In a word rife with true and fictionalized crime thrillers, our culture seems almost exclusively interested in the guilty: Who did it? How do we prove it? And what kind of monsters hide among us?
But USA Network's The Sinner is one of the few crime series more interested in innocence than in guilt. It's exactly what makes it feel so compelling and fresh in an oversaturated genre.
The two seasons -- the second of which premieres on Aug. 1, and the first of which is available now on Netflix – tell two completely different stories of atypical murderers. Both suspects confess to the crimes immediately. But that's only the beginning, as we wade into the murky moral gray areas that the criminal justice system fails to account for.
The Sinner continues to highlight the flaws of our human need to catch the bad guy, cast blame beyond a reasonable doubt, then move on. Instead, it forces us to understand the human being behind a heinous crime and, in the process, foster empathy for the sinner in us all.
The first installment questioned the boundaries of culpability through the character of Cora Tannetti. In her Golden Globe-nominated performance, Jessica Biel played a demure young mother who inexplicably commits a violent murder in broad daylight during an otherwise normal beach day.
It was a transfixing disentanglement of motivation and repressed trauma propelled by Detective Ambrose (Bill Pullman), who is the series' connective tissue for this second installment.
After the detective's success with the Tannetti case, he's called back to his hometown in rural New York for Season 2, to solve yet another homicide with an even more unlikely culprit. 11-year-old Julian poisons his loving parents on their way to Niagara Falls on vacation, but as the season's tagline suggests, "the sins of a child are never his alone."
As usual with The Sinner, there's more than meets the eye. A whole world of unseen and unrecognized pain lives in the context around these murders. Once again, the question isn't who did it or how, but why – and what that tells us about our imperfect ideals around justice, and how we can live with the cracks in those system.
The first three episodes of the eight-episode installment set up a riveting and expertly paced mystery on par with the first season, with the confidence to know that less is more. I'll admit: I was doubtful that The Sinner Season 2 would justify an extension of the limited series, especially with Biel only returning as executive producer rather than as the star.
But each episode moves with the same slow-boil crescendo, building to an ending that throws you right off a cliff so you're hanging on for dear life until the next episode.
It's hard to discuss much of anything specific as far as plot without spoiling the show's well-calculated withholding of information.
You can expect a continued investigation into how we cast judgement, both in the court of public opinion and literal court of law. We want a simple answer to the question of the kind of people who could murder another person. But the reality is much ore layered, like an onion rotting from the inside.
The compelling anti-heroine role that Biel embodied so brilliantly in Season 1 is taken up by Carrie Coon this time, whom viewers will likely recognize as Nora from The Leftovers.
Vera's role in the story takes a couple episodes to solidify, but Coon's enigmatic performance never fails to intrigue. Natalie Paul's Heather, the amateur detective who brings Ambrose into the case, is another new addition, bringing some much-needed human interest into the cryptic mystery.
Faith and religion, which were only slowly revealed as central themes in Season 1, continue to be at the center. But instead of a focus on Catholicism and its inherited sense of guilt, Season 2 delves into the need for alternatives to a higher power. The moral compass of virtue transforms when viewed through the lens of those who have found a code of ethics different from the puritanical ones that American society built its legal system around.
That brings us to the one ingredient that does feel like its missing from Season 2, though: relatability. Or rather, intimacy.
The first installment of The Sinner worked from a place of shared trauma, both in terms of the internalized shame shared between Cora and Ambrose and the audience's shared social sense of Catholic guilt.
There are some parallels being set up between Ambrose's childhood and the odd child-murderer Julian. But the connection remains too unclear to really capitalize on any emotional payoff, and it's not nearly as electric as the one established with Biel's character.
More importantly, the whole premise for this crime feels less instantly familiar than the first -- more of an exploration into the unseen fringes of society than an excavation of the trauma of a woman who could be your mother, daughter, sister, or wife.
Make no mistake: The next installment of The Sinner is sure to keep you watching for the ever-mounting need to solve its cryptic puzzle -- which is reward enough in itself.
I only hope it switches its focus back to finding the humanity in the condemned, no matter how hard it is to recognize ourselves in the people society would rather forget about.
Topics Golden Globes
