Amazon Studio’s third round of original series pilots debuted last week, presenting two prospective dramas and three prospective comedies (all viewable here) to Amazon users. While those users choose which pilots will become full-fledged series, The A.V. Club has taken a look at all five episodes, with our thoughts on Red Oaks, The Cosmopolitans, and Really posting yesterday. Read on for capsule reviews of the Mena Suvari-starring thriller Hysteria and the supernatural mystery series Hand Of God.
Hysteria
Hysteria is based on a striking, stranger-than-fiction story from The New York Times Magazine in 2012: “What Happened To The Girls In Le Roy,” an examination of a strange twitching tic that a group of high-school cheerleaders developed in the small town of Le Roy, New York. The story is terrifying and fascinating: A group of girls of high social status start twitching, and the only known cause is mass hysteria, clinically called “mass psychogenic illness.” Hysteria struggles to be nearly as interesting as the story of Le Roy, and ultimately fails in doing so. That’s largely because the creator, Shaun Cassidy—yes, the former teen idol (also the creator of Invasion and American Gothic, among other TV series)—moves the focus of Hysteria away from the curious interlocked psychology of the young women infected and instead toward the consequences of social media in an increasingly networked world. That could be an interesting twist on the idea, but it veers too close to “texting is evil” to be anything beyond cheap shock value. The tic, when it starts to affect the teenagers, is a result of watching too many videos online, going out to parties with boys, and grinding on the dance floor. It’s a frustratingly simplistic take on such multifaceted source material. (Hysteria also chooses to focus on an illicit relationship one of the teens has with a 36-year-old cop, playing up the officer’s tortured soul while needlessly sexualizing and making illicit the camaraderie of the girls.)
The saving grace for the show is Logan Harlen (Mena Suvari), the neurologist working with the girls. Suvari brings surprising gravity and depth to the role—and given her experience in American Beauty, she’s familiar with deconstructing the image of the slutty cheerleader. In terms of the pure casework, Logan’s story is fascinating: She and her fellow doctors treat the patients with humanity, even when the show doesn’t bother. But silly prestige-drama conceits have to be maintained, even here: Logan is given a secretive backstory and a jailed, manipulative brother. It’s too bad, because aside from all the stuff that Hysteria thinks should be part of its recipe—an uncommunicative anti-hero cop trying and failing to do the right thing, slutty teenage girls, an uptight career woman with a past, unfounded anxiety about technology and the future—it’s kind of interesting. But as it is, it’s half-baked and trying too hard. [SS]