Info "Shining Girls" from Apple TV+ is a supernatural crime-series based off a book The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. Apple TV's series adaptation stars Elizabeth Moss (The West Wing, Mad Men, The One I Love, The Handmaid's Tale) as the lead, with Wagner Moura (Elysium, Narcos), Phillipa Soo (Tick Tick ... Boom, Hamilton), Chris Chalk (12 Years A Slave, Detroit, When They See Us), Amy Brenneman (Heat, Fear, Judging Amy, The Leftovers), and Jamie Bell (King Kong, Jumper, Snowpiercer, Fantastic Four) in major supporting roles.
Recap
SHINING GIRLS third episode, "Overnight," is one of those nice episodes that starts where it ends--or in this case, almost. Appropriate for a time-travel show. Anyway, we open with Dan waking up hungover on the metro, blood dripping from his hand. Confused he returns home to find his son playing video games and random books on his shelf pulled out on their spines. Kirby looks for unsolved murders that could be related. Her and Dan go through the unsolved murders of numerous women and find six other matching victims, excluding Kirby and the dead Julia. While phoning his son to check on him, Kirby tries to take evidence from her unsolved case but Dan stops her. She tries to convince him that the matchbox belongs to her since her attack (Harper) put it inside her but convinces her to leave the evidence in the warehouse. Later, their boss Anna warns Kirby about Dan's chaotic history. Kirby asks Dan if he has enough for the article but he says most of what they have is stuff the police would refute since it makes them look bad. He finds her notebook and questions her sanity, to which she lies and says her attack left her chronically fuzzy and that the notebook of life details helps keep herself in order. It's ironic because due to changing timelines, the changes between timelines that Kirby writes down make her the most reliable since everyone else is susceptible to Harper's tampering. They reexamine a crime scene photo from 1952 but cannot identify the item left inside the body. Kirby's husband Marcus from the current timeline, like Anna before him, warns her of Dan's chaotic past. Marcus helps her identify the item from the 1952 crime scene -- it's a locker key from the Adler Planetarium, Jin Sook's (the planetarium worker from episode 1's Cutline). Marcus confronts Dan and tells him to not bring his wife into his usual mess. Stressed out, Dan gets wildly drunk without knowing Harper is watching him. Dan falls down an escalator and finds Harper following him down into the metro station. In his drunken stupor, he reveals to know the cops have the wrong guy for Julia's murder, that the killer has a type, and that he's getting his info from a survivor. Harper goes to Dan's house and messes with the books on his shelf, before finding crime-scene photos of his victims left on the fridge by Kirby. He watches Dan's son from afar and stares at him before leaving. Kirby goes to the Adler Planetarium to learn the woman Jin Sook it belongs to, is still alive. She tries to ask Jin-Sook about how she lost her keys and if she's seen anything strange but it freaks the woman out. The episode ends with another time-shift and Kirby looks in the mirror to see her hair no longer short but past her shoulders -- with no idea what changes exist in this new timeline.
Review
My question from last episode about where the radium paint-can Harper put in Julia's body was from, has finally been answered: his 1952 victim who he put Jin-Sook's Adler Planetarium keys inside of.
Episode three's "Overnight" is definitely ramping up the amount of dirt our protagonists have on our time-hopping killer but just as Kirby makes some steps to maybe preventing one of Harper's murders -- the timeline changes again. It's a little frustrating but it illustrates the isolation and chaos that the lead Kirby has to constantly wrestle with. It's also a good reminder of Harper's formidable power.
I'm still curious about the aspects of Harper -- how did he get his special ability? Is it related to his 1952 murder victim? Does all this traveling through time, mean he's actually a lot younger than Dan and Kirby? One possibility is that Harper would still be aging during all those trips through time so he could actually be a lot younger than our heroes -- perhaps even born around the same time as Dan's son or even later. Another thought that entered my head, is that all this jumping through time might in fact accidentally or purposefully cancel out Harper's activities -- such as the heroes discovery of a past murder preventing Harper's future murder of someone else. Only watching more of this show will tell us the answer to these questions.
Alcoholism is a major personal obstacle for everyday people and a lot of fictional heroes, anti-heroes, even villains. But it was good to see alcoholism not portrayed through rosy-colored glasses in Dan's case. Often, Hollywood really dresses up alcoholism to look cool, to be an endless fountain of fun, in episode three we get to see the absolutely messy face of drunkenness from a very sober lens -- Dan becomes a very annoying person, does drugs, falls down a lot, and even leaves his kid alone at home ... a point that even our show's homicidal time-traveler even points out as very not-good.
So far, I'm enjoying the show. I want to know what happens next and I very much like seeing such a drama set against a 90s background. How will our non-time-traveling heroes stop Harper? That will be the true deciding factor on whether this show is good or great.
Hope you've enjoyed this summary and review!
