1 out of 5

Created by: Heidi Cole McAdams and Mike Weiss

On Criminal Minds, week by week, for 20+ episodes seasons across 10+ seasons, there’ve certainly been a few templates by which each hour of TV abides. Most of these involve some pretty hilarious logical leaps, and harping on one vague detail someone notices, alongside the highly fictionalized method of profiling, but: despite the whole thing being pretty predictable, the vast majority of episodes do make the viewer feel like we’ve “earned” the conclusion:  as silly as any of it might be, the whodunn-the-serial-killings involve an in-universe sense of fact finding and detectiving.

On Death and Other Details, the “in-universe” method of solving any given mystery is by vibes. Imogene (Violett Beane) “notices things” others don’t, which visually translates into her replaying events in her mind, zeroing in on a very specific, camera-zoomed detail, and then jumping to a conclusion which we know is false because there are several episodes left – and this is not an episodic procedural type show.

That concept in and of itself isn’t a one-starrable sin, being similar enough to other shows and movies with a similar shtick, but Death pushes our disbelief suspension further by having Imogene dive into others thoughts and pluck out details, perhaps suggesting that some line of questioning we’re not hearing is prompting these discoveries, but even this isn’t necessarily the final coffin nail – it’s just silly, and not presented in a very convincing fashion.

Rather, neither of these quirks work because the mystery – a whodunnit on a cruise, when guests and crew start popping up dead, somehow linked to Imogene’s troublesome past, and how it intertwines with that of detective Rufus’ (Mandy Patinkin), also onboard – is presented via secondhand “cool:” by a production / writing / directing team who liked Knives Out‘s funky ensemble and dark tone, and wanted to blend that with some Wes Anderson-adjacent whimsy, when neither of these qualities feel very natural to that team, or appropriate for the story being told. It’s all very forced and uninspired feeling, told via dialogue that assumes swear words give things an edge, that something is smart if you reveal them with a twee music sting, and that you can make snarky comments that contain exactly zero snark seem clever as long as you say them with rolled eyes and a biting tone. Furthermore, the aforementioned method of clue-hunting excuses any need for actual logic to the mystery: you can just reveal some heretofore unmentioned detail as a twist, which the show loves to do via “X hours earlier” type cutaways which, given this style of plotting, are only that – style.

The other nail is where I’ll show my age, finding most of the core cast insufferable. This isn’t a gripe with the actors, who, dodgy accents aside, are playing their archetypes as one-note as the script demands, and the lack of inner worlds for their characters feel similarly apropos; rather, it’s that the parts are all written with what I identify as a young(er) person’s priorities and a very general, tired take on what’s subversive: where casual drug use and drunkenness is mixed messaged as both cool and crass; where sex is both super sexy and free but then no, no, it means a lot and I love you so much; where everyone is trying to get one over on another, and family and friends are equally everything and nothing. These are not exclusively young person traits, but their on or off polarity is.

I think all of this, collectively, is a heavy burden, but it could still be buoyed by an engaging story. But the majority if the story is the attempted puzzle box layering, which is just a sequence of all the aforementioned unsteady elements stacked upon one another – which is obviously also unsteady. Dressed up in its stolen-identity style, it’s quite the house of cards, and one that ties itself into knots to make a pretty bow of concluding loose threads, which I did appreciate… until it proved to be a gambit for a season 2 hook.