The Whispers "Hide & Seek" Review: Fresh Ink

The Whispers S01E02: "Hide & Seek"

If there's one phrase that best describes the first episode of The Whispers, it's almost certainly "totally fine." In my review of last week's premiere, I noted that the show did a better job of telling this kind of familiar extraterrestrial/sci-fi-y story than a number of recent projects, and the good news is that Episode 2 followed that same pattern. "Hide & Seek" didn't deliver any significant or memorable moments, but it also avoided the kind of over-explaining and repetitiveness that can bog down many second episodes. If it sounds like I continue to damn the show with faint praise, that's probably accurate, but The Whispers continues to be a very, very minor and pleasant surprise.

Let's start with a minor mea culpa from yours truly: Last week, I noted that there'd be a substantial "twist" reveal in this second episode, but I was actually referring to the revelation that Milo Ventimiglia's mysterious John Doe character was actually the supposedly dead husband of Lily Rabe's Claire. While "Hide & Seek" dug into that information in more detail, the "revelation" itself in fact came at the end of the pilot. Truthfully, these things run together when you watch a few episodes at a time on a screener site.

ANYWAY, the show's handling of this twist continued its very short tradition of straightforward, fairly basic storytelling choices. Sure, it's a Big Deal that John Doe is actually Sean Bennigan, dead pilot, and this second episode comes up with a few less-than-stellar reasons for Claire to lie about Sean or whether or not she's seen him. But again, a lesser show would have probably dragged this fact out for episodes upon episodes, probably letting the audience know long before some of the central characters figured it out themselves. Instead, here Claire quickly went on the offensive in trying to figure out how and why her husband might be alive, how it might connect to her dysfunctional relationship with Wes (Barry Sloane) or these dang kids. That she lied to Wes about seeing—or rather, not seeing—Wes was an OK moment for two characters that have quite a bit of experience lying to one another, or to others about one another.

On Sean's end is where some of the mystery remains, and that's fine, I guess. This episode continued his undefined crusade to do... something. He's leaving markings (presumably for Claire) and getting fresh ink, so there's that. We know it's a serious and important plan because he found time to rent out a poorly lit storage unit and fill it with photos, gibberish writing, and CONNECTIONS. That was about as cliche as TV gets, but I'm willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt exclusively for the choice to include a surge protector hanging from the ceiling in those shots. Someone give the production and set designers a raise, stat. You know what I'm less willing to forgive? Vague, apparently meaningful tattoos. If we could develop some kind of international interest group that would lobby Hollywood to stop trying to wring out plot via body art, that would be so dope. Who's with me?

Still, amid those pretty boilerplate moments, I continued to enjoy Milo's performance. Producing the character's blank expressions appears to be pretty effortless for him, and that's not exactly a knock on the dude's skills. Given how quickly The Whispers has explained some of the bigger story elements at-play here—remember, it's aliens—I'm hopeful that the show won't keep Sean away from the other main characters for too much longer. Whatever he's plotting with the doctor isn't exactly inspiring, thrilling television, but we already know some connections between the doc and Claire, so at least the show isn't needlessly expanding the universe, right? It's the little things!

Speaking of little things, those creepy kids, am I right? Given that the news about Claire and Sean actually came in the previous episode, the reveal that their son could actually speak clearly, without the aid of sign language, was probably the biggest development in "Hide & Seek." As I said last week, everyone's mileage of child actors, and particularly potentially villainous child actors, is going to vary, but Kyle Harrison Brietkopf did a solid enough job in keeping Henry from immediately sliding into Omen territory or something. Though there's a lack of actively nefarious behavior by these kids that in many ways makes it that much more unsettling, I like the idea that the children were both working behind their parents' backs but also not exactly part of whatever evil alien plan was being hatched (perhaps literally).

The least successful stuff here was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the domestic squabbling between Wes and his wife (Kristen Connolly). It's only episode two, but their arguments about trust and distrust, with a little national security data breach thrown in for good measure, are the kind of mediocre-to-bad pipe that these kinds of shows try to lay to make us care about the characters. You can already get the sense that the show doesn't actively care about Connolly's character; she's a minor obstacle that Wes has to manage while he's also trying to figure out aliens, or whatever. Connolly is a very good actress who deserved better than this thankless storytelling, so maybe there's something better around the corner, but I wouldn't hold out hope.

Again, "Hide & Seek" wasn't great television. Heck, it wasn't even good television. But by the second episode of many of the previous shows like this, I could already tell that there wasn't a real direction the show was headed. Here, there were bits and pieces of intrigue, without any real sense of Mystery Overkill, that I'm willing to keep watching. That's a minor accomplishment, but one nonetheless.

NOTES

— And hey! Autumn Reeser is still on this show, acting from a hospital bed.

— It was kind of a bummer that Wes followed his superior's orders and quickly made his way back to the U.S., as the intrigue abroad gave the first episode some life.

— I appreciate that Alan Ruck's asshole boss character absolutely did not buy Wes' (true) story that his daughter was the one that hacked classified government documents. Not going to blame this one on a toddler, Defense Department!

So, what'd you think of Episode 2? Are you sticking with it?