Drama
Andor
The critically acclaimed Star Wars series ‘Andor’ is back. For fans, it is a return to form. For families, the show is still potentially a ride through an asteroid belt.
Mickey Fitzgerald’s seen plenty of corpses. She’s a cop, after all, working some of the meanest streets in Philadelphia. It’s a part of the job. And with drug use out of control, an increasingly common part.
But that doesn’t make it easier. And some cases are harder than others.
When she sees the latest Jane Doe, slumped next to the A Track bridge, Micky freezes: She stands as still as a stone, her only movement a thumb sliding between two fisted fingers.
The body type, the purple-pink hair cascading out of the hood … could it be her? Could it be Casey?
It’s not. Not this time. But the next one? Maybe.
Casey’s been missing from the Philly streets for more than a month now. And Mickey soon starts to worry that there’s a killer on the loose, murdering Philadelphia’s most vulnerable.
Mickey needs to find the killer. And she needs to find Casey, too—hopefully before it’s too late.
Before the end of the first episode, we know what the show leads us to expect: Casey is Mickey’s sister. They grew up together on these same streets. Mickey eventually found her way into law enforcement—a good, solid career. She has a son, Thomas, now, too.
Things aren’t perfect: Thomas’ father can’t be bothered with the boy. And plenty of Mickey’s fellow cops eye her with derision. But still, she’s better off than most of the folks she tries to help.
Casey is one of those people—or, at least, she was. Mickey doesn’t know her sister’s whereabouts. “She’s been gone too long this time,” she says.
Complicating matters are the murders.
The police don’t want to believe that the slew of dead young women they’ve found are anything more than a series of unfortunate drug overdoses. Mickey’s just being conspiratorial. Again. But when three women turn up with lethal doses of insulin in their bloodstreams, Mickey can’t turn her back. She realizes that someone’s killing these vulnerable young women. He may have already gotten to Casey, too.
Indeed, that’s what Mickey most fears. Not only because it would very likely mean that her sister’s dead—but that her sister might’ve told the killer something about Mickey, too. Because Mickey can’t shake the feeling that someone’s following her.
Long Bright River, based on Liz Moore’s bestselling book of the same name, is a fairly standard mystery thriller with a big theme at its core: choices.
The story opens with Mickey and son Thomas diving into the story of Faust, the fabled literary character who sold his soul to the devil. Mickey presents Faust’s story as a cautionary tale.
“There are certain choices you can never undo,” she tells Thomas, her sister’s own life on the streets surely bouncing around in her mind. “So make good choices today.”
But when Thomas learns that Faust wasn’t actually condemned by his choice—that the woman for whom Faust sold his soul redeemed him through her own love—Thomas gets confused.
“Isn’t saving people what you do?” Thomas asks.
“Not everybody can be saved, and that’s my point,” Mickey tells her son.
But Thomas doesn’t agree. If someone needs saving, we should always try.
“Even if the devil’s out there?” Mickey asks.
“Especially because the devil’s out there,” Thomas answers.
It’s a fascinating exchange, especially considering that Mickey’s not particularly religious. For her, the devil is more a concept than a reality—but she sees that conceptual devil at work on the streets every day.
But Mickey’s not the only one who sees problems here. Viewers will, too.
The show, by today’s streaming standards, isn’t salacious. We’re not exposed to outrageous levels of gore or barraged by endless profanities. But the show does deal with some very difficult subjects.
Casey, along with most of the women living on the streets in this Philadelphia neighborhood, are addicts who support their habits via sex work. And that, of course, makes them particularly vulnerable to those who would prey upon them. We see women try to doll themselves up to charm the johns who would pick them up; we see some of these women’s dead bodies in fields and under bridges.
And while profanity isn’t omnipresent, it certainly does show up now—up to and including the f- and s-word.
Mickey’s right, of course: The choices we make matter. That goes for the choices that the show’s creators make—and what we choose to watch.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Mickey Fitzgerald and her new partner, Lafferty, are called to the scene of a “probable overdose.” But when Mickey examines the body and finds blood in its mouth, she suspects foul play. But no one else in her precinct seems willing to listen to her.
We see the corpse, slumped against a concrete wall. The bodies of other victims are found in the morgue, and we see their faces and hands. One woman is lured into a vehicle. The driver locks the doors, and the terrified woman pounds on the window as the vehicle drives away. One woman bears a vicious-looking scar on her face. We hear that Mickey’s former partner was injured on the job.
Most of the women (and men) living on the streets in this particular section of Philadelphia are addicts. One sits in a store aisle, clutching a birthday card she pulled off a shelf. Another rocks on a washing machine, angering its owner. (Mickey comes by, bandages the woman’s feet, then calmly and compassionately leads her away.) In flashback, a woman suffers an apparent overdose: Mickey and another woman attend to her until she’s out of the woods. We hear that Philadelphia is on track to deal with 1,200 overdose deaths for the year.
Mickey and her son, Thomas, have an ongoing discussion about Faust (precipitated by the two of them listening to the opera in the car). Faust, of course, famously sold his soul to the devil, and Mickey asks if Thomas knows “what the devil is—conceptually.” In a later conversation, after Thomas talks about hell and damnation in school, she tells him that it was her fault; she had discussed Faust in a “really intense, religious way,” she says, and she reminds Thomas that they’re “not particularly …” letting the thought trail away. (She was clearly going to say that they weren’t particularly religious. That said, we do see a cross in what we assume is her father’s house.
A woman with her back turned to the camera puts on her shirt. (We see her bra strap, but nothing else). We hear that Thomas’ father, Simon, has abandoned his parenting responsibilities. And when “Gee-Pop,” Thomas’ grandad, encourages Mickey to cut the guy out of their lives completely, he reminds her,“Just because Simon can make a baby doesn’t make him a father.” When Thomas kisses Gee-Pop on the cheek, Gee-Pop mutters to Mickey that if he kissed his own grandfather like that, he’d get slapped for it.
Gee-Pop gives Thomas a toy slot machine to play with. We hear 11 uses of the f-word and five of the s-word. Lafferty complains about acid reflux. Other profanities include “a–,” “d–n,” “h—” and two abuses of Jesus’ name.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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