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When Rya is actually allowed to start driving the series’ narrative forward, it becomes easier to see why Seyfried was drawn to the role. Seyfried, for her part, is given so little to do in The Crowded Room’s first five episodes that it is, at first, hard to understand why she agreed to star in the series, especially coming off her career-best turn in last year’s The Dropout.
#Kid cudi said keep moving forward so i do series#
Once it’s done away with its initial façade, The Crowded Room picks up quite a bit in its second half, which adopts an increased focus on actors like Seyfried and Christopher Abbott, who shows up late in the series as Danny’s lawyer and makes one of the biggest impressions of any of its cast members. That, in turn, makes the show’s needlessly long runtime feel alternately confounding and irritating. Even those who have no knowledge of the 1981 novel that served as the series’ inspiration will likely find themselves catching on quickly to the revelation that The Crowded Room essentially grounds the first and second halves of its season around. The problem is that many of The Crowded Room’s twists are painfully obvious from the moment the show begins. To say anything more here about their roles, though, would be to spoil many of the surprises that The Crowded Room spends a considerable amount of time trying to hold on to. In its early episodes, The Crowded Room primarily focuses on the time Danny spent living with the latter two characters. The Crowded Room uses these interviews as a way into its numerous flashbacks, which gradually reveal exactly how Danny went from being a relatively sweet kid born and raised in upstate New York to a hostile shooter.Īlong the way, The Crowded Room, which comes from A Beautiful Mind writer Avika Goldsman, introduces viewers to a handful of key figures in Danny’s life, including his stepfather Marlin, (Will Chase) his mother, Candy (Emmy Rossum) a free-spirited partier named Ariana (Sasha Lane), and his Israeli landlord, Yitzak (Lior Raz). Following his arrest, Danny catches the attention of interrogator Rya Goodwin (Seyfried), who conducts a series of one-on-one interviews with him in the hopes of unearthing the truth behind the crime. Loosely inspired by Daniel Keyes’ 1981 nonfiction novel The Minds of Billy Milligan, The Crowded Room picks up with its lead, Danny Sullivan (Holland), after he is arrested for participating in a public shooting that leaves three people injured. The problem is that it’s buried under 6 hours’ worth of unnecessary filler. There’s an intriguing, well-acted series in The Crowded Room. Even when the series has reached some of its most moving and compelling moments - most of which occur in its final few installments - it dampens their impact with “twists” that not only come across as frustratingly hokey, but also seem to exist solely to justify The Crowded Room’s overlong 10-hour runtime.

Unfortunately, these kinds of miscalculations are present in all of The Crowded Room’s 10 episodes. When it’s later revealed that not everything is as it seemed in the show’s first half, it’s hard not to realize in the same breath just how much more interesting The Crowded Room could have been if it had simpy played it straight from the very beginning. In doing so, the new Apple TV+ series leaves its two immensely capable leads, Amanda Seyfried and Tom Holland, stranded with nothing to do but be vessels for The Crowded Room’s endless exposition dumps. It has a twist, which it drags out for nearly six hours. Throughout the first half of its 10-episode season, The Crowded Room does not have a story. Multiple thinly drawn supporting characters
