I watched the first episode of Dept. Q when it originally landed on Netflix, remember being hooked by the opening and apparently responded by putting it on my watchlist and ignoring it. As one does.
With Season 2 coming, I finally went back. And holy hell, I’m glad I did, because Dept. Q pulls off something in its premiere that I didn’t appreciate until the episode was almost over because it shows us the case before we even know there’s a case.
That’s not immediately obvious because Episode 1 has a lot of work to do first. We have to meet Carl Morck, learn why he’s such a miserable son of a bitch, establish the shooting that’s eating him alive, dump him into his sad little basement department and introduce enough people that I spent part of the episode trying to remember whether I was looking at Merritt, Moira or somebody else.
It takes its time. But unlike shows that get stuck in the River of Molasses and never come out, Dept. Q knows exactly where it’s going.
Carl Morck Is a Miserable Son of a Bitch
Matthew Goode’s Carl Morck doesn’t merely dislike people. He seems personally offended that they continue to exist around him.
His therapist annoys him. His coworkers annoy him. His boss annoys him. His family annoys him. A kid on the bus asks whether he’s a cop and somehow that annoys him. Carl could probably get into an argument with a lamp.
And yet the premiere gives us a pretty damn good reason for why he’s particularly miserable now.
The opening is brutal. Carl and his partner are investigating a murder scene with another officer when a masked gunman appears from nowhere and shoots all three of them. One officer dies. Carl’s partner is left severely injured. Carl survives.
Worse, Carl knows his own impatience may have helped put them in that position.
He pushed the investigation forward when the other officer wanted to wait. Carl being Carl, he didn’t just disagree with the guy; he treated him like an idiot. And then it all when to hell when the shooting happened.
So when Carl returns to work and overhears people blaming him for walking everyone into an ambush, they’re saying something he has already been saying to himself.
The guilt isn’t some character trait pasted onto him so Matthew Goode can stare moodily into the distance. It’s everywhere. It’s in the way Carl watches the reconstruction of the shooting. It’s there when he visits his injured partner. It’s underneath his obsession with investigating the attack himself.
He’s still an asshole. He’s just an asshole carrying around an enormous amount of guilt.
And Rachel, his temporary therapist, is one of the few people who immediately figures out how to handle him. Kelly Macdonald is funny without turning their scenes into comedy. Carl throws up a wall of sarcasm and hostility, and Rachel basically looks at it and says, Cute. Anyway…
I already want more of those two together.
Welcome to the Basement, Carl
Meanwhile, Moira has problems of her own. Homicides are up, cases aren’t being solved and the higher-ups have decided the answer is a shiny new department devoted to high-profile cold cases.
Somebody has to run it. Who better than the detective nobody upstairs particularly wants to deal with?
Suddenly Carl has his own department. In the basement. In something called a “shower quarantine.” And it’s basically Mulder’s office without the UFO poster.
And really, this might be the nicest thing anyone could do for Carl. He gets to go downstairs and be miserable by himself, except, of course, he isn’t going to be by himself because Akram shows up.
At first Carl treats him exactly the way Carl treats everyone else: like an inconvenience somebody has deposited in his path. But Akram isn’t simply an IT guy who wandered downstairs and started touching confidential files. He has a police background in Syria, reads the cases and actually understands what he’s looking at.
All of that gets Carl’s attention, though he’d never admit it.
Alexej Manvelov and Goode already have the beginnings of a terrific odd-couple partnership because Akram doesn’t need Carl to like him. He’s useful. Carl recognizes that he’s useful, and appears vaguely irritated by the fact that he’s useful.
Now all we need is for Rose to get down there permanently with them and it’s a triple win.
Merritt Wasn’t the Side Story
While all this is happening, Dept. Q keeps cutting to prosecutor Merritt Lingard.
Initially, it feels like the show is simply establishing another major character whose life will eventually cross Carl’s.
Merritt loses a case. She’s getting increasingly personal threats. Somebody appears to know things about her private life. She’s struggling with problems at home involving William. Eventually, she takes him away for a change of scenery but there’s clearly something wrong.
But the episode never puts up a giant sign saying: PAY ATTENTION. THIS IS DEPT. Q’S FIRST CASE. Instead, it just lets Merritt’s story exist alongside Carl’s.
That’s what makes the eventual reveal so damn good. Akram has been digging through the cold-case files and leaves one on Carl’s desk. Carl opens it and sees it’s Merritt.
Suddenly we’re looking at surveillance photographs from the ferry we’ve already watched.
And Merritt has been missing for four years. Wow. The timelines weren’t happening together at all. That’s awesome.
There isn’t some obnoxious FOUR YEARS AGO card telling us how clever the show is being. The premiere simply lets us assume these stories are occurring simultaneously and then changes the context of everything we’ve been watching.
Now Merritt isn’t another character waiting to meet Carl. She’s the mystery. And Akram has just handed Carl his first real reason to give a shit about Dept. Q.
Slow Doesn’t Have to Mean Boring
I’ll admit the episode had me wondering for a while.
It’s not particularly fast. There are a lot of characters to establish, and I had some initial confusion over who was who. Merritt, Moira and even Rachel looked similar enough at first that I occasionally had to stop and reorient myself.
And Carl’s story isn’t exactly racing anywhere. We watch him return to work, deal with therapy, visit the hospital, fight with people and get banished to his basement kingdom.
But there’s a difference between slow and going nowhere. Dept. Q is slow because it’s laying track.
By the time Akram puts Merritt’s file on Carl’s desk, all that apparently disconnected material suddenly has a purpose. We already know Merritt. We’ve seen the threats. We’ve seen William. We’ve watched the ferry trip.
We’re emotionally ahead of Carl before he has even begun investigating. And then the episode gives us one more thing: Merritt isn’t dead.
Four years later, she’s being held somewhere that looks like a tunnel, ship’s hull, bunker or God knows what. There are markings covering the walls. Someone is watching her.
Well, holy hell.
🔥 Our Verdict: WATCHABLE
Dept. Q takes a while to show its hand, but when it finally does, the entire premiere clicks into place.
Matthew Goode makes Carl Morck compelling despite Carl apparently waking up every morning furious that humanity survived another night. His guilt over the shooting gives some real weight to all that hostility, and his emerging partnership with Akram may already be my favorite part of the show.
But it’s the construction of Merritt’s story is what impressed me the most.
The premiere spends most of its running time letting us believe we’re following two concurrent stories, only to reveal that we’ve actually been watching the cold case Carl and Akram are about to investigate.
That’s how you reward somebody for paying attention.
Yes, it moves slowly at first. Yes, there are enough similar-looking people and names flying around that I occasionally wondered who the hell I was looking at. I don’t care.
Merritt has been missing for four years. She’s still alive. And Carl doesn’t even know that yet.
Fire up Episode 2.
Read All Our Dept. Q Season 1 Coverage
This is ongoing coverage, so check back as we check back in with Morck, Akram and company through the rest of the first season before S2 premieres.
