Will Trent. If you watch, what do you think?
I just have a few thoughts, and questions.
I am five episodes in, so I have these five thoughts, and two questions.
Good dog. Very good dog.
I’m amazed and a little sad I never knew about the books.
Would pretty much watch it for Sonja Sohn’s voice.
As much as I’m always happy when a mystery writer’s work makes it to a screen, large or small, I can’t help wishing the U.S. networks could break free of the “gotta solve it in 44 minutes” trap. I’d love them to treat the Will Trent stories the way the producers of The Calling worked with Dror Mishani’s material. Stretch an investigation out over multiple episodes to allow space for deeper dives into character, motivation of multiple suspects, and the fun parts of mysteries-red herrings and getting it wrong.
I’m a sucker for the “really broken hero”, and this series has more than its quota.
If you haven’t watched it yet, Will Trent is built from characters, and presumably crimes and plotlines found in a series of novels by Karin Slaughter. The title character is a survivor of an incredibly rigourous childhood, and emerged from the foster system in Atlanta with a desire to make the world better. He seems limited in his capacity to show empathy, but is clearly motivated by concern for others.
Open Questions, A and B
A) It’s hard to tell, especially when the protagonist’s personal challenges draw out my own empathy, whether they are as “good”as they seem, or if there are layers I’m not noticing.
B) I’ve read some criticism online of the author’s handling of the character’s dyslexia. It seems to me, after 5 episodes, that in the tv adaptation at least they are veering close to treating it like the comic book hero Daredevil’s blindness. The tired old trope of “the other senses compensating for the fact that the hero can’t actually see”.
To go deeper into both questions, I guess I’ll have to read some of the novels. Oh well!