#the show does not run on its homoeroticism bc that is not what it wants to do. but the show DOES emphasize the degree

[renshengs]

beyond evil (2021) occupies a very interesting space in the larger expanse of crime shows. like, it is a Cop Show. it is undeniably a Cop Show even if the two main characters, who are both cops for very different reasons, are handled with significantly greater awareness and intention than usual.

it is also, impressively, a show that pierces the real ugly rot of 1) police corruption and its overlap with capitalism 2) atrocious real-life lawmaking 3) the poor handling of femicide in stories. i cannot express how abruptly shocked i was to discover that i did not hate the way this show was carrying itself, despite its crime drama genre, narrative about two homoerotic cops, and its murder mystery premise featuring a plot about a serial killer with solely female victims. here is a story that understands its purpose and is so clear-eyed about it that i did in fact tentatively suspend all my wariness about Cop Shows to watch it—and what i got was a scathing response to every serial killer and true crime documentary out there. a narrative that said: enough. enough. look at the way grief rots people from the inside out. look at the way loss ruins lives. do not forget the sufferings of the innocent.

far too many crime dramas possess an incredibly dehumanizing analytical tone to them that goes, “what if these poor women died in brutal gruesome tragic ways? anyway, look at these men and their heroic journey for justice!” it’s why i can’t fucking stand to watch them for the sake of my blood pressure. while beyond evil is not exempt from using such gruesomeness as a part of its horror aspect, the women in this show, particularly the women who were murdered, occupy such a heavy weight over the narrative that it is impossible to reduce them to what they’re usually reduced to: numbers in files, or cold cases. and because the purpose of beyond evil is to examine the ways grief and loss bring about destruction to people’s lives and communities, these women cannot be seen as numbers. they need to be vivid and real; the audience needs to feel their loss as deeply and gnawingly as the townspeople do. as we would in real life.

personally i’m still surprised at myself for liking a Cop Show this much—because the law enforcement sympathy is unavoidable in a cop show—but then i’m also shocked at how immediately this show establishes its awareness of police power. i don’t mean it gives a passing nod, like a brief disclaimer. i mean that you watch until the end and you’re like: oh! the entire fucking show is about police power and its consequences! this entire goddamn show is about cops’ potential for harm and how it destroys lives! the main character only ever became a cop out of desperation because he realized it would protect him from suffering further at the hands of the police. because he realized it was the only way for him to get access to both the information and the legal power needed to take his own steps to solve his sister’s murder. it’s not radical—it’s a cop show. but it is novel. a cop whose relationship with his own occupation is bitterly resigned at best and traumatic at worst.

this is far from an original thought, but truly i think what makes beyond evil worth watching is that it is so incredibly careful with itself. its meta awareness of its own genre heightens it to a tier above other crime dramas—it knows and rejects voyeuristic perspectives into the lives of people who’ve suffered real loss and tragedy, and so it makes the loss inescapable. every direction you look, someone’s life has been irrevocably altered by the murders you learn about in the story. it gives you no space to push away the murder—no, you need to sit directly in its field of impact. all the fucking time. you are not watching the town suffer, you’re suffering with the town. the story sucks you in and makes you live alongside the rest of them; it's why the first watch hurts so raw. because the story refuses to let you take a true-crime approach. because it refuses to prioritize the narratives of perpetrators over human lives. you are there, and you are hurting.

man. really, if you're going to watch anything, watch this.

[bloody-wonder]

“i wanna write about neil putting andrews hand under his shirt” here’s your excuse!!

thanks for playing along *wink wink*

so this scene which needs no introduction somehow manages to be overappreciated in the fandom while simultaneously being underappreciated. here’s what i mean. (tw cause i talk about the drake incident)

so there’s context and subtext to this scene. the context is that neil needs andrew to agree to get committed and leave kevin behind so neil must convince him that he would be a satisfactory replacement as kevin’s “bodyguard” - if riko comes for kevin, neil will not budge. so neil decides to show andrew his “credentials” - the scars which prove that so much damage has already been done to him that riko can’t really scare him anymore. however neil can’t just take the shirt off in a room full of people bcs he wants to show the scars to no one but andrew so his next best decision is to take andrew’s hand and put it under his shirt so that he can feel them. for neil, at least consciously, it’s just a perfectly logical persuasion strategy.

that’s the context which in the fandom is readily pushed aside in favor of the homoerotic subtext: “omg andrew touched neil’s naked skin *fans oneself energetically* that’s sooooo gay”. the shitposts about what wymack must have thought at seeing this are an entire subgenre by this point. like, i’m not saying it’s not gay or criticizing anyone for pointing out homoerotic subtext so enthusiastically, but still it’s very interesting to me why people prefer to look at this scene from wymack’s pov - who had no context of what exactly was happening bcs he didn’t know a lot about andrew’s deals and bcs the boys were talking in german. people prefer to strip this scene of its context to the point where neil and andrew are just any two boys touching each other in a mildly erotic way.

now one of the reasons i love aftg so much is that everything in it is very specific to its context and its characters (which is btw probably the reason why we can’t explain or describe aftg to our friends - it’s hard to describe unless you recount everything that happens in it or it would make no sense). so what i propose instead is returning this scene into its context but going deeper - not just looking at it in terms of a given dialogue like neil does but in terms of the tragic sequence of events that lead to andrew having to be committed. 

so.

andrew has just been violently raped, again, by the same abuser he took so much pains to get away from. his deepest darkest secret, which even his closest circle and his therapist didn’t know, has just been disclosed in the worst way possible. now they all know. now in their eyes he has graduated from the resident “sociopath” to the victim of the nastiest kind of abuse. he has been put in the worst kind of spolight. now they all know - his family, his team, neil. what will be their reaction? will their treatment of him change? will they pity him? ugh. 

andrew is in great physical pain and the happy pills won’t let his spiralling mind process what just happened properly. but the underlying feeling, i imagine, is of being found out, singled out, branded as different, alone. kevin and aaron are in a state of shock, nicky is crying and trying to hug him, and wymack is little help.

enter neil. we’re privy to his inner monologue so we know that neil was as shocked as the rest of them and felt nauseous bcs of the horror and pressure of the situation, but he showed nothing of it outwardly. he even found the time and cheek to confront andrew about something while everyone else was treating him like a ticking bomb or fatally ill. neil, who has already sufficiently demonstrated that his treatment of andrew won’t change one bit, then wants to take kevin off his shoulders so that andrew is able to go away to take care of himself, and in order to persuade him he wants to show him his scars - but only to him - so he puts andrew’s hand under his shirt. andrew knew that neil has scars but he didn’t know the extent. “these ouches feel a little rough for a child on the run”, he says. these scars, their number and graveness, show that neil wasn’t just a part of a gangster family or whatever he says but that serious abuse has been inflicted on him personally. that in that regard he has probably been through similar shit as andrew. that he can understand him perfectly. that andrew is not alone. 

so when neil puts andrew’s hand on his scars he says not only “i’m competent enough to look after kevin in your absence”, but also “your secret has just been violently disclosed but i have a similar secret and i will tell it to you - this is a snippet. you’re not alone”. this is what he actually says in the text:

The story I gave you was mostly true. I might have left out some critical details, but I know you're not really surprised by that. If we survive this year and you're still interested, you can ask me for them later. I think it's your turn in our secrets game, anyway.

and andrew agreed to neil’s offer - probably not bcs he deemed him “competent” but bcs he felt the major shift in trust between them. 

i think its one of the key andreil moments and it certainly is brought up a lot but mainly bcs “it’s gay”, apparently. idk maybe i’m just too aroace or something but it makes me sad that this powerful scene gets diminished to just another homoerotic moment. when i was reading the books for the first time, the homoeroticism of this scene didn’t even occur to me bcs i was still very much in the post-drake not at all amorous mindset as i imagine were neil and andrew. so if you ask me, “the gayness” of this scene is overhyped, but its meaning is definitely underappreciated.

tl;dr neil didn’t put andrew’s hand under his shirt - he put it on his scars