Pilot Review: The Mist

The Mist (Spike)
Premiered June 22 at 10pm

I had absolutely no interest in watching this pilot mainly because I thought it might be scary (and terrible), but I’m trying to be committed to really giving every episode a shot. Unfortunately, the nature of a show like this is that having a villain that’s really just a weather pattern means every other aspect of the show is going to be completely irrelevant and probably very poorly thought-out. I wasn’t disappointed at all in that respect, though I found much to scoff at and roll my eyes at during this premiere. It strikes me as one particular light and ineffective concept for a film and therefore an especially poor choice to turn into a weekly series. Moments like someone wandering through the mist, asking a stranger “Are you real?” before shooting him in the head, leaving his companion unharmed and apologizing to her for not being able to know before shooting himself confirm the nonsensical nature of this show and its inanimate object enemy, which manages to do ridiculous things to people in mere moments meaning that…they’re going to spend the entire series inside? That’s where I again question how this becomes a show. Add to that the preposterous fact that this show is trying to tackle gender politics and rape culture, with lines like “Your father can’t hear you while you’re waking makeup” and top-notch policework like telling a man in uniform “You can’t go around spreading fear like that, it disrupts the public” and following up the news that someone is homeless with a request for a social security number, and you have a truly terrible and worthless show. As if one of the cops wanting to get a selfie of himself in the mist to show to his wife wasn’t laughable enough, the sight of a woman with the bottom half of her face falling off was so fake that it didn’t even manage to be scary. This show really has so little going for it.

How will it work as a series? I’d imagine the only reason to watch this show is to guess which characters are going to bite the dust (mist?) next. My money is on Mia, who was tied up one second and then stabbed her captor in the crotch with a pitchfork moments later, to be the last one standing, though she, like almost everyone else on this show, are truly insufferable.
How long will it last? I think my review is much harsher than most, as the aggregate appears to be relatively mixed. Since I’m so far behind on my TV, this show has aired three episodes already. The premiere numbers weren’t great, and they’ve gone down steadily with each episode, so I’d guess that one season of this show is all that we’re going to get, thankfully.

Pilot grade: F-