We came to Forever the
ABC TV show in a roundabout way that was, on reflection, probably a good
thing. Had we been watching it real-time
over fall 2014 and spring 2015, we would have suffered the anguish of trying to
appeal its cancellation and ultimately failing.
On a trip to the US in October 2014, we caught what we didn’t know then
was the second episode, DVR’ed on a relative’s machine; through word-of-mouth,
we had been recommended the show. In the
same trip, we caught what we didn’t realize was episode 10. On another trip in March, we caught episode
17. It helped that all of these episodes
were pretty good, episode 2 (in my opinion, and in retrospect) one of the best
of the season, and episode 10 with a killer climax. I admit I’m partial to the
modern DVD box set method of TV consumption, which can allow you to binge-watch
or not, according to your preference or mood.
It’s to its credit that Forever worked
well as a binge-watch, that despite its reasonably formulaic quality, this
didn’t threaten the integrity of the show and indeed, ramped up suspense to a
near-frenzy pitch, for me at least.
Forever is, to sum
it up in an easily digestible format, about Henry Morgan (Ioan Gruffud), a
doctor who, by 2014, has been alive for over 200 years. He was shot and drowned in 1814, and every
time he’s been killed since then, he pops back up, alive and naked, in the
nearest body of water. By 2014, he’s
taken a job at the New York Medical Examiners office, a role that suits him
well and puts his many years’ observational skills to good use. To such good use, in fact, that after he
helps solve at least one case for NYPD detective Jo Martinez (Alana de la
Garza), they become a team. They are
joined by her colleagues Mike Hanson (Donnie Keshawarz) and Lt. Joanna Reece
(Lorraine Toussaint) as well as junior pathologist Lucas (Joel David
Moore). Henry’s friend and confidant is
Abe (Judd Hirsch), with whom he shares a house (complete with secret basement
lab) and antiques store. Another
important character in the story is New York City, the backdrop for countless
adventures which up the ante visually and in the narrative[1].
WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS ALERT – I will try to
signpost big spoilers but cannot guarantee the following won’t contain small
spoilers that you would learn, for example, in the first two episodes
That Forever succeeded
with me personally is a bit of a surprise, given that I don’t really like
police procedurals (unless, I suppose, they have some odd anachronistic element
like, for example, Ashes to Ashes, about
which I had the same devotion); to be honest, I don’t much like US network TV,
given its general reliance on formula, its lack of adventurousness, its
cookie-cutter characters, and its pat assumptions. It cannot be argued that Forever doesn’t rely on a formula, and one that gets cemented
pretty quickly. Each episode gives you a
case of the week + dollop of flashback + usually something contributing to the
overall narrative arc, the mystery that focuses on who and what is Henry Morgan. The mystery of the week is usually pretty
well-written, but the brilliance, I suppose, is the integration of the
flashbacks, which give insight both large and small into the life of a man
forced into situations most of us mere mortals can only imagine.
It’s been often said that the crux of a successful TV show
is “the gang”; to that end, are Forever’s
characters mere types? The relationship
between Abe and Henry is completely unique and powerful in its uniqueness. Henry and his one-time wife Abigail, a nurse,
found Abe as a baby in 1945 in Europe’s concentration camps. In adopting him, Henry has given Abe an
exceptional vantage point as he grows older but his father does not; many
characters eventually assume that Henry is Abe’s son. This means they are protective of each other,
and their interactions can range from that of contemporaries to Abe’s disgust
with the “old man”’s old-fashionedness (he can’t appreciate jazz, doesn’t have
a cell phone, doesn’t use a computer, and so on). Abe has to rescue Henry when he turns up
naked in the East River after dying[2], and
they share a bond over Abe’s disappeared adopted mother, a thread that isn’t
resolved until the final episode. This
is underlined by seeing Abe at different ages in the flashbacks, from a baby to
a child (1955) to a teen (1965) to a young man and then a middle-aged man
(1985). Judd Hirsch, one of the first of the regulars to be cast, is perfect
for the role.
Henry—winningly played by Ioan Gruffud—is himself
sufficiently interesting to carry the weight of the show; classically handsome
(and with the kind of hair that lends itself perfectly to successive historical
periods), beautifully able to express emotions, and with good comic timing—Forever is, despite all its moody
trappings, marginally a comedy. There
are multiple references to Henry’s similarities to Sherlock Holmes, epitomized
by his “Sherlock Scan.” To be honest I
must be one of the few people who haven’t hopped aboard the Sherlock bandwagon,
in any form, so I’d be much happier if we could drop the notion Henry Morgan
inspired Conan Doyle to write Sherlock.
Furthermore, I normally can’t stand the ubiquitous TV custom of
monologues from the characters that offer moral bookends to the action
onscreen; yet from a 200-year-old, it seems less pretentious somehow. I think it’s hard not to be charmed by Henry
and his eccentric ways; like the song goes, he’s the Englishman in New York[3]. Furthermore, as his moral dilemmas pile up,
it’s hard not sympathize with his (completely fantastical) predicament.
Nevertheless, in the light of long-lived wanderers (such as,
appropriately, Captain Jack Harkness), Henry has stayed a remarkably decent
human being whose heart is always in the right place and whose desire to help
is genuine. He is pleasant and seems to
enjoy the finer things in life (from food and wine to music and art). Something must have inspired him in the early
decades of the 19th century to become a doctor; his wealthy
mercantile background could have made him simply a gentleman. As the incarcerated priest in “Diamonds Are
Forever” seems to indicate, Henry’s curse/affliction/gift seems destined for
some purpose.
Henry’s more mundane colleagues at NYPD are less complex,
though the format of the series seems to limit character development. Mike Hanson and Lucas are played mainly for
laughs, and I would have liked to have seen an episode skewed toward Lucas to
make him more than the ultimate fan-boy (though this facet of his character is
acknowledged and subverted a number of times, most memorably in “The
Frustrating Thing About Psychopaths” as his knowledge and devotion to graphic
novels becomes crucial to the plot and also serves as provocation for the
complicated ethics of that episode).
That “Punk Is Dead” is able to tell us some new things about Hanson is
mainly down to production team and fan response. This is true of the “tough cop in charge,”
Lt. Reece, whose personality breaks free from time to time (most notably in “6 AM”)
but mostly remains a type. I was hoping
we’d get to see some flashback to her as a cop on the beat, and evidently many
of the deleted scenes in the episodes served to flesh her out.
When I dropped in on episodes 2 and 10, I felt pretty
cynically toward Jo Martinez. She looks
like a Disney princess made flesh (as Henry himself points out, her proportions
make her particularly attractive), and I felt like this relationship was the
height of predictability. However, I was
wrong. I have been used to some
slow-burners in series before, but none quite so slow as this one. It is allegedly not even certain that Jo and
Henry (or “Mortinez” as the shippers are calling them) would have become a
couple in season 2 or ever. Martinez
still tends ever-so-slightly toward character shorthand, and I would have liked
to have seen an episode that focused on her character development without
having to do with her dead husband or her n’er-do-well father (her Bechdel test
triumphs only by her complete devotion to work). Strangely—and this may not be a good thing—her
character comes alive a bit more when she is romanced by millionaire hotelier
Isaac Monroe (think Billy Shipton in “Blink”) in “Dead Men Tell Long Tales” and
“Best Foot Forward.”
Henry’s romantic entanglements are more mixed; I found Iona
Payne, the dominatrix therapist, slightly irritating in her first episode “The
Ecstasy of Agony” though she was more rounded as a character in “Memories of
Murder” and I wasn’t totally against the idea of her and Henry (okay, so I am a
bit of a “Mortinez” myself).
Henry is fascinated by death, not through a morbid interest
but because he would like to understand his condition—and perhaps die
someday. From the first episode, he
becomes aware that he may not be alone, as his mystery caller purports to be a
2,000-year-old immortal. The situation
throws Henry into a panic; as he observes to Abe, in the past when his trail
has been discovered, he has moved away and outlived his accuser. With “Adam,” this proves impossible, leading
us down an inevitable path riddled with tension.
WARNING: BIGGER SPOILERS AHEAD
I was very pleased to find out that Adam was being played by
an underrated[4]
actor, Burn Gorman, who I suppose was chosen for the role for, among other
things, his ability to play more-English-than-the-English harmless[5] as well
as stone-facedly-evil-but-somehow-American-accented psychopath. The suspense ramped up by “The Man in the
Killer Suit” and “Skinny Dipper” was so great that I couldn’t imagine where the
series was going (and with half of the season to go!). “Skinny Dipper” must rank as one of the most
un-Christmasy Christmas episodes of all time, though the look on Henry’s face
as Adam is finally revealed (as the mild-mannered, tea-sipping psychologist who
totally manipulated Henry), is absolutely shocking and terrifying.
I did wonder if the final episodes were going to be able to
deliver on the heights we’d achieved in the pilot, “Look Before You Leap,” “The
Night in Question” (which drops some exquisite bombshells about the
disappearance of Abigail) and “The Last Death of Henry Morgan.” While I was a bit disappointed that Henry
would resort to cheaper and cheaper tricks when faced with dire situations, and
while I felt “The Last Death . . .” was sliiiightly less gripping than “Skinny
Dipper,” it did tie up some loose ends nicely as a bookend to the rip-roaring
pilot. Forever
ends in a way that could easily be picked up again later, though I was
impressed at the way Henry chose to deal with Adam in their final confrontation.
Reportedly, all of the cast seem to have appreciated the
history embedded in the series and this served in part to attract them to their
roles. This is part of what delighted me
about Forever and made me a devoted
fan. Certainly, the strokes are broad,
but they are focused on two Big Issues:
the Holocaust and slavery. The
former is embodied in Abe but comes to a head in one of my favorite episodes,
“Hitler on the Half Shell,” which, while not excusing the atrocities of the
Nazi regime, shows that evil is unpredictable and not absolute. The audience cringes in horror as Adam shows
up at Abe’s Antiques; after what Adam tells him, Henry has to accept that even
“evil” has aspects of grey. This episode
sees Abe identify his birth parents for the first time, which is touching.
The latter is tied directly to Henry’s identity and
immortality, sensitively fleshed out, I thought, in “Dead Men Tell Long
Tales.” Henry is in this sense
startlingly modern in his outlook, as he berates his father for involvement in
the slave trade and dies on the Empress
of Africa trying to save the life of a slave. It comes as a rather shocking further
revelation that he was going to stage a slave revolt on the ship and fears that
his death caused the destruction of the ship and death of the 300 people on
board. In “Dead Men Tell Long Tales,” it
is rather miraculously proven that his efforts did allow the slaves to escape
to freedom (Canada?).
Madness is also a theme of Forever, mainly in “The Ecstasy of Agony” and “Social Engineering”
as this introduces Henry’s first wife, Nora.
In a subversion of the literary motif, it’s Nora who puts her husband in
an asylum and apparently suffers no qualms; it isn’t clear what she thinks of
his escape and disappearance a year later, but the past comes back to literally
haunt Henry in 1865. Working at a London
hospital, Henry is discovered again by the aged Nora, though her remorse over
his confinement leads to tragedy. I was
surprised that the fact Henry consented to his first wife being confined to an
asylum in poetic justice of his previous plight got so little examination,
especially in a quite rigorous episode like “Social Engineering.” There’s room for a lot of historical periods
dramatized weekly, though the fallow periods give room for thought.
I’m sincerely glad I got to watch this show, and I hope you
will considering watching it, too. I
hope it will come back for another series someday!
[1] Though
one wonders if the scale of the show contributed to an expense that was an
element in the show’s cancellation?
[2] It’s never
quite clear how Abe knows.
[3] It’s
interesting to me that Gruffud’s accent is allowed to go Welsh as much as it
likes but he’s always described as the ultimate Englishman. That’s a journal article in itself,
representing nationalism in Forever.
[4] Though
he seems to be getting a lot more work recently and is playing more
three-dimensional characters, though it would be nice to see him actually play
a hero.
[5] Quite
similar to his role in Pacific Rim, actually!
