Summary
In Episode 1, The Institute is oddly too mysterious for its own good, presenting loads of questions but no answers, and leaving little in terms of character or plot for the audience to really latch onto.
I get the sense we’ll have to cut The Institute a bit of slack. There’s a compelling core story here, and Episode 1 hints at it repeatedly. But it’s mired in smug dialogue and clunky exposition and overly cutesy and ambiguous hinting. If there were a name for this phenomenon, it’d be premiereitis or something; the thing a show contracts when the needs of setting up the story and getting to the interesting bits outweigh the need for being any good.
It doesn’t help that exceedingly clever characters are always annoying. “The Boy” is primarily about Luke, a 14-year-old savant, but it quickly becomes about several other very smart young characters too, all of whom are – even worse – eccentric in some way. So, you don’t just have the clever-clogs stuff to deal with, but also performative weirdness and teenage angst. That’s a recipe for disaster. It’s a wonder that The Institute is watchable at all.
And you can tell the show, which is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, isn’t especially interested in the build-up. We know Luke is clever because he sits exams meant for older kids and seems to know everything about everything. We also know his supreme intellect is indicative of a more unique ability, since when he gets wound up, stuff around him, such as a pizza pan, goes flying. It’s all very broad, workmanlike storytelling. The point is to get Luke to the titular institute as quickly as possible. That’s where things open up.
But the key issue with The Institute Episode 1 – which is why it was a good idea to debut Episode 2 alongside it – is that it gives too little away. It’s a weird criticism, I’ll grant you, since you don’t want a mystery to reveal all of its secrets immediately. But the audience needs something to latch onto, and “The Boy” frontloads a little too much mystery for us to know where our focus should be. Everything anybody does or says in this premiere should have a little “for some reason” qualifier at the end. You’ll see what I mean as we go.
What we do know is that the Institute is essentially a prison for gifted teenagers, though “gifted” is a relative term. Luke and his new cellmates – including Kalisha, George, Iris, and Nick – are all pretty smart, but their real value seems to be either telekinetic or telepathic abilities. The place is run by Ms. Sigsby, Stackhouse, and Hendricks, who are all mysterious and use a lot of acronyms, and insist that the place is working on the cutting-edge of science for the betterment of the entire country, if not the world. Oh, and the kids aren’t allowed to leave.
There’s a nonchalance to this introduction that is a little weird. Luke immediately intuits that he has been kidnapped and is being kept prisoner, but he doesn’t seem especially bothered about it. The other kids have a vague idea too, but most of them have just decided it’s easier to play along in the hopes of “graduating” from the other half of the building, and ultimately being released back into the wild, apparently with their memories wiped (I suspect this is a lie and they’re killed or simply never released, but like just about everything in The Institute, it’s a little unclear.)
What’s brewing on the kid front, beyond the obvious appeal of more information being gleaned about the Institute itself, is a prison break scheme. There isn’t a great deal of that in Episode 1, but the seeds are planted for later. All we know for certain is that Luke doesn’t intend on staying and knows something is deeply amiss with the place. As it wasn’t obvious already, when he refuses to have a tracker forcibly implanted, he’s unceremoniously assaulted for his recalcitrance and made to receive the implant anyway. The kids are given the illusion of being treated like adults and allowed to do whatever they want, including smoking and drinking, but make no mistake – they’re prisoners.
Mary-Louise Parker in The Institute | Image via MGM+
Elsewhere in The Institute Episode 1, we’re introduced to Tim, an ex-cop from the Boston PD who won a lot of accolades for stopping an active shooter but is nursing a lot of guilt and trauma – not to mention a drinking habit – from the event. Now sober, he’s trying to keep a low profile by applying for a job he’s wildly overqualified for; that of a “night knocker”, or in other words, a nighttime patrolman who does the rounds and keeps antisocial behaviour to a minimum. It’s clear that Tim is going to factor heavily into the kid plot eventually, but for now, he’s totally siloed, spending the entire premiere getting to know his new surroundings and fending off bizarre hostility from one of his colleagues, Wendy.
Tim is our only avenue for exploring the plot outside of the Institute, though, unless you count brief snippets we get of characters associated with it venturing outside of its walls. Sigsby is especially interesting. She’s the higher-up who seemingly interfaces with the kids primarily, and it was her who sold Luke on the idea of the place being integral for the greater good, but in the comfort of her own home she self-harms by burning her own legs, which implies she’s got a little more internal trauma than her unflappable schoolmarm demeanour would suggest.
And the leadership structure of the Institute is very non-specific. The people we’ve met – Sigsby, Hendricks, and Stackhouse – seem to have varying degrees of sway, but I’d imagine that none of them have true control over the facility. But Stackhouse, at the very least, has the power to get contractors bumped off, which becomes the fate of Michelle, the woman who kidnapped Luke in the first place, when her pillow talk with her double-agent girlfriend gives too much away. It’s easy to see how the place has remained a secret – the official cover story to keep denizens of Dennison River Bend away from it is that it’s a laboratory for the testing of infectious diseases – when anyone who briefly sways in their loyalty will be shot in the head immediately.
That’s all we know for now. Without a really compelling and non-annoying character to root for, or a specific aspect of the overarching mystery to grab hold of, overall interest is admittedly low. But there’s definitely the germ of a great story here. Hopefully, The Institute doesn’t go the way of most recent Stephen King adaptations and become dull beyond compare, but I’ll concede that the early signs aren’t great.
