Inching Into "The Crowded Room"

Major spoilers ahead.

There have been attempts to turn "The Minds of Billy Milligan" novel by Daniel Keyes, and the court case it was based on, into a movie since the 1980s.  That's probably why the eventual miniseries adaptation, "The Crowded Room," feels like such a throwback, not just to older media about dissociative identity disorder (DID), but to older media about court cases.  The first half of the show is essentially a counselor/patient interrogation, where a psychiatrist, Rya Goodwin (Amanda Seyfried), interrogates a young man named Danny Sullivan (Tom Holland) about a shooting he committed with a girl named Ariana (Sasha Lane).  The second half transitions into a court case, leading up to the big climax where Danny takes the witness stand to bolster an insanity defense.

I'm spoiling the fact that the show is about DID because, frankly, it's pretty obvious that this is the case from very early on, though it takes "The Crowded Room" fully seven episodes to get around to admitting it.  Frankly, this is a massive blunder, and negatively impacts the entire series.  Danny's backstory and account of the crime should have taken up two or three episodes at most, before we learned the truth.  Instead, series creator Akiva Goldsmith spends way too long on the build up and insists on playing the existence of Danny's "alters" like a twist, despite Danny's narrative being so ridiculous that clearly something is up long before the reveal.  It's so frustrating to see play out, because the cast is good, the production values are high, and there's a lot of strong material here.  The penultimate episode is an outstanding hour of television, featuring Emmy Rossum as Danny's troubled mother Candy.  Unfortunately, it requires way, way too much slogging through the early episodes to get there.    

A lot depends on the performance of Tom Holland, who plays Danny.  Holland has now had a string of these ambitious, but very flawed projects, and I respect that he just keeps throwing himself at them.  Danny is a demanding part, not just because of the alters, but because it requires a lot physically.  There are violent altercations, chase sequences, and simulated drug use, in addition to the heavy emotional material.  There's also a terrible wig that is very distracting.  Holland is okay here - not very interesting, but perfectly competent.  It helps that he's surrounded by strong supporting performers like Seyfried, Christopher Abbot as Danny's lawyer Stan Camisa, Will Chase as Danny's stepfather Marlin, and Jason Isaacs as a mystery man named Jack.

There's so much to like about "The Crowded Room," and so much effort was clearly expended on its creation, but the approach to this story was fundamentally wrongheaded.  Putting aside the terrible execution of this premise, I have to question why you'd want to tell this story in 2023, and tell it in such a straightforward, familiar manner.  Oh, it was smart to use a fictionalized version of Billy Milligan, since there's a lot about the real Milligan and the outcome of his court case  that are deeply troubling.  And the depiction of DID is more nuanced than what we see in other media about the subject like "Sybil," and far more responsible than modern genre stories with DID protagonists like "Mr. Robot" and "Moon Knight."  However, it still leans into the sensationalization and treats the audience like DID is somehow a new concept that hasn't been overused in media for decades.

One part of "The Crowded Room" I can recommend without reservations is the animated opening title sequence, one of the best I've seen all year.  And I've already singled out the ninth episode for praise, which does a fantastic job of addressing domestic violence issues.  If "The Crowded Room" had been done as a movie or a much shorter miniseries or framed its story differently, I'd probably be more inclined to give it a pass.  However, I find myself very short on patience these days when it comes to media that wants to play dumb.  If it weren't for the efforts of the cast, especially Amanda Seyfried, and my initial misconception that this was a six-episode miniseries instead of a ten-episode miniseries, I'd probably have ditched this after the first week.     

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