Review: The Lazarus Project, "Episode 1" | Season 1, Episode 1

TNT's last gasp at (imported) scripted drama delivers a premiere worth seeking out (but maybe not worth covering amidst a busy summer)

Photo: TNT

So, TNT had originally planned to debut The Lazarus Project in January, when our schedule was pretty thin, and I wrote a few of the reviews in advance as the episodes aired in Canada (where I spend the holidays) last fall. Then they abandoned that premiere very suddenly, leaving me with this review edited and in the system. It seems silly not to share it for anyone who checked out the premiere last night, but I’m not sure it will be worth regular coverage. I’ll check in with the finale, which I still haven’t seen alongside the rest of the back half of the season. You can find out more about the shows we are covering this summer on our About Page.

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When I was doing research for an ongoing academic piece I’ve been working on, I quoted a science fiction writer who observed the relief they felt that their project wouldn’t have to deal with the uncertainties of trying to write a story in a mid-COVID environment. Whereas shows set in the “real world” had to make hard decisions regarding the how and when of both depicting and “moving past” COVID, science fiction creates the freedom to bypass it entirely, allowing unfettered access to the escapist motivation of many—maybe most?—viewers.

However, while others may have seen science fiction as an escape from COVID, Lazarus Project creator Joe Barton saw it as an opportunity. Barton knows how we’re going to react when George’s first version of events devolves into a global pandemic, and doubles down by revealing that it’s not just an alternate reality. This is our reality, where COVID happened, and where yet another viral outbreak has led to widespread masking, overcrowding hospitals, and looming dread. Barton uses it to ensure that when George is suddenly pulled back in time to six months earlier, we’re equal parts confused and relieved, and thus able to relate to George’s panicked obsession with both protecting himself from the virus and figuring out what he’s experiencing.

The Lazarus Project is a time loop narrative, a genre that is objectively well-trod at this point, but here’s the thing: pump as many of them into my veins as you want. The Lazarus Project moves swiftly and confidently because it knows exactly what kind of time loop project it wants to be. It works through the “mystery” component in the first half of its pilot. There’s a version that stretches this out longer, but George has the promise of an answer in just his first loop, and he’s getting the full breakdown of the eponymous organization in the second. At that point, we have all the “answers” we need: a singularity was discovered that allows a secret government (?) organization to reset time if the world is about to end, which they have done countless times without anyone knowing except those who are either recruited to work for them or “mutants” like George who develop the ability to recall every timeline of events.

Writing it out, I realize that the actual organization behind the project is left purposefully vague, although they’re clearly recruiting from within militaries, which implies at least some kind of government origins. Nonetheless, the show doesn’t dawdle around trying to solve the mystery, and quickly cues up the R.E.M. for a montage of George going from an app developer with plans to help investors predict future developments to a gunfight with an ex-Lazarus Project agent who is set on detonating a nuclear warhead, with two of his colleagues gunned down in the process. It isn’t a show about being stuck in a time loop: it’s a show about unwillingly being forced to live with the knowledge that time is not as much of a constant as we once believed it to be.

That R.E.M. montage is a real turning point, because there’s a “fun” show up until Robrov kills Archie and Erik in cold blood. But from the moment Shiv sits sullenly at the bar while his colleagues celebrate the defeat of the MERS-22 outbreak, the show is laying the groundwork for the fact this isn’t fun at all. George is coming into the fold at a time of victory, and the team is mostly celebrating, but there have been other defeats, and each time something dies. As Archie and George actually go into it, you realize the scale of every “reset,” an immeasurable butterfly effect that cannot be calculated. And when George returns to the moment where he previously saved his girlfriend from falling back into a garbage truck, this time distracted by news of Robrov’s detainment, we realize before he does that every one of those resets is felt acutely by those directly affected.

Although the fact it’s a British series immediately clarifies its generic pathway, if you separate that out you could absolutely see the U.S. broadcast procedural version of this story. Every week is a new potential end of the world, with the ramifications of a potential reset looming over each “threat of the week.” But when Sarah gets hit with that garbage truck, the actual Lazarus Project fades into the background, foregrounding the implications this has for George’s life. As soon as he saved her the first time, my spidey sense was tingling, expecting that we’d come back around again in the future. Anticipating it, though, doesn’t change the damage it’s going to do to him, and how it will fundamentally alter his relationship to his work—now, the end of the world actually means a chance for a do-over, raising questions about whether anyone like him and the rest of the Lazarus team have ever put their finger on the scale.

And this is what makes The Lazarus Project a good time loop narrative. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a mystery or we get a full monologue of exposition explaining everything: what matters is that we’re thinking about the implications of what we’re seeing on the characters involved. Despite rushing through a significant amount of plot amid said exposition, “Episode 1” raises all the right issues, and despite answering some key questions asks plenty more that will sustain the show moving forward. Anchored by the great Paapa Essiedu (I May Destroy You), it pulls you into its grasp by not shying away from the real world dynamics of science fiction, embracing COVID and every other world disaster and answering what it took for us to have the messed up world we do.

Stray observations

• The exposition uses two key world catastrophes as benchmarks of sorts for The Lazarus Project. COVID is a natural one—essentially explaining that the speed at which we received a vaccine was because of their work—but 9/11 was more interesting. It sets an early benchmark for the idea that the loss of life in the attack itself and in the war in Afghanistan were not enough to justify their intervention.

• One challenge of moving this quickly is while I definitely saw the montage where George was learning how to fire a gun, I was still surprised when he reloaded and fired it so easily at episode’s end, since he still felt like a trainee (and was clearly surprised to be put into the field). A necessarily evil, but harder to sell his transition when the passage of time is (fittingly) opaque.

• My mother, who was watching with me, was very startled by Erik’s disregard for the cops and other civilians they placed in danger in Paris, but my read was he clearly understood that either they didn’t save the world and none of it happened, or they do save the world and it will have been worth it. But that’s a hard mindset to get into this quickly.

• Given that George seemed very cognizant of the clock, I’ll presume he chose to be having sex at the checkpoint, which seems like a real risk to me? As we see when he returns the first time, he’s obviously startled, and in the comedy version of this story there’d be a reset where Sarah gets flung off the bed and concussed.

• I doubt we’ll get an answer, but I’d be curious what led to the Lazarus Project’s headquarters being bombed out in George’s first loop? Did they abandon it?

• Needless to say, anyone who’s ever experienced deja vu has a natural inclination to ponder the implications of this premise on their own experience, which to me makes it more universal than the cases where a single person is trapped in the loop. The universality of it really shapes one’s reaction to it.

• In true timey-wimey fashion, wrote this review weeks before the show was going to debut on TNT, and now am editing it over six months later. Given that TNT has effectively abandoned any-and-all scripted programming (Edit: I wrote this before they bailed on the fourth season of Snowpiercer), it’s entirely unclear what future it has in the U.S., but some comments from U.K. subscribers and the fact a second season is coming made me start watching while in Canada—where it aired in the fall—and thus here we are. As always, if you’ve already seen the entire season, please be respectful of others watching for the first time and refrain from spoilers/hints about future developments, and we’ll regroup at the finale.