The Darwin Incident

Episode 7

The Darwin Incident has always been a series that would sensationalize some of its elements for the plot or potentially compelling TV. But this week, it might finally reach levels that are too unbelievable. A human/chimpanzee hybrid? Maybe. Vegans as an oppressed underclass motivated to violent terrorism? Plausible. Cops who actually make coordinated efforts to stop a school shooter? Please, let's try to keep things realistic here.

This episode does attempt to round back to actually analyze the workings of online radicalization and mass violence machinations it barely hovered over last week. Gare properly describes the "Red Pill" concept he takes his channel name from. His particular intent in livestreaming his slaughter, who and what drove him to it, is a fictional angle in its own right, but it mirrors the way such an act could be weaponized to promote a message and how the public might react if that were the case. There's something very darkly funny about Gare explicitly saying neither gun rights nor mental illness should be discussed as factors in his manifesto.

It does mean that The Darwin Incident is asking, at least partially, to actually analyze the idea of veganism as a terrorist ideology. Yes, in this case, it's not all about Veganism—the ALA's manipulation of Gare is intended as an analogue for any amount of mindsets sending vulnerable young people down dangerous paths. Yet Gare's own beliefs and how he was led to them—his "Red Pill" moment—still get substantial textual airplay. Which means viewers are treated to this violent vegan dropping sincere lines like "Our tables are overflowing with blood," which got an unintentional snort-laugh out of me. It reaches those farcical levels I called out when I first started reviewing this show. It plays like those crack theories that organizations like PETA exist mainly to make more mainstream animal rights groups look bad by association.

As in the previous episode, the moment-to-moment dramatizations of Gare's massacre are presented effectively by The Darwin Incident's choices. A shooter livestreaming their acts, with police and others using that to track their movements—that's a compelling detail driven by this story's modern, too-online approach. Similarly, I'm interested in the fact that Gare survives to be apprehended by the police. He's not martyred and could maintain a presence in the plot for future use. It's a wrench in Rivera's scheme that can keep the thriller wheels turning.

Those are all just mechanical components of the storytelling to be impressed by, though, as the thematic and emotional elements continue to run dry for The Darwin Incident with this arc. Gare's final confrontation with Charlie and Lucy in the cafeteria is shockingly shallow. There's potential to touch on the dual threads of Charlie's functionality for the vegan argument—he's both a symbol of human/animal convergence that complicates the nature of one eating the other, as well as a potential spokes-manzee for the animals that could have reconsidered rights as a result. But none of that is touched on, with time instead given to Gare's animal-empathy backstory and detailing the time-delay on his stream that threw some people off. Which is kind of weak as a twist, I must say.

The show flirts with the heaviness of the subject matter it's depicting, but settles for rote, evocative imagery in place of actual analysis. The scene where Gare spares Lucy on account of her recently embraced veganism, after gunning down her other classmates in front of her, carries some compelling connotations for her as a character moving forward. Or it would, if the writing had any interest in doing anything of depth with Lucy. So then, just a week later, she's eschewed any implications of survivors' guilt to say that things are "back to normal" and crack wise about PTSD counseling. Not that Charlie's much more dynamic, as he remarks on his plan to take down the entire ALA with the same sort of disaffected dryness he's delivered everything with, but at least that's in-character for him. The most growth that happens in anyone is cranky cop Phil seemingly being turned around on Charlie's character, thanks to his actions during the shooting, as he provides assistance and advice to Charlie's parents in safeguarding their adopted son. Aww, see, prejudiced folks can have their minds changed about marginalized groups thanks to extreme acts of heroism!

It means that sort of turnaround is probably what Charlie's going to need to do on a slightly larger scale with the mob that shows up at his house at the end of this episode. Never mind that, apart from Lucy's mom, there's never been any implication of how the adult population of this tiny town feels about the Humanzee living among them. But then I get the impression the story didn't actually care until this moment, when they could be whipped up as a dramatic link chained to the next section of the story. The Darwin Incident has shown it can pull off sociological analysis through its allegories before. But in invoking one of the most harrowing realities of the culture it's seemingly satirizing, the best it could come up with was "Wouldn't it be messed up if a vegan livestreamed a school shooting? Okay, moving on!"

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.