3 out of 5

Created by: Manny Coto

covers season 1

TV offerings are a broad landscape, with so, so many shows bypassing any given viewer without notice, and many dying on the vine before they even have an opportunity to be noticed. I suspect we’ve all experienced variations where something promising, by our own standards, is put to rest: an episode or two in and you’re looking forward to next week when the cancellation notice come in. Sometimes I’ll get it – I like the show, but I get why it didn’t land. And, of course, the opposite can happen also: I really dislike what I’ve seen but the show goes on, and I accept that the majority’s tastes differ from my own.

neXt’s cancellation announcement wasn’t a surprise. It’s first episode not only overloaded itself with way too many TV cliches – A kid in danger! A brutish, snarky lead character with (insert life-ending disease)! – but its “rogue computer AI” subject matter was delivered via grandpa tech speech and keyboard jibber-jabbering akin to a CSI episode; acceptable stuff for a certain type of show, perhaps, but not great for a prime time premiere during a quarantine (it’s currently 2020, the time of COVID) in which people are hungry for good television distractions. The predictability of its delivery – computer considers humans a threat; AI populates to every conceivable system – was compounded by just how dated it felt; the subject itself doesn’t have to be as such, as even recent shows like Emergence have been silly but mostly interesting, whereas neXt felt more like plotting by dartboard versus coming up with an interesting story or characters.

But the show had one good thing on its side: lead actors who were fun to watch. John Slattery as Paul, the creator of the AI who realizes its up to no good, iterates on the snippy character type he became identified with in his Mad Men role and factors in Paul’s disgruntlement over being fired from his own tech company, and also yadda yadda impending death from that life-threatening disease. He’s all offhand, cutting remarks and pushing his way into places he’s not wanted, and he’s a great central character. Fernanda Andrade plays Shea, the FBI agent who ends up getting wrapped up in things, and the actress finds the right balance between being taskmaster and feeling harried by events to play straight-woman foil to Paul in a believable fashion: she also takes no shit in her own way, but isn’t just a black and white cop tuff. The supporting roles are also filled by actors who do a great job with what they’re given: Michael Mosley and Eve Harlow as fellow FBIers; Gerardo Celasco and Evan Whitten as Shea’s husband and son. The show may be written lazily, but it’s cast well.

And then, after a couple episodes and that cancellation announcement, something else good happens: neXt turns in to an “event” series – i.e. “we always meant it to be one season!” – and the timeline escalates insanely. A lot of these evil computer series end up, by necessity of getting to 22 episodes or a renewal, trailing things out in a wayward fashion. People are slow to discover and accept the truth; the evil computer goes in to mustache-twirling mode and comes up with some oblique plan to destroy the world. Here, neXt just goes to town: from the third episode onward, it takes no prisoners, and the “rogue AI” tries everything under the sun to install itself into a system that can properly support its architecture. It plays every card, and delays or distracts or kills any given obstacle by manipulating events. Most people buy in to what’s happening, and then there are those who believe it, but don’t want to upset job prospects by rocking the boat – which feels like a more timely (although I guess it’s timeless) attitude that gives the show some bite. Paul and especially Shea are pushed to make some pretty surprising decisions that are not common for leads for whom we’re intended to root. Kicking around in the background are plenty of subplots that are of that cliched nature with which we began the show – likely remnants of when neXt wasn’t an event series. Those are dealt with mercifully quickly, as the ticking clock keeps advancing forward, and we get to revel in the joy of that as well, a sense of brevity with such subplots that’s uncommon for TV in general.

The show doesn’t necessarily cross the line into being great at any point, but it definitely achieves successful entertainment distraction, leveraging the good will of a watchable cast and its limited runtime to make something that was legitimately fun to tune in to week to week.