The Alienist Episode 1
I’ve been waiting eagerly (almost impatiently) for the premiere of The Alienist. I started watching the first episode with high expectations – Not only did it meet those expectations, but far exceeded them. This gritty psychological timepiece thriller is everything you could ask for in a show.
The series opens at night as a lone police officer walks down a snowy New York City street in 1896. We then see a small hand in the snow. At first I thought there was a child buried, but then I realized the hand was severed. As blood drops from above on the policeman’s face he runs to “sound the alarm.” In the days before modern communication we learn this was done by banging loudly on metal posts.
A Tragedy
Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Bruhl) is woken in the night. He comes down to find a traumatized young boy in his kitchen. When Kreizler asks him what he saw, he says “Why was he wearing a dress?”. We discover that a young boy, dressed like a girl, has been cut to pieces. Kreizler sends young Stevie Taggert (Matt Lintz) to fetch John Moore (Luke Evans) and bring him to the bridge with his drawing kit.
We find John Moore in the midst of a romantic encounter with a lovely young woman. I will confess the first thought that came to mind when I saw him was “Gaston!” but I soon forgot about his previous role in the movie Beauty and the Beast.The couple is interrupted as an older woman rushes into the room telling Moore a young lad needs to see him. As Moore pays the young woman, I realize this is a brothel.
Stevie takes Moore for a wild carriage ride through the streets of New York to the site where the boy’s body was found. It’s atop a bridge that is under construction. Moore, who is an illustrator for The New York Times, talks his way up to the body’s location. Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt (Brian Geraghty), yes THAT Teddy Roosevelt who eventually becomes our 26th President, reluctantly allows Moore to view the body.
Poor Giorgio
As Captain Connor (David Wilmot) lifts the boy’s head we see that his eyes are missing. It is assumed by the men that birds got them, but I immediately wonder if the killer gouged them out. The Captain recognizes him as Giorgio Santorelli, a boy prostitute who works out of Paresis Hall. Roosevelt tells Connor to bring the proprietor and owner of the building to his office the next day.
Moore struggles to sketch what he sees, overcome by the vicious attack on the young boy. It’s refreshing to see Moore shook up by the site, makes it feel more real than if he had not been affected at all. It also shows us that his character is not use to dealing with the seedier side of life. As Moore sketches Giorgio’s remains the camera pans down on the poor mutilated boy. We zoom in on a gruesome close up of his face with it’s missing eyes. It’s a bit disturbing as we zoom all the way into his eye socket. We then see Kreizler looking at a picture of two young children labeled Benjamin and Sofia.
Moore brings his drawings of the dead child to Kreizler who examines them thoroughly. Moore describes the mutilated child to the Doctor. He tells him the boy looked as if an animal had torn him apart. The details of the boys wounds were extensive, including his kidney and lung left on the ground at his feet and his genitalia removed. My heart goes out to this poor little boy. Moore then lets Kreizler know a suspect has been arrested.
A Suspect Arrested
Kreizler and Moore arrive at Bellevue Hospital to see the suspect. Moore appears as shocked by the behaviors of the patients as I am. It saddens me to see how the mentally ill were treated during that time. Kreizler finds the suspect, Henry Wolff (Jack Kesy) repeatedly smashing his head against the concrete wall. I literally find myself cringing with every blow to his bloody head. After talking to the suspect Kreizler deduces that while Wolff did kill a man named Edwin, he did not kill the boy.
The two men show up at Police Headquarters, where you can tell by the way the Officers look at him, that Kreizler is not liked at all. With no back story up to this point I can only speculate on whether it’s the man or the profession that the Police despise. I suspect in Kreizler’s case it’s both.
Old Friends
They arrive at Commissioner Roosevelt’s office where we finally meet Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning), his secretary and the first woman to hold a position with the Police Department. We also learn that Howard and Moore’s families “go way back”. We finally get a taste of back story at this point. The three men, Kreizler, Moore and Roosevelt attended Harvard together. Or did they? Is this true backstory? Or just what they tell Howard in an attempt to see Roosevelt?
Roosevelt is not happy to see Kreizler when he and Moore barge into his office. He tells him that Wolff is innocent of murdering the boy. He explains the similarities with the unsolved murder three years previous of Benjamin and Sofia Zweig. That explains the picture Kreizler was holding earlier. Benjamin had been a patient of his who liked to dress like a girl. Their bodies had been found in a water tank. Benjamin’s body was mutilated in the same way that Giorgio’s was. Kreizler is convinced they were all killed by the same person. He wants access to the post mortem of the siblings, but Roosevelt denies his request.
Don’t Mess with Miss Howard
We get a taste of 19th Century sexual harassment in the workplace when Miss Howard goes looking for Captain Connor for the Commissioner. While showing her his penis he tells her there is a hairless rat about. Howard tells him she only sees a little pink mouse. Good for you Sara! I love that she has no problem standing up to these sexist men.
Outside the station Moore asks Howard to get the Zweig files for Kreizler. She refuses to do it. She does not want to lose the trust Roosevelt has in her. Moore gives her his drawing of Giorgio’s body explaining they need her help and then walks away.
We find ourselves in what appears to be perhaps a basement of some sort. There is a pot on a fire. A black cat enters and is fed a bit of liver. We see someone holding a picture of “Gloria”, Giorgio’s altar ego at Paresis Hall. We then see an eyeball dropped into the boiling water. It seems I was right after all and the killer took his eyes, not the birds.
The Zweig Files
Moore back at the brothel and as he is leaving Miss Howard is waiting for him. He is shocked that she found him there. She presents Moore with the files that Kreizler wants. She tells Moore the only thanks she needs is to be told if anything interesting is found in them.
When Moore brings the files to Kreizler he discovers there are no details in them about the wounds and how they were inflicted. We are then at a graveyard as two little coffins are dug up. I wonder if Kreizler had to get permission to do this, or if he just did it on his own. I don’t even know if you needed special permission back then, but I would assume you did.
A Mother in Mourning
The Zweig children’s mother arrives unannounced at Kreizler’s house. He tells her it was necessary to have the children’s remains dug up. She says she has read about the boy on the bridge. Kreizler assures her that Benjamin’s desire to dress like a girl had nothing in common to Giorgio the prostitute’s dressing like a girl. She tells him that she trusted him. As she stares at him with her pale blue eyes they leave me with a very creepy feeling. She tells him both her children are dead because of him. What does that mean?
John Moore arrives at Kreizler’s house to discover brother’s Marcus (Douglas Smith) and Lucius Isaacson (Matthew Shear) there to perform an autopsy on the children’s remains. The Commissioner did not trust the Coroner’s Office to keep quiet so he lent the brothers to Kreizler. They can help the doctor for as long as he is needed. They say they won’t be missed at the department because of their modern methods and because they are Jewish. Kreizler explains he wants them to find anything that will connect Benjamin’s murder to the Santorelli murder.
Mysterious Package
As Kreizler prepares to enter his carriage he discovers a crumpled up paper on the seat. After looking at it he looks around anxiously. Spotting a mysterious man, that vanishes as a carriage drives by he chases it down. Finding the carriage empty he chases the man into an abandoned building. We go back and forth between the Isaacson’s examining Benjamin’s skeleton and Kreizler chasing the man in what is a very tense set of scenes.
The tension is very high as Kreizler chases the man into a room in the attic. As he reaches for the door handle I’m feeling very nervous about what he will find. He yanks open the door to discover a small windowless room with no other exit…and no man. Moore finally catches up to him asking where the man went. Kreizler looks up to a hole at the top of the roof. I don’t see how a man could physically get up to that hole to escape. I’m beginning to think the doctor was chasing a figment of his imagination, as Moore never actually saw the man himself. Moore grabs the crumpled paper and is shocked to find a child’s tongue inside it.
Is Kreizler Losing his Mind?
The episode ends with Kreizler giving a creepy monologue about slitting throats and plucking innocent eyes from a horrified face. As he talks about how this is the only way he will understand the killer we see scenes of young male prostitutes in the street. He ends by saying he must follow this wherever it leads him, even if it’s to the darkest pits of hell. Kreizler seems to be slipping into insanity.
I have not read Caleb Carr’s novel that the show is based on and I do not know what will happen, or who the killer is. All my thoughts on what is happening are pure speculation. At this point I find Dr. Kreizler to be very strange and creepy. It feels like I’m supposed to suspect he is the killer, or maybe he actually IS the killer. I’m really not sure. All I do know is I can’t wait for next Monday to see what happens next!
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