'The Slap' Premiere Review: Hitting a Kid Is Just the Beginning
No, The Slap, premiering on Thursday night, is not the story of what NBC would like to do to Brian Williams.
The Slap, an eight-part miniseries, is about a family gathering at which a young boy is slapped across the face. No spoilers here: The NBC promos show you that the slapper is Zachary Quinto, who has shaved down his Spock ears to inhabit the burned-crisp soul of Harry, a rich, arrogant New Yorker. He’s the kind of guy who drives his gleaming Land Rover into a chi-chi Brooklyn neighborhood and still finds it necessary to bellow, “Where can I park this so it won’t get jacked?”
The guy he’s bellowing at is Hector, Harry’s cousin, played wonderfully by Peter Sarsgaard with a resentful simper. Hector’s wife, Aisha (Thandie Newton) presides over a boisterous 40th-birthday party for Hector; he just wants everyone to get along and leave him alone so he can sneak off and feel up the babysitter (Mackenzie Leigh).
The slapped kid, Hugo (Dylan Schombing), is a kindergarten-aged creep, a little monster of entitlement. He has spent the afternoon misbehaving and swings a baseball bat dangerously close to another child. (It’s crucial that on some level you must feel, if only for a few seconds, that the wee nipper deserved a good swat.) His parents are an artsy couple radiating whatever virulent strain of permissiveness is going around these days. They’re played by Thomas Sadoski (one of the brighter spots in The Newsroom) and Melissa George, who has come to specialize in fearless audience-alienating, in shows as various as HBO’s In Treatment (therapist Gabriel Byrne fell into her pillowy lips as though wanting to nap in her mouth) and The Good Wife (Alan Cumming nearly had a heart attack every time she got within gazing distance of Chris Noth, terrified that Noth’s randy governor would succumb to her sloe-eyed hypnosis).
Related: 'The Slap' Showrunner Talks Going Beyond the Australian Original
Have I sufficiently suggested just how unsympathetic this crowd is? If not, let me add that George’s character, Rose, is — in the show’s most blatant signal that the viewer ought to be put off by her — still breast-feeding the five-year-old boy. That kid walks up to her nipple as though he was pulling on a Red Bull.
The Slap premiere is directed by Lisa Cholodenko, who follows up her superb work on HBO’s Olive Kitteridge by once again keeping all the irritants fluid: Olive just had one misanthropic pain in the butt; The Slap has a party full of them. Cholodenko frequently has the camera sit back and observe a number of characters at once, capturing these fine actors’ various reactions to the action. This kind of trust is still rare in TV directing, and serves to make the viewer feel more engaged — we’re watching someone behave badly right alongside the co-stars.
The opening hour was written by playwright Jon Robin Baitz, whose TV work has included Brothers & Sisters. Baitz is adapting the original version of The Slap, which was made for Australian television. (Indeed, George played the same role in the original.) One high compliment I can pay Baitz is to say that not for one second did I feel I was watching anything other than an intrinsically, intensely American story.
Irritating and fascinating, The Slap is unlike anything else on network TV. To this assertion, I would guess half the people who watch The Slap’s premiere on Thursday night will respond, “And thank God for that!” The rest of us will be rubbing our hands in glee, eager for more Slap.
The Slap premieres Thursday, Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. on NBC.
