Drama
Alien: Earth
FX’s ‘Alien: Earth’ is just the latest graphically violent entry in the already graphically violent ‘Alien’ franchise.
Warren Cave is a killer. So said a jury 19 years ago. He was just 16 when he allegedly broke into the home of author Chuck Buhrman and stabbed the guy to death.
The jury wasn’t taxed much in the trial: Sure, the murder weapon was never found, no tell-tale DNA was ever spotted. But Warren’s fingerprints were found in the house. Lanie, one of Buhrman’s twin 15-year-old daughters, spotted Warren hopping over a fence. Besides, up-and-coming reporter Poppy Parnell said he was guilty. Why, her “Profile of a Monster” newspaper series was all about Warren, and it ran before the verdict was passed. Hey, if a major newspaper can demonize a dude without losing every last vat of ink and roll of paper to lawsuits, he has to be guilty, right?
But 19 years later, Poppy’s not so sure.
Warren Cave, or at least his story, had been good to Poppy. Her “Profile of a Monster” series vaulted the cub reporter to the journalistic stratosphere, sending her to The New York Times and the multiple Pulitzer Prizes she eventually claimed.
But one can win only so many Pulitzers before it becomes old hat. So Poppy has moved on to another medium entirely: true-crime podcasting. Now she examines old cases with her reporter’s eye and throws them back into the spotlight, where her readers can obsess over and digest new twists and turns in each.
Poppy never thought she’d reopen the case of Warren Cave. But after encountering some old evidence, especially an old police interview with Lanie Buhrman, she wonders whether Warren’s really the “monster” she painted him to be.
“That entire series launched my career,” she confesses. “And now I can’t help wondering if I was wrong.”
To get to the truth, though, she’ll need to talk with Warren himself—the man she helped put away for life, the man who turned to white supremacy in prison. She’s not just reopening an old case. She’s tearing open old wounds for both of them.
You’d think that with a show featuring Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer (who plays Poppy) and Emmy-winner Aaron Paul (Warren), Truth be Told would be better than it is.
But, truth be told, it’s not.
This Apple TV+ offering feels a little like a gimmicky, low-IQ mystery that doesn’t seem to understand journalism or the law that well—both fairly critical components, you’d think, for a story such as this one.
The series tries to distract the viewer from its logical leaps with occasional sleaze and shock: hurried sex scenes in the backseat of a car, racial tension between Poppy and Warren; flying profanity at every turn. It’s not the sort of content that’ll make most of us faint dead away, mind you: Game of Thrones often sported more content before the opening credits than you’ll see in whole episodes of Truth be Told. But almost all of the show’s problematic content is wholly unnecessary: It’s there, it seems, just to boost the show’s gritty bona fides for whoever grades those sorts of things.
But it also contains some surprising nods to spirituality, both explicit and implicit. Poppy and her family all go to church, and it seems that faith is more than just skin deep for the podcaster. And through Poppy’s new barrage of reporting, the show explores not only themes of guilt and innocence, but grace and redemption, too.
Alas, Truth be Told seems to lose interest in such provocative spiritual asides, distracted by its own salaciousness.
Nineteen years after her stories helped put a man behind bars for a terrible murder, podcaster Poppy Parnell wonders whether she helped convict an innocent man. But delving into the case again involves both personal and professional risk. And why would the convicted killer want to talk with his public-opinion executioner anyway?
We see flashbacks to the murder. And while the killer is always obscured, the blood and trauma and groans of the victim are not. Decades later, one of the victim’s daughters (working as a “death duma”) has sex with a young relative of one of her clients. (We see movements and hear groans in the back seat of a car, though no nudity is involved.) The woman also smokes a cigarette, and she and her aunt seem to be hiding something.
Poppy’s sister either owns or works in a tough-looking bar, and a couple of scenes—including a booze-saturated birthday party for Poppy’s father—take place there. We learn that Poppy’s stepmother is about the same age as Poppy is (a source of friction between the two), and Poppy’s father is verbally abusive to his daughter. Poppy fears that her dad is sick, but her husband suggests she wait until morning to investigate, when everyone else has sobered up.
We see Poppy and her family attend church. She seems to pray and remember her mother in a place of worship, and a cross dangles from her rear-view mirror. She reads a note from her (presumably) dead mother: “Your heart will always tell you what’s right,” it says. “Listen to it.” Poppy is guilt-ridden because she believes she should’ve been a better reporter and investigated all angles of Warren’s case better, rather than just the angles that proved beneficial to her career.
Warren sports several racist tattoos on his forearms, and he tries to shock Poppy by showing them to her. (She indeed initially storms out, and family advises her not to help him at all.)
Poppy meets an old flame at a party (he refers to himself as “Poppy’s roadkill”), and he seems to be still carrying a torch for his ex. (We also hear that Poppy’s ex-husband cheated on her.) There’s an insinuation that the teenage Warren was assaulted in prison, and Poppy speculates just how, and how often, the teen was misused behind bars. Warren claims he’s innocent of the murder, though admits he was in the house looking for drugs. (The victim’s wife, he tells Poppy, was an addict.)
Characters say the f-word three times and the s-word 14 times. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n” and “h—.” God’s name and Jesus’ name are both abused once apiece.
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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