Rabbit Hole Series Premiere Review: Nothing Is As It Seems

Are you ready for a good time?

You must be if you’ve already tuned into Rabbit Hole Season 1 Episode 1 and Rabbit Hole Season 1 Episode 2 and popped around for more.

Nothing is as it seems on this show, but one thing is for sure: it does nothing as it seems with a healthy dose of humor.

And that’s my favorite part of Rabbit Hole. It’s funny.

John Weir is on the hook for murder and just saw his best friend murdered, but he’s got plenty of time for levity.

It’s helpful that he’s kidnapped his latest bedroom conquest, who was a total plant and may or may not be part of whoever is trying to bring him down.

But is anyone trying to bring him down at all? Probably. Maybe. I guess so.

What I’ve found is that after these two episodes, I don’t need all of the answers anytime soon because the journey is enjoyable enough to keep the ride moving along for a while.

So far, there isn’t a character introduced that doesn’t have a purpose, and that’s normally half the battle of getting a new series off on the right foot.

John Weir has made a living out of sleight-of-hand maneuvers in the business world. It’s no surprise since his father, who isn’t as dead as you’d expect after a shotgun tore apart his head right in front of his son, pulled off the impossible with that wicked trick.

Not that John was aware of that for who knows how long.

If the first hour set up the insane cobblestones creating this winding path, the second ensured we have no idea where it’s taking us.

So far, Rabbit Hole has a lot of explaining to do.

In the beginning, not making sense made sense. It was almost a little old-fashioned.

Much like Kiefer Sutherland himself, John is old-school in how he pulls off the impossible to get results. Using real-life manipulations is much better than relying on tech. There’s no doubt that what your eyes saw is real; you just have to realize that not every word printed about a mark in time is reliably correct.

If John used computer manipulation, adding or erasing people or modifying their faces, someone in the real world could prove otherwise. The way John and his team set up two people to appear to be in cahoots did the trick, and what someone sees is indisputable. What actually happened is not.

You knew when Hailey saw John’s face on the jumbotron, and Jack’s response was more of a “darn it” than otherwise raising an alarm that there was more to that story.

Still, it was surprising that the credits rolled with Edward Homm in John’s basement, but not as funny as Homm making his way upstairs still bound and gagged just seconds after Hailey called John a psycho.

I am not some psychotic killer person, OK? [Homm comes up the basement stairs, bound and gagged]

John

Timing is everything, and it works very well on Rabbit Hole.

We know that John was hired to make it look like Homm was in cahoots with a corporate executive. What we don’t know is why he was framed for a  murder that didn’t occur, how John knew it was a possibility, or how he managed to kidnap Homm before he got whacked.

There is a lot of framing and kidnapping going on around here.

Who is Hailey, and how did John’s face get onto her dating app? It can’t be as easy as his friends put it there. If it were, then there wouldn’t have been a camera in her hotel room.

This one has left even John stymied.

Hailey is a perfect comic foil for John, and Sutherland and Meta Golding play off each other beautifully. She plays perfectly insensed to his frustratingly exasperated oh, so well.

It has John confused enough to keep Hailey around. He didn’t have to step in when some goons were trying to lead her to a freakin’ Mercedes. And good on her for recognizing something was off with things beyond having no idea why she was being taken in.

John used what he knows best to take charge of the situation. He grabbed a phone to manipulate it with video.

If you haven’t figured out by now that news organizations, political factions, and everyone else who has a yen to do so grabs things off the web to sway your opinions on everything, then you haven’t been paying attention.

Rabbit Hole itself is manipulating viewers to reconsider everything it knows, as well.

Charles Dance had been cast as a character named Ben, but Rabbit Hole spent so much time suggesting how badly John had been affected by his father’s death that it was still shocking when his dad appeared as yet another set of credits rolled.

So far, so good on the credit rolling surprises.

Ben: Well, you’re really messing this one up, John.
John: Nice to see you, too, dad.

To be sure, John would have been shocked by his dad’s death. We don’t know when he reconnected with him or how long he believed he was dead. Even if it was a week, seeing what he saw would have a devasting effect on his psyche.

What’s interesting is why he would be interested in taking something so traumatic and making it his life’s work to bring similar trauma to others.

There’s definitely a lot to unpack as the season progresses, and we cannot wait to take this journey with you.

But we’re not the only ones who want to know what’s going on here.

In addition to the good guy (we think), and the unknowns, we also have verifiable baddies and an FBI agent hot on John’s trail.

Kyle the Intern is a very bad young dude, and he’s got that annoying expression you just want to smack it off of his face.

Agent Jo Madi might just get frustrated enough to be the one to do it.

What I like about Madi is that she’s already got a line on John Weir, so as things begin to explode around him, she’s taking note of it. That includes how the intern suddenly went ballistic on John after an illegal police station run.

I’ve got to cut this short due to the weather… my electricity has gone on and off four times while writing this. Oy.

Hopefully, you’re as excited about this new show and just how incredibly fun it is from the get to. Are you ready to talk about it?

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Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She’s a member of the Critic’s Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on Twitter and email her here at TV Fanatic.

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