What’s the name of the show? The Messengers.
When does it premiere? Friday 17 April at 9pm EST on the CW
What is this show? The devil comes down to Earth on a meteor and the shockwave turns five normal people into angels – with superpowers.
Seriously? Well, not explicitly, but yeah, that’s what they’re going for.
Then what happens? All the people are drawn to converge together in Houston.
Why Houston? I don’t know. It does make sense that the devil would live in Texas.
What’s the show’s pedigree? Eoghan O’Donnell, formerly a writer on MTV’s Teen Wolf, created the show.
What happens in the premiere? Like I said, a meteor crashes to Earth and there is a naked man on fire at the center of it. He’s known as The Man (Diogo Morgado, who ironically just played Jesus in NatGeo’s Killing Jesus). We later find out he’s the devil.
Anyway, when the meteor crashes, the invisible shockwave it sends out it kills five people: scientist Vera (Shantel VanSanten), who was near the crash site and goes to investigate; single mom Erin (Sofia Black-D’Elia); troubled foster kid and teenage swimmer Peter (Joel Courtney); undercover DEA agent Raul (JD Pardo); and Texas evangelist Joshua (Jon Fletcher). All five of them wake back up and when they do, they have magical powers.
Erin heals her daughter who was in a car crash, Peter has super-strength to beat up the person bullying him, and Joshua sees visions of the future (including the coming apocalypse). Nothing has yet happened with Raul, who is on the run from some dirty cops in league with a Mexican drug cartel. Vera gets a visit from the Man, who tells her that if she kills a woman, he’ll tell her where her kidnapped son is. Boy, is he evil. The solution to all of their problems somehow seems to exist in Houston, where Joshua already lives.
So, how can you tell these people are supposed to be angels? When you see them in the mirror or filmed on a video camera, they have glowing white wings behind them.
Seriously? Yeah.
Is this show any good? The oddest thing about The Messengers is that its tone is somehow askew, like a dress that looks amazing on the rack but doesn’t quite fit when worn by an actual human being. The concept is simple enough – five strangers are drawn together through fate and coincidence to prevent some sort of greater evil. It’s the religious undertones that seem forced. Joshua tells his faithful flock that these angels are supposed to stop the Book of Revelations from happening, but he also treats the devil like the usual “big bad” in a superhero movie.
The CW is the home to popular sci-fi shows like The Flash and Arrow and plenty of fantasy soaps like The Vampire Diaries, but The Messengers tries to take those formulas and put a religious gloss on them. It’s as if it’s trying to pander to the huge Christian audience while still maintaining its credibility with its core base of teens who are into shows about loveable monsters. It’s not a very good mix, especially for a show as straightforward as this, with little feel for the actual nuances of good and evil, as a show like Breaking Bad, or even something cheesier like Gotham, would have.
By the time the coincidences drawing the characters together start piling up and we learn more about their secret personal tragedies (including a laughably bad one involving Joshua), it’s hard to care where these people are headed, or why we should stick around to find out if this guy really is the devil and what it’s going to take to stop him.
Which characters will you love? Peter seems like the sort of sensitive but strong kid that all the teenage girls will love. Raul also has a hint of the good-boy-gone-bad that might be endearing in the long run. It doesn’t hurt that both of them are often shirtless in the classic CW beefcake style. But, honestly, the Man, the devil stand-in with glowing red eyes, is probably the most interesting thing on the show, even though we don’t see much of him in the pilot.
Which characters will you hate? Erin is portrayed as the saintly single mother, which is a cliché on shows like this. We’re not given any real time for her to develop a personality of her own.
What’s the best thing about it? The meteor and its power wave are created with some pretty cool visual effects, as are the angel wings – though their significance might make you roll your eyes.
What’s the worst thing about it? Each of the characters can’t be a perfect saint, so they’re all faced with some sort of adversity they have to overcome, but in all the cases (Erin’s abusive ex, Joshua’s overbearing father, Raul’s partners that turn on him) they are such stock problems for such genre pieces that it’s hard to take any of them very seriously.
Should you watch this show? If you want a show that deals with science, religion, superpowers and suspense in a real, intricate and adult way, Orphan Black returns to BBC America on Saturday.
