IT'S TIME TO TALK ABOUT THE MURDERED NUN.
Here is what we know, after episode one:
-There are two spunky old ladies who have a JUSTICE FOR THE MURDERED NUN Facebook campaign. The two old ladies read their Facebook feed and make inquiries, and worry together about how to make certain other hypothetical inquiries. One approaches an archivist with a broad smile and says, "I'm looking for this file! I asked before, and it didn't turn up, but I find if I ask a second time, things sometimes magically turn up! So I wonder if maybe this file has made its way back to its proper slot since the last time I asked?" Flash those pearly whites. The archivist--perhaps aware that a camera is trained on her--smiles right back and says, "Let's give this a shot!" Here's the moment I fell in love with "The Keepers." So many daffy bits of subtext, tucked away like sapphires in the vast minefield that is this murder inquiry. (One of the spunky old ladies describes herself as the textual scholar in this operation, because she really hates "dealing with actual people." Her friend is "the one who deals with people." We see pretty quickly that this dichotomy is false; this story, like so many other stories that people tell about themselves, is an over-simplification of the Matters At Hand.)
-Can we linger over the moment when Spunky Lady II flirts with the loony, nefarious investigator with the big, white beard? "I bet you could ask your former colleagues at the police office for help with your nun questions. You know why? Because you look like Paul Newman. Everyone would want to assist you, because you LOOK SO MUCH LIKE MR. NEWMAN! It's those baby blues, Sweetheart! You know it!!!" This moment of lunacy is followed by silence. The police officer, who bears little, if any, resemblance to Paul Newman, simply demurs. We sense he has some kind of secret Pact with the Devil. Spunky Lady II, like a bull-dog, reminds the nefarious cop, and the camera, that "this nun was a teacher of mine, and so dear to me, and so I just really, really want to see that justice is served." As if we had not heard the first, or fourth, or tenth time she said this. And we fade to black.
-"I remember thinking, O Dear, a year of discussing ROMEO AND JULIET? THIS is going to kill me."
-Why did non-murdered Math Nun wait so long to call the police after she realized that English Lit Nun had disappeared? The episode teases us with this question, then leaves it unaddressed for the next forty minutes, at least. Sweet torture! And who is Jane Doe??
-And then there's the wealth of random detail the episode offers, like any good crime novel. Why was Murdered Nun's car left far, far from her body, and dangling ostentatiously out into the road, so that you couldn't miss it? Where did the twigs come from? The twigs!!! Second Murder Victim was warned by her mother--on the very night of her murder--to be "careful out there on the streets, because of the killer who is still loose." She was warned--and then, that very night, she was killed! "Forensics becomes very difficult after forty-five years. The blood dries up, the tissue deteriorates, the witnesses die." Part of what gives this show the aura of a Greek tragedy is that something from an earlier decade still has such an impact on the present. The poison of earlier generations is transmitted--generously!--to us, today. You might recall "Spotlight," as you watch this first episode--how there is a kind of community-wide evil, a silent form of consent, a way of saying, without words, "We're all going to turn a blind eye to what is happening here." So that the intrepid investigators risk vilification simply for trying to hold people accountable--for calling attention both to sins of commission and to sins of omission. And do you love the witness who recalls being a high-school student and dreaming up some Sly Fun? "Let's look up the spots where our teachers actually live, then stare at their windows!" Does this take you back immediately to your own high-school days? This innocent prankster went out to stare at a math guy's window--"That's where he lives! He really lives there!" (though he was out watching EASY RIDER in a theater, at the time)--and, while staring, she heard a scream. Evocations of Kitty Genovese here, or of a Shirley Jackson story. I will most certainly be watching more. There's nothing like an eight-hour late-July date with a murdered nun!
Here is what we know, after episode one:
-There are two spunky old ladies who have a JUSTICE FOR THE MURDERED NUN Facebook campaign. The two old ladies read their Facebook feed and make inquiries, and worry together about how to make certain other hypothetical inquiries. One approaches an archivist with a broad smile and says, "I'm looking for this file! I asked before, and it didn't turn up, but I find if I ask a second time, things sometimes magically turn up! So I wonder if maybe this file has made its way back to its proper slot since the last time I asked?" Flash those pearly whites. The archivist--perhaps aware that a camera is trained on her--smiles right back and says, "Let's give this a shot!" Here's the moment I fell in love with "The Keepers." So many daffy bits of subtext, tucked away like sapphires in the vast minefield that is this murder inquiry. (One of the spunky old ladies describes herself as the textual scholar in this operation, because she really hates "dealing with actual people." Her friend is "the one who deals with people." We see pretty quickly that this dichotomy is false; this story, like so many other stories that people tell about themselves, is an over-simplification of the Matters At Hand.)
-Can we linger over the moment when Spunky Lady II flirts with the loony, nefarious investigator with the big, white beard? "I bet you could ask your former colleagues at the police office for help with your nun questions. You know why? Because you look like Paul Newman. Everyone would want to assist you, because you LOOK SO MUCH LIKE MR. NEWMAN! It's those baby blues, Sweetheart! You know it!!!" This moment of lunacy is followed by silence. The police officer, who bears little, if any, resemblance to Paul Newman, simply demurs. We sense he has some kind of secret Pact with the Devil. Spunky Lady II, like a bull-dog, reminds the nefarious cop, and the camera, that "this nun was a teacher of mine, and so dear to me, and so I just really, really want to see that justice is served." As if we had not heard the first, or fourth, or tenth time she said this. And we fade to black.
-"I remember thinking, O Dear, a year of discussing ROMEO AND JULIET? THIS is going to kill me."
-Why did non-murdered Math Nun wait so long to call the police after she realized that English Lit Nun had disappeared? The episode teases us with this question, then leaves it unaddressed for the next forty minutes, at least. Sweet torture! And who is Jane Doe??
-And then there's the wealth of random detail the episode offers, like any good crime novel. Why was Murdered Nun's car left far, far from her body, and dangling ostentatiously out into the road, so that you couldn't miss it? Where did the twigs come from? The twigs!!! Second Murder Victim was warned by her mother--on the very night of her murder--to be "careful out there on the streets, because of the killer who is still loose." She was warned--and then, that very night, she was killed! "Forensics becomes very difficult after forty-five years. The blood dries up, the tissue deteriorates, the witnesses die." Part of what gives this show the aura of a Greek tragedy is that something from an earlier decade still has such an impact on the present. The poison of earlier generations is transmitted--generously!--to us, today. You might recall "Spotlight," as you watch this first episode--how there is a kind of community-wide evil, a silent form of consent, a way of saying, without words, "We're all going to turn a blind eye to what is happening here." So that the intrepid investigators risk vilification simply for trying to hold people accountable--for calling attention both to sins of commission and to sins of omission. And do you love the witness who recalls being a high-school student and dreaming up some Sly Fun? "Let's look up the spots where our teachers actually live, then stare at their windows!" Does this take you back immediately to your own high-school days? This innocent prankster went out to stare at a math guy's window--"That's where he lives! He really lives there!" (though he was out watching EASY RIDER in a theater, at the time)--and, while staring, she heard a scream. Evocations of Kitty Genovese here, or of a Shirley Jackson story. I will most certainly be watching more. There's nothing like an eight-hour late-July date with a murdered nun!
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