Perception - “Ch-ch-changes”/“Alienation”
Perception has the extreme misfortune of beginning its second season less than a week after Hannibal finished its first. There are crucial differences between the shows (mostly in the scope of their respective ambitions, though that’s debatable), but given Perception’s stated interest in mental illness and “dark procedural” trappings, the comparison is instructive. Where Hannibal is the product of a singular, compelling artistic vision, Perception is basically a mashup of every other “quirky investigator” procedural ever made, a show that continually appears to be made by committee. Where Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham is a haunted man both gifted and cursed with a cocktail of psychologically disorders that actually do make him a uniquely gifted man hunter, Eric McCormack’s schizophrenic FBI consultant Daniel Pierce looks and sounds like he was created by a Netflix-style algorithm cobbling together everyone from Dr. House to Temperance Brennan to Adrian Monk. Obviously, Perception is a different sort of show, but where Hannibal distinguishes itself as a stunning, successful version of the serial killer show, Perception is just middling.
The frustrating adequateness of Perception comes primarily from a sense that the show doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. Tonight’s premiere and especially next week’s second episode veer from wholeheartedly embracing the USA-ness of the premise to try to seriously examine the consequences of Daniel’s mental illness in a way that makes it very difficult to sustain any sort of reaction. This sort of tonal whiplash is particularly disappointing considering the way the end of the first season came close to the mark for both versions of the show: An admittedly ridiculous political conspiracy plot put Daniel in the hospital and produced the sort of claustrophobic distrust it’s easy to imagine someone with Daniel’s schizophrenia and hallucinations actually experiencing. Meanwhile the finale’s end set up a new status quo where Daniel was contained by his meds and had real intimate relationships, both with his former student and FBI agent Kate Moretti (Rachel Leigh Cook) and with Caroline Newsome (Kelly Rowan), the real-life basis for his imaginary friend Natalie (The show got weird, okay?).