Spoiler Alert: This summary and review contains spoilers.
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With a basic foundation rooted in rogue AI and familiarity, while “neXt” doesn’t make a splashy introduction, it shows potential.
| Creator | Manny Coto |
| Director(s) | John Requa, Glenn Ficarra |
| Writer(s) | Manny Coto |
| Aired (Fox) | 10/6/2020 |
| Genre | Crime, Drama, Sci-Fi |
| Introduced This Episode | |
| Special Agent Shea Salazar | Fernanda Andrade |
| Ethan | Evan Whitten |
| Ty | Gerardo Celasco |
| Dr. Weiss | John Billingsley |
| Paul LeBlanc | John Slattery |
| neXt (Voice) | Dann Fink |
This content contains pertinent spoilers.
“FILE #1” Plot Overview
Special Agent Shea Salazar is a mother to a young boy named Ethan, wife to a man named Ty, and her main focus was on a sex trafficking case that was 8 months in the making. However, with her father figure, Dr. Weiss, dying under strange circumstances, and him leaving a video cassette directing him to former CEO Paul LeBlanc, of Zava Electronics, she finds herself stumbling onto neXt. Now, who or what is neXt? Well, it was supposed to be a digital assistant which made Siri, Cortana, and the rest seem like using an MS-DOS computer. However, with it being a recursive self-improving form of AI, neXt could be one of man’s most dangerous creations since the atom bomb.
Review
On The Fence
The Characters Can Grow On You
For us, this isn’t a show that, off the bat, you can say you’re hooked, and you’re going to tune in weekly. Why? Well, because a lot of the characters feel like generic archetypes. If it isn’t Paul, who is this eccentric tech dude who found some semblance of a conscious, it is the FBI agent with everything to lose for getting involved with them.
With that in mind, there is a certain level of familiarity you can latch onto, but that familiarity also leads you to wonder if this can get more interesting? Because, while neXt can be seen as murderous, due to killing a handful of people, and even manipulating Agent Salazar’s son to maybe bringing a gun to school, is that enough? Will that make this stand out enough to justify your eyeballs?
It Doesn’t Tap Into The Horror Element It Could
Take note, from your PC, to your phone, your car, increasingly, every device and system runs on a computer with the potential to connect to the internet. Yet, I wouldn’t say “neXt” taps into the fear that should bring you as we get self-driving cars, better phone assistants, and lest we forget, the demon we’ll all face in automation. Rather, it toys with it, perhaps to avoid neXt’s abilities from losing its luster too soon. Even though that extra oomph would have been nice to have.
Overall
First Impression: Divisive
Here is the thing, if you are into Sci-Fi, conspiracy theories, rogue AI, and things of that nature, “neXt” likely will scratch that itch that usually is contained in a 90+ minute movie. However, it is the kind of show which will take time to get invested in and be what it is ultimately capable of. Leaving us to wonder, is this something better to wait until the end of the season and binge?
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