A pair of police detective undertake erstwhile unsolved law-breaking by talking to the renew victims . It sounds like a totally off - kelter premise for a TV show , but Fox’sPast Lifeactually made me question the future of musical genre television . coddler ahead .
Past Life , airing spring 2010 on Fox , seems to be strain to piggyback on the success of Medium , a show I have n’t really see . You have a variety of procedural crime - solving scene to each episode , but there ’s also a spooky supernatural facet . And it ’s all spit with a dash of personal increase . It ’s very broadly establish on anM.J. Rosenovel calledThe Reincarnationist , but I do n’t think much beyond the approximation of reincarnation got carried over .
Fox kindly sent us a videodisk of this pilot , and it ’s got the same unsmooth sharpness as a stack of other pilots . It ’s also saddle with the task of selling you on one of the oddest premises I ’ve seen in quite some time . In a nutshell , Dr. Kate McGinn is a psychologist who works at New York City ’s Talmadge Center For Behavior Health , which is dedicate to study “ the human person . ” McGinn specializes in “ regression therapy , ” helping multitude to confront the stuff that happened in their premature life which may be affect them today . McGinn is almost paranormally sunny and cheery , except when she ’s comforting someone who ’s grappling with having been murder .
And because ( I venture ) these cases often ask ferret out the detail of exactly what happened the last meter around , the Talmadge Center hires a detective , Price Whatley , to help McGinn out . Whatley is the Scully to her Mulder — he does n’t believe in all this past life nonsense , but he needs the money since he lost his job at the NYPD . But Whatley shield a secret pain having to do with his dead wife — and you wo n’t be too dismayed to get wind that he ’s secretly hop-skip all this reincarnation hokum will lead to some sort of reunion . ( I ’m picturing Whatley eventually make a very serious family relationship processing conversation with a one - twelvemonth - old , which is how old his reincarnated wife would be now . )
The Talmadge Center , accidentally , is quite swanky , and seems to be capable to give to keep Kate McGinn in classy healer outfits . The clients we meet in the original , whose 14 - year - old Logos is having eldritch execution - esque flashbacks , seem exceedingly well heeled . So I ’m guessing we ’re mostly going to be relate ourselves with the old lives of the wealthy and troubled here . Besides Kate and Whatley , the Talmadge Center is also abode to Dr. Malachi Talmadge , who stand around attend worried and occasionally butts heads with Whatley . And then there ’s Rishi Karna , the intemperately - work research assistant who scantily pop out up in the buffer .
I ’m just go to pause here and wonder whose idea it was to call our bad - guy cable investigator fictional character “ Price Whatley . ”
So I ’m guessing that not every sequence of this show will ask murder , per se . You could have a character who got mugged during the 1920s , and never got over it , and now is still pissed about it thirty years into a fresh incarnation . presumptively , there has to be some kind of crime every week , though , or Price Whatley wo n’t have much to do .
Judging from the fender , there ’ll be two tracks to every instalment : the curative track , in which the reincarnated person work through all of their issue under the harmonic , tight - lipped smile of Kate McGinn . And then the mystery track , where Price Whatley searches through old caseful file and says things like , “ I know it sounds crazy , but I really think we ’re on to something here . ” ( That ’s not a quotation from the airplane pilot . That ’s just the sort of affair I can imagine Price Whatley articulate . ) Price Whatley , of course , is on the outs with his former superordinate , but there are still some copper who owe favour to him and will let him research old unsolved crimes on the sly .
And then , at the end of every episode , the two track will converge somehow , as the crucify reincarnatee finally discovers the truth of what happened and gets some closedown . And Whatley gets his man , or cleaning woman , or whatever . A crime is solved , a someone is healed , and the cycle of hurt turns a bit slower . Or something .
If you ’re recollect " This does n’t fathom like my cupful of tea leaf , " then it ’s probably not . I went into the airplane pilot feeling slightly worried , and nothing about it was quite able to exchange my mind — although there was nothing ill-timed with any of it . The main matter that jumped out at me , candidly , was that Price Whatley should be a laughing farm animal . He ’s a former cop who now runs around furrow leads that arrive out of vague past - sprightliness visions from people who seem a minute mental . Nobody should be taking Whatley earnestly at all , and yet somehow he manages to satisfy the same role as every detective on every adjective show ever . And the show adorn a lot of energy in demonstrate how professional and serious Kate McGinn and the remainder of the Talmadge team are , with their jargon about regress therapy and their capital resources .
So why do I feel as though this is some sort of watershed for writing style television receiver ? perhaps because it feels like an uneasy nuclear fusion reaction of a few different literary genre , into something that I ’m not certain is ever go to be as thought - provoking as other Fox shows like Fringe or Dollhouse ( or the late lamented Terminator : TheSarah Connor Chronicles . ) Rather than boldly venturing into inquisitive territory , this show reflects the gathering consensus that any speculative themes must be insidious , vague , and swaddled in formula .
So you have the “ squad of expert ” model of investigator show , not unlike Bones or CSI . ( Except that instead of having a research laboratory , these people have a healer ’s office . ) You have the healing , personal - growth case show , where every workweek someone is going to get past his / her psychic trauma . And then you have the one strand of actual risky fabrication , the past life-time retrogression , which does n’t face like it ’s ever fail to evolve into a mythos or ask deeper inquiry . It ’s just endure to be the McGuffin — and it ’s going to allow us to have spooky J - horror - esque blurry flashbacks to something wispy and terrifying materialise in the sixties or seventies , which get slightly more elaborate every time we see them throughout the instalment .
It ’s a perfectly solid show , and a nice enough casting , but the genre ingredient feel like watery tea . And I ’m really not certain how the reincarnation - of - the - calendar week data format will pan out calendar week in , week out . It seems like it could stick out from the same problems as Tru Calling , only bad . Still , I have a feeling this show could be a whopping mega - hitting , and further push back genre idiot box in the focus of being somewhat apologetic , and vaguely detective - orient .
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