Time to meet Henry Morgan, our protagonist, with apparent
Sherlock-Holmes level powers of observation which he uses to charm a fellow
subway passanger. Personally I would think that this complete stranger
mentioning lots of details of my life he didn’t know deeply and overwhelmingly
stalkery.
Despite the stalkeriness, this gets him a date. Right
until the subway train they’re in is involved in a horrific crash. Ok, that
made me jump, I admit. In the aftermath while Henry’s impaled and reached for
an antique watch, his voice over explains his history
Starting 200 years ago with him as a doctor on a slave
ship (with the same antique watch) and him being willing to die to save a Black
slave from being thrown overboard on suspicion of having cholera. They shoot
him and throw his body overboard.
Which brings us to the present – every time he dies he
returns, always in a body of water; and we see him swim to shore. Naked (an
unfortunate downside of the immortality thing).
We follow some really clichéd musing about the curse of
being immortal because everyone you love dies (and you have to walk through the
city naked) and are introduced to Abe, the human taxi driver who conveniently
knows the big secret and works to try and life the immortal out of the angst
caused by his amazing super power.
He lives under an antique shop where he keeps a very
morbid journal of the ways he died and how much each one hurt – the voice over
helps remind us he regards living forever as a curse he needs to break (and the
guy doesn’t even have to avoid sunlight or drink blood!)
From here we go to Detective Jo Martinez (please be more
interesting!), sneaking out on a one night stand. She’s called in to
investigate the subway crash and picks up Henry’s antique watch (for plot
reasons) which is still working. This introduces her apparent
partner/colleague, Detective Hanson and her boss, Lt Roark (no they don’t
pronounce Lieutenant correctly. Beheadings for all of them).
While Henry may own/live in an antique shop he works as a
pathologist at NYC Medical examiner’s office. He gets to work slicing and
dicing the driver of the subway (his heart attack is suspected to be the cause
of the accident) with his colleague Lucas when Detective Martinez arrives
(Lucas does the clichéd nervous nerd stammer).
Henry pulls out his Sherlockobservationbullshit and
comments on Jo being a recent widow (assuming she was married to a man – or at
all and she’s not wearing her mother’s wedding ring round her neck to remember
her, or to keep a family heirloom or any other explanation. Yes, this annoys me
– and this is aside from how utterly inappropriate it is) and has a drinking
problem. Leaving aside the personal comments, Henry concludes that the driver
was probably poisoned (with Lucas adding how utterly infallible Henry is). He
then gets a call from an ominous anonymous caller ominously telling Henry he
saw him survive. Henry treats this as scary
Henry goes home and tells Abe and plans to move away,
hide and outlive the ominous guy – Abe points out the flaw: Abe isn’t immortal.
Henry protests he needs Abe so Abe insists they actually stay. Henry’s afraid
though – since he has been experimented on (and hanged for heresy) in the past.
Abe brings up how isolated and lonely Henry is – throwing in a picture of long
dead lost love Abigail, to hammer home how Henry is just existing, not living.
Henry finally agrees
To add to the pressure, Detective Martinez and her
computer expert colleague check CCTV and see Henry get on the train.
Henry gets into work the next day to find an anonymous
package containing a picture of him and his then wife, Abigail, in 1955 – who
apparently had faith in Henry being immortal for a big important purpose.
Co-worker Lucas also comments on how little he knows about Henry before Henry
makes the leap that the anonymous caller is probably the one who caused the
subway disaster – to prove Henry is immortal.
To speed up his investigations on who his stalker is,
Henry injects himself with the poisoned blood of the driver (assuming the toxin
is both in the blood and still potent in said blood); he dies and recognises
the poison as aconite, but when Abe drives him back to the shop he finds the
police – and Detective Martinez – waiting for him.
She pulls him in for questioning which he dodges before
taking over the entire conversation for a lecture on aconite before launching
an intellectual exercise that suggests he’s not the killer because he was the
one who suggested poisoning while Detective Martinez hoped it was a heart
attack. He also adds they don’t have enough evidence to hold him
Which is true – however that doesn’t mean he can go back to the body of the man he is suspected of killing and start investigating! But, yes, he does. Finding both an entry point for the injection and a finger print (which is so vulnerable to accusations of tampering since the only other person there is Lucas)
At the police station the conclusion is Henry is creepy
(oh yes) but Detective Martinez defends him until Henry arrives with the finger
print which they identify as belonging to a Hans Koehler. Of course she brings
him with her to question him (why wouldn’t you bring a suspect along?) and he
finds Hans has a whole greenhouse full of aconite (the poison which, we have to
remember, Henry hasn’t actually proven is the cause of death). They also find
his garage lab where Henry continually ignores Detective Martinez when she
tries to get him to live.
Hans returns and Martinez tries to arrest him – but he
escapes when he throws a beaker of aconite at her. Henry uses SCIENCE (and sets
her hand on fire) to save her.
Lt Roark and Detective Hanson arrive, Hanson having dug
up Hans’s motive (the driver was involved in the accidental death of Hans’s
wife) – a motive which confuses Henry since it means he’s not linked to his
curious stalker. Henry also comments further on Martinez’s apparent drinking
problem.
They go out anyway so we can establish more sexual
tension talking about Henry’s watch and Martinez’s dead husband before they’re
called back to the case
Apparently Hans had a lot more of the drug which is
missing and Henry uses his Genius to deduce he’s making it water soluble and
that he plans to sue it to cause mass death in Grand Central Station (for
reasons unknown, Hans decided to plan this and document this plan by drawing
the ceiling of Grand Central Station. Because… reasons).
At the station Henry decides Hans will use the roof-based
air conditioning because GENIUS – where they find Hans and he shoots Detective
Martinez leaving Henry to try and talk Hans out of commemorating his wife’s
death with an act of terrorism. Henry fights him (not really caring about being
shot) – and gets shot before managing to stagger to his feet and push Hans off
the roof – himself as well. The fall is fatal
Temporarily, of course.
Detective Martinez wakes up in hospital with Henry by her
bedside trying to convince her Hans committed suicide – because Henry totally
couldn’t have gone off the roof, obviously. Creepy Stalker Guy also calls Henry
– suggesting that he is also immortal and can’t die, and he’s also looking to
die (and how very sad it is he can’t die).
Closing montage on all the life and death he’s seen – and
back to when he met Abbie and how he found Abe: a baby in the Nazi
concentration camps. And Detective Martinez consulting him on her next case
Ok, first thing – I hate Sherlockian, observation powers
because they’re ridiculous. A woman eating Russian chocolate is a woman eating
Russian chocolate. It doesn’t mean she’s Russian – it means she likes a certain
brand of chocolate! A woman with indentations from cello playing on her fingers
doesn’t necessarily have a performance. She may be AWFUL and it may be a hobby!
She may have showered recently because she just finished rolling around in mud
which is how she gets her sexual thrills! Any of these clues could mean a
plethora of things, it’s only because of the omnipotent writer controlling all
their character’s experience that actually makes this kind of thing work.
And it’s still stalkery and creepy.
As to the plot – we seem to have a lot of the very very
very very standard clichés of immortals that I’ve seen play out with vampires,
werecreatures, gods, fae, demigods, and
Our Bernard Who’s A Bit Weird many many times over – the curse of seeing people
die yadda yadda. Only without the other world building and features around
those creatures – all of that is just replaced with “mystery”.
So what fills the gap? This Sherlock nonsense. In fact,
the whole concept seems to be another way to have the “super brilliant but
slightly antisocial guy solves things by being brilliant” following in the
footsteps of Sherlock, Numbers, Lie to Me and innumerable dodgy cop shows. The
immortality is just another way to justify the brilliant-man-solves-stuff
trope.
Which means, while there are aspects that intrigue me, I’m not all that positive about this series.
Also note the clichéd “our guy is from the past but look
he wasn’t really bad” scene with the slave ship – following in the footsteps of
a gazillion Confederate vampires.
