The Darwin Incident

Episode 4

Like a predator attempting to evolve, The Darwin Incident has me fighting against my base instincts as a critic. There's a real temptation, with this episode, to make assessments and critiques I know to avoid. The driving mechanic of this entry is the revelation of Charlie's rights—or rather, his lack of them. The humanzee's dual nature has seen him officially classified as "property" (a pet, effectively) of his foster parents, as his lawyer mom works within the legal system to push back against prescriptions about Charlie's existence and abilities to grant him the legal rights that are supposed to be afforded to all sentient beings covered by the U.S. Constitution. They've apparently been working on this for all fifteen years of his life, with nothing to show but stymied efforts beholden to the slow-moving social experiment that is the incident of Charlie's life.

It's a mechanical contrivance that drives the immediate conflicts in this episode. It's a drawn-out reveal that raises the question of why it wasn't brought up or addressed earlier for drama's sake. And its incredulities can 100% be glossed over by virtue of the fact that this story takes place in America, and America is a shithole.

It's a place where the textual story and allegory of The Darwin Incident at last overlap in something resembling harmony. Legal systems in the United States already deny "inalienable" rights to a multitude of groups based on the prejudice-filtered actions of what they see as the "worst" of them. As the sole representative of his mix-and-match species, Charlie is scrutinized into needing to play the "model minority" for himself. This episode reveals that the dramatic incident that unfolded when Charlie was five was borne out of nothing but typical childhood bullying and light-injury retaliation. It's the sort of thing everyone deals with from some angle, but because it was the terrifying unknown of the Humanzee who perpetrated it, it's enough to prompt a whole squad of cops to draw their guns and prepare to fire on the child. It's one of those scenes that might come off as overt, overblown drama—unless you're, you know, a viewer who has lived in the U.S. at any point in the past several decades.

It's got all the sociopolitical bluntness of a Schoolhouse Rock sketch as anything else thus far in The Darwin Incident. But I have to admit something is striking about a work from a foreign author so directly turning to the camera and going, "Hey, isn't it screwed up that an entire country can deny your personhood and rights based on whether they like you or not?"

With the clarification of what happened and how it led to him being effectively on house arrest for the next decade, Charlie's characterization comes into much sharper focus. He absolutely is stunted in his social growth, aware of that, and unfairly prompted to "prove" he can be allowed to make his own decisions. It can't be helped that he's had nothing to do but think during his isolation, cultivating that cold logic as he tried to reason out his treatment with nothing but the supportive sounding boards of his parents. As I questioned last week, he could have gone on the internet, I suppose, but that's a place where I'll blow past my critical questions in service of framing the character in this situation. It's similar to how it's a bit unbelievable that nobody sworn to secrecy after five-year-old Charlie's incident blabbed, but I don't worry about that because it's not the part of this story that matters.

What matters is that the events of this episode make clear that Charlie does, in fact, have foibles beyond being a thought-experiment mouthpiece. He can use his hyper-awareness and logical deductions to track down the ALA members who attacked his family, but he can be stymied by Rivera's philosophical debates and waylaid by being compelled to save the life of his captor. He understands the idea of lies, but can't pick up on the art of them before it's too late. In a neat twist, Charlie's biggest weakness is that his decision to detachedly observe humanity causes him to be cut off from a more immediate understanding of them as individuals, leading to, as his dad accurately articulates, some poorly considered decisions. To put it another way, Charlie has committed the classic blunder: he's not acting as if he lives in a society.

It's probably the strongest use of The Darwin Incident's efforts at sociopolitical allegory around its main character so far, and I'll admit it surprised me. Part of that is because it still comes alongside the hackier elements of the writing, including bringing up a to-be-important social media account called, I shit you not, the "Red Pill Channel." I also have to again fight against the shallow critical compulsion to question the importance of a character in the story, specifically Lucy. I barely mentioned her in my inaugural review last week, and that's because, as she continues to do through this episode, she's less of an active participant in the plot and more a viewpoint who just sort of orbits around it. The Darwin Incident is a detached, top-down enough story that I don't know that it needs an audience surrogate character to have its blunt allegories spelled out to (though here I am also spelling them out for you). And if the series wants Lucy to instead act as a tether to Charlie's personal embrace of humanity apart from his dry observations, they need to give her more to personally do than react to hearing about the injustices and complexities of social contracts. But hey, the series is already growing, maybe the writing will eventually get there.

It'd be easy for me to write off trite misunderstandings like the police just happening to catch Charlie in a situation where it looks like he stabbed a guy, but this episode of The Darwin Incident then makes surprising strides in demonstrating that it's a story that understands things here are just like that. Charlie's been guilty until proven innocent his whole life; why would this be any different? The cops in this episode keep him from his parents under the guise of, effectively, civil asset forfeiture. Early in the episode, Bert can't head out to help his kidnapped son because he's busy with work. There's still some stupid writing in The Darwin Incident, but then there's writing that reminds one of how truly stupid things have been made in the society it illustrates.

Rating:

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The Darwin Incident is currently streaming on Prime Video.

Chris's favorite ape is probably Optimus Primal. He can be found posting about anime, transforming robots, and the occasional hopefully more salient political commentary over on his BlueSky.