In The Dark (2019) – Season 1 Episode 1 Recap & Review

Stumbling In The Dark

What do you get when you mix the blindness of Daredevil with the sassy attitude of Jessica Jones whilst adding a dose of slapstick comedy? Probably something very close to CW’s latest drama, In The Dark. There’s potential here for this show to be a really interesting and fun play on conventional tropes and it certainly has the elements to pull it off. Unfortunately, the contrived comedy and mundane characters hold this one back from being a better pilot episode.

The episode begins with an introduction to our main character, as she unenthusiastically has sex with a stranger. An abrupt climax leads Murphy to promptly send the man on his way before grabbing her guide-dog and heading to the local chemist for some pills. Using her disability to her advantage, she cuts to the front of the queue before leaving to drink with her buddy Tyson in a back-alley.

Following this segment, Murphy finds a dead body down an alleyway who may be Tyson and as she hurries home, clearly distraught and upset, she informs her roommate, and subsequently the police, over what she’s found. Given how intoxicated she is and the lack of evidence in the alleyway itself, the police chalk this up to her having one too many drinks.

After going home with a married man and hiding under a glass table when his wife returns home, an ensuing conversation with a blind kid the following day sheds more light on the issues they both have to go through on a daily basis. Unfortunately, Murphy is too distracted to really listen, still caught up over the whereabouts of Tyson.

The episode then ends with Murphy going looking for Tyson’s phone with the help of her flatmate despite the warnings against her doing this. As she finds Tyson’s phone, it looks like someone did kill him and is trying to cover it up, leaving plenty of questions over what really happened.

In The Dark has a lot of potential but the attempts to make Murphy an anti-hero don’t always work. The dark, slapstick comedy is certainly the best element to this one but given the context of it, there’s bound to be some who hate this play on disabilities. It’s still far too early to gauge which side of the spectrum In The Dark will fall but if it can keep the right balance between comedy and drama, In The Dark could be a fun little show.