The Madness – Season 1 Episode 1 “Pilot” Recap & Review

Pilot

Episode 1 of The Madness begins with a man called Muncie waking up in the middle of a forest. He stumbles to the nearest diner and greets the police, where we see brief flashes of what seemed to transpire in the woods. All will be revealed in due time!

We then cut back and see that Muncie Daniels is a writer and pundit by trade. He shows up as a guest speaker on CNN alongside an old acquaintance, Renee. He certainly has a good deal of charisma, and more than holds his own against the tough questions. After, he packs up his stuff and heads out to a quiet cabin in the woods to concentrate on writing.

However, Muncie’s plans hit a snag when the power goes out. There’s no cell signal here either, so Muncie heads over to his neighbour’s place to try and get the lowdown on what’s happening. They had an earlier little run-in, where the guy introduced himself as Mark, and recognized Muncie from the news, but that’s about as far as their interaction went. Unfortunately, he finds his neighbour dead and chopped to bits.

A couple of masked men chase him through the woods, and after a rather tense moment in the water to try and evade capture, Muncie gets the jump on one of the men. This cleverly ties into an earlier scene where we saw him practicing submissions in the gym. Despite choking the guy out and stabbing him with his pen, Muncie drops the weapon next to the body and scarpers.

This catches us up to the moments at the start of the series, and the police join Muncie out to cabin. However, when they get there there’s no sign of a dead body or the masked men either.

The police believe it’s just Muncie’s active imagination and he made the whole thing up. However, they do find Mark’s watch on the ground, and his car tyres appear to be slashed. The officers are understandably wary here, and decide to even look into Muncie as a potential suspect.

When the tow truck arrives, the worker finds a tracker attached to the rear of Muncie’s vehicle. Given there are no other eyewitnesses, the attention, once more, falls to Muncie. Now, weed was found in his cabin and back home, Muncie is paranoid and believes his place has been broken into. There’s only a crooked photo and a broken latch on the backdoor, so the police don’t take it too seriously. However, Muncie noticeably doesn’t mention the tracker to them.

Unfortunately, all of this doesn’t do Muncie’s case any favours and it would appear the noose is tightening around his neck. Reporting a murder and all these suspicious incidents without a body or a name doesn’t exactly look good. He’s encouraged to do what he can and, more importantly, put a name to the face.

Using his deductive skills (and a bit of acting), Muncie finds out the man in the Poconos with him is a guy called Mark Simon. He tracks down Lucie, Mark’s former wife, and she seems to corroborate his story. He does, however, point out that Mark was an asshole.

Muncie is soon approached by Agent Franco Quinones. He’s with the FBI and seems to believe this case intersects with one he’s working on himself. Mark Simon was part of a white supremacist group called the Forge. Now, as Muncie has ties to the BLM and has called out racial hatred in the past, being alone in the woods with someone like  Mark? It really doesn’t look good and does paints a big bullseye on him as the murderer.

At the hospital, while getting patched up, Muncie is approached by a couple of men asking about Brother14. This appears to be Mark’s codeword from within the organization. They threaten his family in a roundabout way, causing Muncie to rush out of hospital and race back home. He scrambles to get everyone moved to a motel, but news has already spread that Muncie could be the killer.

After being approached out in the parking lot by a social commentator on YouTuber called Laura Jennings, Muncie tries to ring her that night. She seems to have information that Muncie is innocent. He can’t get through though, and in the morning news breaks of her having a heart attack in her hotel room.

Unfortunately, things are made even worse tenuous when Muncie finds Mark’s watch inside his car, a blood spatter up the side.

The Episode Review

The first episode gets things off to an intriguing start, with plenty of mystery and a look into Muncie’s “madness” that’s perceived by everyone else around him. It would appear that the murder of Mark Simon is racially motivated, and as a white supremist, it makes sense why he would be a disliked individual. However, it doesn’t explain the two men out in the woods, nor why nobody has found the body or the pen out in the woods. At least not yet anyway, that could come in the episodes ahead.

Muncie is an interesting protagonist though and there appears to be a vendetta against him to pin this murder on him. But why? To what end? I’m sure more will be revealed in the episodes ahead but so far, this one looks like it could be a really intriguing watch.