Method to The Method’s Madness

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”

— Carl Jung

First, the “If This.”

Criminal Minds was rousingly popular in its day, especially among women, and lasted 15 seasons. The CBS series about a group of criminal profilers who work in the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) bowed on Sept. 22, 2005 and touched an instant nerve with viewers looking for reassurance that, in a post-9/11 world, no matter how violent or sadistic the crime, the perpetrators would eventually be caught in the end — by getting inside their minds and predicting that they were likely to do next.

Criminal Minds reflected the day-to-day work of the real-life behavioral analysis division in the real-world FBI. The FBI’s psi-ops division not only familiarized the general public with terms like “UnSub” — unidentified subject — but also pointed the way to a new trend in pop-culture crime drama, from the Academy Award-winning Silence of the Lambs, which marked its 30th anniversary earlier this year to more recently, prestige TV like Showtime’s Dexter and Netflix’s Mindhunter.

Criminal Minds spawned two short-lived sequels, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior in 2011 and Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders in 2016. At the height of its ratings power, in 2010, it topped 14 million viewers a week, ranking it in that year’s Top 10 most-watched shows on broadcast TV.

That was then, this is now.

“If this, then that” takes are always tricky. Trouble is, everyone’s taste is different. I’ve lost track of the number of times a friend, knowing my love for 2001: A Space Odyssey, has recommended a recent, similarly themed movie they think I’ll like, and I’ve been disappointed every time.

No two TV movies, no two TV shows can ever be exactly the same.

That said, when I’m looking for a successful follow-up, I’m looking for something that will take much of what I liked about the original — whether it’s the tone, the look, the style or characters I can relate to and engage with, and remind me of characters I liked in the original — and change it in surprising but effective ways. That’s where the creative spark comes in, when a show or movie’s writer-producers come up with a new twist on an old tale that seems daring and original.

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

— William Shakespeare, Hamlet

And now the “Then that.”

I did not know what to expect of The Method, which bowed worldwide on Netflix after a successful run on Moscow’s Channel One.

I suppose I was drawn to the fact that it was part crime drama, part whodunit and wholly Russian — made in Russia by Russians for a Russian audience.

I suppose I reasoned too that, unlike paying to see a movie, if I didn’t like it I could just move onto the next Netflix offering. That’s the genius behind Netflix’s business model: Because it’s a subscription service, you’re paying for a whole range of choices, some of which you may not care for but some of which you will.

The trick is in finding the ones you will care for.

And I ended up caring for The Method very much.

The Method opens each one of its hour-long episodes much as those early-season episodes of Criminal Minds did, with a spoken quotation about life and life’s meaning.

That may sound gimmicky, and I watched the opening scenes of with a measure of doubt and trepidation. While I liked Criminal Minds as much as the next person, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see a pale imitation, in a foreign language, with English subtitles.

I needn’t have worried. Because early in that first episode, there’s one of the most startling, harrowing scenes I think I’ve seen in a TV drama in a long, long while.

The Method opens with a graduating class of law-school students kicking back and celebrating their graduation in a popular, crowded night club, full of dancing, seething bodies, flashing lights and loud music. The flawed heroine, law student Esenya Steklova (Paulina Andreeva), seemingly has everything going for her: looks, money, fashion sense and a father with connections deep inside Moscow’s establishment.

The first sign The Method is going to be different from many similarly themed dramas is a small personal moment. Esenya commiserates with a friend and fellow graduate who tells her that she’s worried for her future, because she’s neither as attractive, wealthy or well connected as Esenya.

It’s a tender, heartfelt moment that touches on the issues of class and privilege inside privileged Russian society.

And then . . . moments and another soulful conversation later, all hell breaks loose. (If you want to know exactly what, you’ll have to watch.)

Enter The Method’s enigmatic central figure, Rodion Meglin (St. Petersburg stage actor and playwright Konstantin Khabensky), an older mentor figure who’s part psychology professor, part criminal profiler and unapologetic loner with a hard-earned reputation for being able to read people’s minds, figure out their motivations and catch any criminal, no matter how elusive or clever that criminal might be.

That first hour twists and turns, and it’s quite unlike I’ve seen. I found myself guessing constantly, and constantly ending up one step behind. Hardly anyone is who they seem to be, and everyone seems to be hiding something That first hour is gripping and hypnotic and addictive in ways the best TV so often is.

And then something near miraculous happens.

TV is full of shows that have a hellzapoppin’ first episode — the result, more often than not, of a bigger budget and more production time — only to let the viewer down in the episodes immediately following.

Instead, The Method gets increasingly tense and tightly wound as it moves forward. Each hour-long episode revolves around an individual crime, as Criminal Minds and many other procedurals do, but there’s also that recurring mystery — what exactly happened in the nightclub that night, who’s really behind it, and why. The Method works on two levels, as a crime-of-the-week detective drama, and as a conspiracy drama in which identity, family and personal history all play a part. The Method is like a Russian nesting doll, in which each doll resembles the one inside but is not quite the same.

One of the great selling points of The Method is how it shows life in Russia as it really is, without the clichés or easy cheap shots at a politically dysfunctional system; each episode is set in a separate, different Russian city, which in itself is eye-opening.

As titles go, The Method isn’t exactly a grabber — it sounds like one of those cheap self-help seminars, where some snake-oil salesman or other wants to share his secret to success, for a fee.

Just as you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, though, you shouldn’t judge The Method by its title.

It’s similar in tone and feel to Dexter, but with different accents and a setting that looks vaguely familiar, and yet isn’t.

If you liked Dexter, if you liked Criminal Minds and True Detective and others it, and you don’t mind reading subtitles, there’s every chance you’ll like The Method.

There are Facebook groups for Vocal creators like the Vocal Creators Support Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/820414142214339) if you want to be more active in the community.

Vocal Creators Support Group and other groups like it are great places to share and get feedback about your work, or find encouragement when you’re struggling with a piece.


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