Aquarius

By: Robert Murphy

At the height of the peace movement from the 1960s to 1970s there would be one man whose name would go down in infamy and his name was Charles Manson (Gethin Anthony). He and his "family" would end up going on a spree of murders that would inspire an entire generation of fear for people. But before all this Manson would appear to be nothing but a small time peddler in a world with so much more going on. Black rights movements, protests against government sanctioned wars and police brutality swept over the nation and one man walked the line between good cop and bad cop like no other. Sam Hodiak (David Duchovny) is an LAPD officer with a troubled past and even more troubling future as he is set to the task of recovering one of Manson's latest runaways, the daughter of a prominent Los Angeles lawyer Emma Karn (Emma Dumont). Along the way you will see him bust a few heads and walk the very dangerous line of right and wrong in a time where the two were practically invisible, the key is to actually have a good moral compass underneath.

David Duchovny's return to television is one that I was eager to get behind, I was an avid follower of his exploits on Californication and in quite a few ways his role in Aquarius shares many of the same characteristics. Detective Hodiak is a former lush and somewhat of a womanizer that has tried to turn a new leaf in one form or another after seeing what kind of life he was living. This however doesn't stop him from bending a few rules to get confessions from criminals or even beating the crap out of potential informants. Police brutality being something that is deeply overlooked during this time as it was something that cops felt criminals deserved. After a few episodes though the layers start to peel away from Hodiak's bad boy persona and you start to see more of a free thinking type than you would have expected. This being a big deal for the supposedly straight edged look he has for most of the show and most would view him a suit or narc the instant he walked into a room. But, his character actually has a lot going for him and respect for all kind of individuals during a time where anyone who wasn't white seemed to be in the wrong or on the outside looking in on the American dream.

This is an aspect I felt that Aquarius gets into extremely well. Everyone knows about the Black Panther and civil rights movements that were brewing around this time and how people of color were being treated now that the walls were starting to break down and everyone was starting to coexist. Well, trying to coexist I should say since plenty of hate and superiority complexes were still brewing. It is especially tough on Hodiak's new partner Brian Shafe (Grey Damon) who is the departments free spirit hippie cop. An odd combo but one that I enjoyed since he had an interesting interpretation on both sides of law being someone who hates the police brutality and their abuse of power but still wanting to serve and protect. His character we find out isn't so popular on the home front as he's married to a black woman and they share child together in a community mostly surround by white neighbors. The abuse for his character runs deep but one of the most satisfying moments comes when Hodiak busts a few heads to find out who threw a rock through Brian's window.

There is also other issues that arise that I feel were presented fairly well but mostly fall under the same category. Issues with race and sexual orientation are laced throughout the story and in many cases make Hodiak a more compelling character each time they come up. In the episode entitled "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" Hodiak helps a fellow detective in trying to stop a local paper from revealing that he in fact from Cuba because it will ruin his career and his family. Such a tiny thing that you would never cause a huge problem now is a monumental disaster as the man never told his wife who he was and never told any other detective in the department for fear of being mocked and not given good cases. Landmines like this are layered throughout the story and it gets me wrap up into just what sort of era this was and all the hardships there were to have if you weren't the "right" color, race or even gender.

Now at this point you may be asking yourself why I haven't brought up the supposed star of the show Charles Manson and that is because he really doesn't ever come off as the shows center. Much of what the show does and does well is create a cop drama about Hodiak with scenes about Manson set about here and there to include him in the story. It's not that he is portrayed poorly or anything, far from it, as I felt that former Game of Thrones actor Gethin Anthony does a great job of playing the deeply deranged and yet intoxicating Manson. The issue is that his story just never pops and he becomes a background character that never does anything so sinister as his infamous name would suggest. He is frankly just a name in someone else's story during the entire first season of Aquarius which is a big deal considering how the show was marketed as a drama about the life of Manson leading up to what he has done. Mostly what his character does well is give the other characters in the show some drive and moment to move forward such as Hodiak and another character who is so intricate to the plot that I refuse to spoil in this review. 

What also doesn't help the case for Manson though is Emma. This innocent little runaway was probably just looking for a bit of fun when she runs away with Manson and his little following of females and that works out fine for the first few episodes. Emma Dumont does a good job of playing the china doll character whose spent most of her life trapped in a cage wishing her parents would stop fighting and pay more attention to her. However, once she starts to see Manson for the mad man that he is and all that he does she doesn't do anything about it and often her scene involve her blankly starring into the camera like "Oh my God, he really did that." Her actions make less and less sense throughout the series when she flips flops between going along with Manson and not going along with him. Two moments in particular were confusing for me such as the first time Manson has her have sex with someone to curry favor with them. She acts shocked but the next time we see her she's raiding the guys fridge and acting like it didn't matter. Her character was just plain confusing and made the Manson story pop even less.

What Aquarius really should have ended up being is a nice period piece about cops during this era. David Duchovny plays a great Detective Hodiak who does many things wrong but often it is for the right reasons and in many ways he is a cop that I feel is needed in this time for his forward thinking attitude. We also have the many topics that are broken into such a gender equality, civil rights and homosexuality. It isn't presented delicately and that is a good thing because this era wasn't delicate and people didn't tip toe around what they had to say. Where things fall apart however is with the shows supposed main focus Charles Manson whose stories never quite felt that relevant to the what was going on. I was happy to watch the show in it's entirety though and not have to wait each week for it to come out, if I had I feel like my opinion of it may have been different. Getting to see Hodiak's change as a character kept me wanting more, along with the key issues and period points presented throughout.

Good:

- David Duchovny as Sam Hodiak

- Issues of race, gender and color all were compelling parts of the story

- A great cop drama more than a series about Charles Manson

Bad:

- Charles Manson's storyline never pops out and shouldn't it? The shows about him

- Emma Karn is never the driving force for the story that she is meant to be

Scully Rating: 7.5 out of 10