easily sustainable level of coherence – but it doesn’t. MFB, while giddily constructing tongue-twisting lines of deliciously glib dialogue for their characters to spew at each other, quickly lose sight of what matters most in a murder mystery – plot. The narrative zigs and zags all over the place, with illogical twists and turns that smack of convenience. It’s as if MFB use the parody element of SCREAM QUEENS as an excuse to lazily eschew any and all semblances of logic.

The first season of SCREAM QUEENS ultimately wallows in its own absurdity, with cartoon pacing and overblown…well, everything. It’s gaudy, glitzy excess in every sense of the word. But it’s deceptively mindless fun, with an underlying satirical brilliance that peeks through its garish coating in snippets of spot-on pop culture deconstruction.

Halfway through the first season, it was obvious to most that SCREAM QUEENS would enjoy a single-season run. Viewers were torn – too macabre for comedy fans, too silly for the horror crowd – and ratings were dropping. The show would finish its inaugural season on December 8th, 2015, with 2.53 million viewers, losing 1.51 million of its screaming queens along the way. Although Curtis garnered a well-deserved Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance in a Television Series by an Actress – Musical or Comedy (which she’d lose to newcomer Rachel Bloom), and the show won both a People’s Choice Award for Favorite New TV Comedy and a Critics’ Choice Television Award for Most Exciting New Series, cancellation seemed all but a certainty.

But Hollywood is a weird little machine that plays by its own set of rules – and Ryan Murphy clearly boasts some serious say-so around town. It was announced in January that SCREAM QUEENS would indeed be back for another go-round.

Five episodes into the show’s sophomore season, SCREAM QUEENS seems to be finding its tonal footing. MFB have opted to set the new season in a hospital for medical oddities, already seeming a more authentic match for the show’s Grand Guignol-style of madcap macabre. Curtis is back as Cathy Munsch – now an honorary PhD who buys the hospital for as-yet unknown reasons – and MFB, wisely, have made her more front and center (likely to do with the more Curtis-convenient Los Angeles set). Niecy Nash also returns as Denise Hemphill, now an FBI Special Agent, but no less crass and smart-alecky. Zayday, along with the surviving members of the Chanels, are all back as medical students, with the ageless John Stamos and (thoroughly unappealing) Taylor Lautner joining the ensemble as doctors. Lea Michelle, whose first season deeds have finally caught up to her, is also back as Hester, now hysterically Hannibal Lecter-like, as is Glen Powell’s even-funnier himbo scene-stealer Chad Radwell. Kirstie Alley rounds out the second season cast as Ingrid Hoffel, the stern hospital administrator.     

To differentiate between a first season that failed to meet expectations that the advance hype promised and the second season reboot, Murphy and company have wisely opted to visually distinguish SCREAM QUEENS, version 2.0, from its predecessor. While the highly-stylized aesthetic that made the first season such a visual treat to watch is maintained, the show has ditched the bubblegum pink and red hues that colored fictional Wallace University and the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority and adopted an alien-green and blue color palette to tint its dingy hospital interiors. The visuals pop amid the lurid, nightmarish colors.

More importantly, MFB have seemingly settled into a creative comfort zone with the writing, opting for ghoulish comedy versus humorous horror. It’s a small distinction some might dismiss as semantics, but it’s key here. It’s no longer horror trying to be edgy with the humor; it’s comedy trying to be edgy with the horror. The dialogue still snaps, and MFB continue to write deliciously sharp soliloquies for Curtis.

Unfortunately, it may be too little, too late for the millions of initial viewers who gave up on the series. Ratings for the second season premiere were down by almost 50%, with World Series and election night preemptions doing little to keep attention-deficit viewers in place and focused in subsequent weeks on the macabre mayhem at the CURE Institute.

Prediction: SCREAM QUEENS is headed for almost-certain cancellation following its sophomore run. Murphy will move Curtis over to AMERICAN HORROR STORY in a much-ballyhooed return to her roots or to one of his other properties, depending upon the themes of future installments of AMERICAN CRIME STORY and FEUD. I’m already squealing in anticipation of shared AHS scenes between Curtis and Kathy Bates, so I’m rooting firmly for the former scenario. Roberts will also return to the AHS fold, and it’s not the last of Powell or Michelle we’ll see in the Murphy universe either. SCREAM QUEENS, the concept and the show, will go down with a lackluster legacy of having more style than substance, likely being better remembered in the Curtis filmography versus television history itself.