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i-m-b-l-u-e · 1 day ago

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Ok so I am going to need to talk for a hot second about how The Residence MASTERS mystery in the visual medium.

(There are no significant spoilers in this post.)

Ok, first, for clarification, I am talking about a Netflix show that came out in March of this year. It is eight episodes and it is excellent and I would highly, highly recommend you watch it if you have an interest in mystery media. For a brief pitch, the show is a murder mystery set in the White House which mostly focuses on the specialized staff and admin working behind the scenes for the Executive Residence. (Not the politicians-- the characters are, like, curators and florists and housekeepers and cooks and engineers.) I want to start here, because this is an absolutely FANTASTIC setting for a murder mystery, and is completely suited to the TV show medium. Good mystery features a compelling and diverse cast of characters who have complex relationships with each other, and this show excellently balances the "compelling and diverse" part with the "complex relationships" part. It is actually very difficult to pick a setting in which a lot of very different and memorable people are so tightly interconnected like this. The White House is essentially the perfect answer to this question, because instead of a little village (in which a lot of the characters are probably going to be pretty similar in mindset) or a bunch of people vacationing together (who probably don't know each other well at all) or a family (who might know each other too well for an audience to pick up on the nature of their relationships quickly), here we have a group of coworkers who are all very dedicated to their prestigious dream job, and who are also under a lot of stress due to its importance. The show can carry diverse characters who are easy to remember because they all have very specific jobs, AND those characters all know each other *just well enough* to have relationships that can be summarized to the audience in a few short clips.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the best part. Generally, at least in my opinion, murder mysteries are not meant to be the size of a full TV show. Stories in this genre are just generally not the right size; even written mystery books average substantially shorter than many other genres. It is very hard to carry one question for eight hours. Longer mysteries can end up retreading ground, or they can get confounded by red herrings that go nowhere, or they can throw in an extra murder to make things more complicated, but often a story that drags things out like this will bore the audience or make the detective look very stupid. But The Residence doesn’t have to worry about that, because it has such a big cast that it ACTUALLY CAN keep all of its balls in the air for eight hours. It answers its one main question bit by bit, and it does not need to kill anyone else, and it does not waste your time because every “false lead” tells you something new about the cast’s relationships and what actually happened that night.

The next major challenge for a show this big is to make sure the audience is able to retain all the necessary information. A whole lot of stuff happens in this show, and much of it is important. The detective has trouble processing everything that’s going on— how to make sure the audience remembers things so they don’t feel cheated? This show has an easy answer: make it funny. For instance, one very minor element introduced in the first episode involves a Secret Service van crashing into one of the White House gates. This information could have just been *told* to the audience as part of the detective’s interviews, but the writers knew they needed to do a little more to make it stick. So instead, they (a) showed several different people explaining the situation whose stories didn’t quite match and (b) cut away to visualize these different stories, emphasizing how confident each character was about their completely contradictory stories. It gave me a laugh, and better, I remembered it the next time it was brought up.

The first episode is absolutely full of information like this. Some of it turns out not to be very relevant; some of it is pretty important; and of course there’s one *little tiny detail* that, when paired with later information, reveals something VERY interesting. In any other media, this would be a fun thing to pick up on a rewatch, but The Residence made me laugh about it and that made it stick in my brain and *that made me feel SO smart*. For clarification, I didn’t binge this show— I watched it over the course of about a week, and the information stuck anyway.

Next, observe: the pacing. The Residence has the onerous task of taking the massive amount of information presented in the first episode and spreading it out over seven more, gradually revealing more details about what’s already been mentioned without anything seeming to come out of nowhere, and it nails that too. Each episode focuses on one or two “interesting” people, gradually unraveling the lies they told in the initial questioning and what they were trying to hide. It’s a very cohesive TV show, but it does a good job balancing the larger mystery with the microcosm of every episode.

Probably the best thing I can say about this show is that a solid 80% of it is pure concentrated solving. The detective of this story is working very hard and it shows. Questions are constantly being answered and details are constantly being resolved and it is very, very satisfying to watch. In the second half of the final episode, which resembles but does not copy a traditional “parlor scene” (a mystery classic, where the detective gathers all the suspects and dramatically reveals the steps they took to deduce the murderer’s identity), every single mini-mystery that has come up throughout the show is referenced and its connection to the main murder explained. It is like watching a Rube Goldberg machine: very complicated, very nonlinear, very satisfying, and you KNOW that the only reason the light turned on at the very end was because every domino fell to get us there. The Residence is a show that answers its one key question with a journey and that is commendable.

I hope I’ve successfully convinced you that this show knows how to handle a mystery format. Now, I am pleased to inform you that it also knows how to handle a mystery plot. A good mystery needs to strike a fine balance between “too obvious” and “out of nowhere”. I can’t believe I have to say this, but the best mysteries make you feel exactly as smart as their detectives. You don’t want your audience bored and you definitely don’t want to make them feel stupid, so most mysteries err on the side of obscurity, having the detective make leaps of logic, then overexplain themself so the audience has the chance to catch up. In this model, the audience is Watson, following the detective around and waiting for them to make it all make sense.

The Residence sometimes does this, allowing the audience to follow Edwin (the show’s Watson character), but it also gives the audience the genuine opportunity to be Sherlock. Many of the mysteries are meant to be figured out alongside, and at the same time as, the detective. This is amazing: you feel smart and then you get INSTANT validation when the detective on screen agrees with you. This happened to me regularly and it felt so, so good— including at the very end of the show. I figured out who the murderer was in the last episode: first tentatively, then with growing confidence, and then with certainty as a few key details clicked for me. “Wait, that character said [specific quote] earlier! It’s them! They’re the murderer!!” I yelled at the screen. Within seconds, I watched those same details click for the detective and I WATCHED HER REPEAT THE EXACT SAME QUOTE.

At the same time, the show allows you to recognize the smarts of its detective by including multiple additional pieces of evidence that the audience might not catch. While I’m yelling the quote at the screen, the detective might be listing three or four other things I didn’t pick up on for whatever reason. Depending on what your strongest qualities are as a viewer, this will work differently for you. I’m good at sorting through the show’s information overload to pick out specific details, but someone else might excel at reading the characters, remembering visual details, or picking up on the nature of characters’ relationships with one another. Any of these are valid ways to solve the show’s mysteries, and watching the detective use all of them at once very clearly shows the character’s talent while praising the viewer as well.

My next point might seem a little bit weird, as it’s not something I see discussed very much in analyses of mystery media, but it’s a crucial step in transforming a mystery plot into a mystery story, and that is: thematic cohesion. See, the murderer’s identity needs to make sense logically, but it also needs to make sense in light of the story’s larger themes. For some very vague and intentionally unlabeled examples: a story about the bravery of speaking out in high-stakes situations regardless of how it reflects on you might feature a murderer who cares a lot about their reputation; a story about how easily people pathologize and sensationalize murder might feature a killer with surprisingly uncomplicated motivations; a story about how some people feel entitled to steal others’ ideas might feature a profoundly uncreative culprit; etc. While I was picking apart The Residence’s literal clues, my mom— who was substantially more tired while watching most of the episodes— was instead paying attention to the show’s themes.

Guess what? She solved it too! …Well, she narrowed it down to a small pool of people who would make particularly narratively appropriate murderers, purely based on vibes. I think this says a lot about the show’s writing. The writers are smart enough to come up with a great thematic frame for the story, but they’re also careful enough with it that you can’t solve the case based purely on vibes. (If you think this is an easy balance to strike, watch Only Murders In The Building season 3…)

Ok ok ok. I have been going on about this. Great setting, great characters (did I say how good the characters were?), great pacing, great plot, great story, great balance, etc. etc. etc. One thing I have not mentioned is the actual detective, just because I wanted to save her for last.

Detective Cupp is so, so refreshing. In a genre where everyone wants their detectives genius or crazy or wacky, Cupp is defined first and foremost as curious. She likes asking questions and she likes finding the answers to them. She does everything she does so she can find the truth, and she is persistent and analytical and dedicated about it. Her priorities fundamentally differ from the other characters, and that means she’s sometimes abrasive or dismissive, but (a) she is NOT SMUG, which is SO INCREDIBLY REFRESHING, and (b) this show lets her actually figure things out as she goes. She is open about her process and doesn’t hide things she’s already solved. She is both the most sympathetic and the most well-developed detective character I have seen in any media I can think of.

I also love her, because she is very direct with people, and because she wants to solve this case and is trying to solve it very hard, and because we see her give up opportunities she cares about so she can see this through. And because her interest in birdwatching is not just a quirky hobby but a genuinely meaningful and deep part of her personality that impacts how she interacts with others. And because she’s the kind of person who is respectful enough not to open her smelly tinned fish on an airplane full of strangers but confident enough to open it when in a car with two coworkers. And because she’s an acespec woman of color!!! I’ve heard people say it’s hard to represent aspec people in media because, how do you bring up their identity?, but those people can go ahead and leave the room because they didn’t write this quote:

“I define [sex] as a thing I enjoy more than talking about real estate and less than looking at birds.”

My girl.

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts to add to this later. I finished watching the show last night and it’s so in my head. I am really sorry to see that it has been cancelled but at the same time I am so fundamentally terrified by the idea of season 2 that I honestly kinda don’t mind. The bar is so incredibly high it would be like watching someone build the White House by hand, then asking them to do the Capitol Building too. …That said, I wouldn’t mind an extra cottage or two.

I hope these directors, writers, and editors continue to work in the mystery genre. I need them. They have done something I would not have believed possible.

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