3 out of 5

Written by: Kirsten Fisher, Kim Wilson, Magda Wozniak, Sarah Lambert

Four youths on the verge of adulthood are doing their usual grocery gathering at the convenience store before a Wednesday night hang when they witness a particularly bumbling robbery at gunpoint. Ed Kennedy (William McKenna), acting quite out of character, decides to confront the gunman, shooing him on his way. Through the happenstance of continuing to get involved, he does actually end up preventing the robbery, and allowing the police to arrive in time to catch the gunman. But not before the latter can tell the former: “You’re a dead man, Ed Kennedy.”

This kicks off a couple of things which carry through for Ed during The Messenger’s 8 episodes: Ed’s awareness of the kind of satisfaction he gets from doing good, and the arrival of a mysterious playing card in Ed’s mail, with three separate times and locations written on it. While Ed revels in the glories of the former, he decides that the latter is telling him to do good for the people found at these times and places, and begins plotting how to do so.

Some of this is somewhat straightforward – strike up a conversation with the isolated, elderly Milla (Maggie Dance); some of it requires some sleuthing; and some of it jars Ed out of his otherwise relative safety, putting him in a position to confront an abusive husband. Along the way, Ed’s friends (Alexandra Jensen’s Audrey, Chris Alosio’s Marv, and Kartanya Maynard’s Ritchie) get swept up in the card business, – as more such cards with tasks are found – and also their own plotthreads start to be trailed out: Audrey’s fitful relationship with her father; Marv’s odd addiction to stuffed animals; Ritchie’s secretive ditching of her bipolar medications.

McKenna’s Ed is wildly relatable: perceived helpfulness is mixed with a lack of awareness of the occasional selfishness of his actions, leading to uneven results with the cards, and McKenna straddles a line of likeable and frustrating very well. We’re never alienated from wanting to watch Ed, even while being fully aware of the gaffs he’s making. …Or are we? One of the larger disconnects with the story is how it skips over a lot of connective tissue in the relationships, somewhat in favor of keeping the source of the cards as a mystery, and somewhat due to poor balancing of the subplots, and somewhat due to an inconsistent internal morality that’s never quite confronted. This should be an interesting aspect of the show, but it’s rarely actually dealt with, instead sort of being summarized into TV “do better” and “love saves the day” morals in the concluding episodes, as the intrigue of the preceding 6 or so starts to unwind. You can sense this happening up front: the show hints at a magical reality that never materializes, meaning we’re in the real world, meaning at some point there will be an explanation for the cards, but we’re too busy having fun chasing down quests to quite deal with it. And again, this is certainly part of the concept, but instead of giving it screen time, it gets wrapped up all cheekily.

The cast is universally charming, though, and while the focus between Ed and his friends doesn’t give them all their due, to subtext of each of their stories (Ed’s included) is definitely deep enough to give the show appeal beyond its quirky premise, even if it doesn’t bring these things to wholly satisfying endings. Elsewhere, the gaps in logic of some of the decision making is easy to paper over: these are kids making big leaps of assumptive faith, and I’m also okay with letting some things go for the sake of entertaining me. Still, when you flirt with some larger concepts, it does make it a bummer when you don’t see those through.

I’d have some thoughts here on how / why the show likely struggled with these things, given the source book’s ending, but that seems outside of the scope of the review, as it shouldn’t be necessary to consider that to gauge your enjoyment.

The Messenger is solid distraction: the cast is pleasing to hang with, the setting and tone feel lived in but broad enough to support some of the sillier and darker elements, and the task-based structure gives the episodes drive so that you can dismiss some of its gaps. …Until the last couple episodes have to deal with that fallout, but by that point, you’re in it.