[7.4/10] My love-hate relationship with this show out of the gate stems from its propensity to gild the lily. There’s a lot of good stuff in “Touch”, taking advantage of what appears to be the show’s M.O. in the early going, telling a character story in the present that’s informed by a foundational story in the past. I appreciate that The Haunting of Hill House is more focused on letting us know who each of these characters is, parceling details and scares about the events at the Hill House then and Nell’s death now as we go, rather than being purely plot driven.
But man, so often it goes one speech, one monologue, one beat too far to drive an obvious point home. I really like the central metaphor of “Touch” -- that Theodora is sensitive and feels things, literally and figuratively, more intensely than other people, which caused her to take extra precautions to protect herself, to “build walls” as the show puts it. But rather than just letting that metaphor permeate the episode, it has Theo give her little speech to the kid at the beginning, or have her mom make that point almost explicitly at the end, or includes other on-the-nose dialogue to make sure that we get it.
The same goes for the evil foster dad story, which frankly was pretty easy to guess from the first scene. That said, I like how they did it for the most part, giving you the sense that something’s off and having Theo piece it together little by little. The problem just becomes when she shakes hands with the foster dad and the show sticks with their handshake about two beats too long and she tells the guy she was looking at his smile. It’s emblematic of the biggest flaw in this series so far, where something is conveyed subtly and artfully, and then the show pelts the audience with an exposition snowball to make sure we get it.
Still, I did like this one. The magical realism of Theo being a touch-based empath is done well, both in the ways it would be an advantage for her as a psychologist (one who, given her background, is especially inclined to help kids who’ve been through trauma), and also a curse when she has to feel the horror’s of the world and experience them firsthand without easy ways to turn them off. Again, there’s some moments where that idea is played a little too loudly, and I don’t necessarily love the trite “I just need to feel something other than the trauma” direction they go with it, but the episode sketches out Theo, and the way her past and her powers have shaped her, nicely.
At the same time, I’m liking the structure of the show more and more. While the first episode is kind of a jumble of introductions, the second and third seem to reveal a strong structure for a series like this one. The Haunting of Hill House manages to balance procedural storytelling, with Shirley and Theo facing the equivalent of the crisis of the week, and then ties into telling instances from their past -- like the box of kittens or the discovery of a bootleggers hideaway. At the same time, the show parcels out bits and pieces of what happened on that fateful night in the past and also the horrible event in the present, while weaving the moments, past and present, we’ve already seen together. It’s ambitious, and the structure alone helps prop the show up when some of the clunky dialogue in particular is threatening to take it down.
Overall, this show has at least one thing every ten minutes that makes me roll my eyes, and the scares are still a bit underwhelming (though the zombie in the basement was solid), but I’m more and more on board with the character-based, interwoven stories that the series is telling, even when it puts too fine a point on certain themes or ideas.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2018-12-08T18:33:14Z
[7.4/10] My love-hate relationship with this show out of the gate stems from its propensity to gild the lily. There’s a lot of good stuff in “Touch”, taking advantage of what appears to be the show’s M.O. in the early going, telling a character story in the present that’s informed by a foundational story in the past. I appreciate that The Haunting of Hill House is more focused on letting us know who each of these characters is, parceling details and scares about the events at the Hill House then and Nell’s death now as we go, rather than being purely plot driven.
But man, so often it goes one speech, one monologue, one beat too far to drive an obvious point home. I really like the central metaphor of “Touch” -- that Theodora is sensitive and feels things, literally and figuratively, more intensely than other people, which caused her to take extra precautions to protect herself, to “build walls” as the show puts it. But rather than just letting that metaphor permeate the episode, it has Theo give her little speech to the kid at the beginning, or have her mom make that point almost explicitly at the end, or includes other on-the-nose dialogue to make sure that we get it.
The same goes for the evil foster dad story, which frankly was pretty easy to guess from the first scene. That said, I like how they did it for the most part, giving you the sense that something’s off and having Theo piece it together little by little. The problem just becomes when she shakes hands with the foster dad and the show sticks with their handshake about two beats too long and she tells the guy she was looking at his smile. It’s emblematic of the biggest flaw in this series so far, where something is conveyed subtly and artfully, and then the show pelts the audience with an exposition snowball to make sure we get it.
Still, I did like this one. The magical realism of Theo being a touch-based empath is done well, both in the ways it would be an advantage for her as a psychologist (one who, given her background, is especially inclined to help kids who’ve been through trauma), and also a curse when she has to feel the horror’s of the world and experience them firsthand without easy ways to turn them off. Again, there’s some moments where that idea is played a little too loudly, and I don’t necessarily love the trite “I just need to feel something other than the trauma” direction they go with it, but the episode sketches out Theo, and the way her past and her powers have shaped her, nicely.
At the same time, I’m liking the structure of the show more and more. While the first episode is kind of a jumble of introductions, the second and third seem to reveal a strong structure for a series like this one. The Haunting of Hill House manages to balance procedural storytelling, with Shirley and Theo facing the equivalent of the crisis of the week, and then ties into telling instances from their past -- like the box of kittens or the discovery of a bootleggers hideaway. At the same time, the show parcels out bits and pieces of what happened on that fateful night in the past and also the horrible event in the present, while weaving the moments, past and present, we’ve already seen together. It’s ambitious, and the structure alone helps prop the show up when some of the clunky dialogue in particular is threatening to take it down.
Overall, this show has at least one thing every ten minutes that makes me roll my eyes, and the scares are still a bit underwhelming (though the zombie in the basement was solid), but I’m more and more on board with the character-based, interwoven stories that the series is telling, even when it puts too fine a point on certain themes or ideas.