On September 19th, 2019, a new creepy drama called "Evil" premiered on CBS, and my obsession with the show began.
Created by Robert and Michelle King ("The Good Wife," "The Good Fight"), "Evil" followed the scary stories of three vastly different people (played by Katja Herbers, Mike Colter, and Aasif Mandvi) hired by the Catholic Church to investigate supernatural incidents.
After the show's first season, it switched from the CBS network to Paramount+ streaming (owned by CBS), where the Kings were no longer bound by FCC rules and regulations. The show got raunchier, sexier, funnier, and a lot more gross—and I loved it even more!
"Evil" is also the show that truly got me through the pandemic and helped me deal with my firing from a certain joke of a radio station that will not be named here. So, watching it was not only entertaining but also oddly comforting and very therapeutic.
The show's similarities to things like "The X-Files," "Kolchak: The Night Stalker," and "Twin Peaks" did not go unnoticed (or unacknowledged by the creators) and only added to my interest.
From the first episode, in which we are introduced to forensic psychologist Kristen Bouchard (Herbers) as she is consulting for the D.A.'s office on a case involving the mental state of a convicted murderer, I was hooked.
The smart, scary, and funny pilot was a unique, startling, and powerful mix of genres. It was part horror, part black comedy, and part legal procedural (the genre that the Kings were so very successful at creating), and somehow that weird combination worked flawlessly.
Each week, the skeptical Kristen and her two partners, Catholic seminarian David Acosta (Colter) and tech expert/fellow skeptic Ben Shakir (Mandvi) encounter possessed humans, hideous demons, unexplainable terrifying events, and bloodcurdling challenges, many of which are aided by the main villain Dr. Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson).
All of this madness is juggled with the main characters' personal stories, such as David's crisis of faith, Ben's faltering relationships and struggles with dubiousness, and Kristen's chaotic family life with her four daughters (the terrific young actresses Maddy Crocco, Brooklyn Shuck, Skylar Gray, Dayla Knapp) estranged husband (Patrick Brammall), and mysterious mother (the GREAT Christine Lahti).
These disparate elements have no business working together, but they do. Brilliantly.
The show had an uncanny ability to freak me out on a weekly basis. Freaking out a jaded horror fan like me is not an easy thing to do, but "Evil" did it consistently. Episodes involving horrifying hospital stays, haunted elevators, demons on the road, evil kids, dead bodies coming to life, and a couple of Halloween episodes that are top-notch in terror, provided me with much-needed thrills and satisfied my horror fix every week.
Don't even get me started on the deeply disturbing Christmas episode from Season One in which groups of children are obsessed with a troublesome, creepy earworm of a song (with video) that invaded my mind, head, and dreams for weeks after the episode aired. Scary, funny, and weird as hell, it's one of my favorite episodes of television ever.
The show also took on technology, social media, the internet, and other modern topics with brutally effective satire and brilliant plotting. "Evil" was a timely show that said more about the current zeitgeist than virtually any other show on television, and it did so while both scaring the shit out of the audience and making them laugh their heads off.
The complicated relationships between the characters and the possible love triangles, betrayals of trust, and mysterious shifting allegiances added depth to the proceedings. They made you all the more invested in the people on screen, and the smart, dense writing balanced reality, fantasy, and satire with aplomb.
Over the years, the show featured some wonderfully varied and immensely talented actors including Kurt Fuller, Boris McGiver, Wallace Shawn (!!), the late, great Peter Scolari, Li Jun Li, Darren Pettie, Tim Matheson, Joe Grifasi, Dylan Baker, Paul Guilfoyle, Richard Kind, Denis O'Hare, Kenneth Tigar, Vondie Curtis-Hall, John Glover, Anna Chlumsky, Tony Plana, and in the final few episodes, the hilarious John Carroll Lynch.
A STELLAR line-up, indeed.
The best addition to the show happened during Season Two when the great Andrea Martin joined the cast as Sister Andrea, a petite 70-something nun with a simple philosophy and a mysterious connection to the supernatural.
Martin was simply magnificent in the role, and watching her walk the tightrope between comedy and drama was a blast. Watching her kill various slimy demons with shovels, hedge shears, and hammers was a damn delight. Perhaps a Sister Andrea spinoff is in order? What do you think, Robert and Michelle King???
The show had very few clinker episodes, and even though some pretty large loose ends did not get tied up in the end (remember when Kristen killed a guy?), the show ended on a reasonably satisfactory note, with some nice closure for the main characters, even if the final moment involving a new baby and some possible evil “complications” was a bit wacky and weird. Overall, I was quite happy with how it turned out.
What I really want to see is more of the terrific and lovely Katja Herbers, who you might remember from “The Leftovers” and “Westworld.” Herbers, a Dutch-born actress, is a very quirky, uncommonly charming, and immensely talented performer who can do just about anything while always maintaining a core of vast intelligence. She was my favorite part of “Evil,” by far.
By the way, if you enjoyed Herbers in “Evil,” then you MUST see her in the terrific 2019 horror/satire “The Columnist” in which her titular character goes on a killing spree to rid the world of assholes on social media. Yeah, it’s as cool as it sounds, and she is absolutely terrific in it.
"Evil" was a very special show, but it never really took off like it should have. It definitely had a very passionate fan base and will continue to be loved for years to come. If you have yet to watch it, all four seasons are on Paramount+, and the first three seasons are on Netflix.
Get to it before the Vatican sends a cartel to exorcise your demons and send you back hell!!
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