From TV Guide:

Hits and Misses:

The second episode of this new series is less gruesome than the premiere, but it's no day in the park. It's more a night in the dark, as our crack FBI team, led by the preternaturally intelligent Peter Coyote as Virgil Webster, investigates the world of S&M. There's an encounter between a suspect and Agent Rebecca Locke involving handcuffs that are not FBI issue, and there's an explicit rape scene. Inside is essentially a TV take on The Silence of the Lambs, but thanks to Coyote's malevolent monotone, it has a sleazy charm all its own.

My score: 7

Also? I can imagine some buffy/angelverse characters being in on the frequency.

You know Giles would be on it. And Fred.

My score: 7

So it's a Hit? Cool.

From the New Yorker review:

"In the first episode, when Locke is, at last, face to face with the killer, and he threatens her while explaining the deranged thinking behind his modus operandi—he’s intent on exposing the falseness of the dreams that bring young women to Los Angeles—she says, “The joke’s on you. I was made a nobody a long time ago, and by something a hell of a lot scarier than you.” Here Locke is out of control, abasing herself before a psychopath who preys on vulnerable women, and then getting all up in his face, in the space of one sentence. Her gift fails her when she needs it most. She’s just been fired from this new job (or so she thinks), and her dejection has erased her professionalism. This hardly ever happens to men on TV shows who have dangerous jobs to do; they may screw up, but not because they’re bummed out."

I didn't get that at all. Simon's motives are to strip away the lies these women have about their identities. He take their false identities leaving them with the truth that they are nobody. She's playing mental chess by trying to get him to believe that she doesn't have a false identify, what he looks to take was already taken. Her gift doesn't fail her as she knows it's the only tact she can take. It may have been desperate, which is understandable, but not unprofessional.

they may screw up, but not because they’re bummed out."

I don't think carrying around the trauma of being kidnapped for eighteen months counts as "bummed out."

Yeah, I thought that was a well written review, in terms of her prose, but whatever weird agenda she superimposed over the show made me go "heh?" My favorite rorschach review, though -- and they all are to some degree, actually -- was the guy who gave us a really, really positive review, but talked about how Rebecca was "kidnapped by a serial killer called 'The Apostle.'" Um, she was? I finally realized that in the scene where Paul confronts Web with "I know who she is..." Web mentions "your namesake, The Apostle..." meaning, of course, the Apostle Paul... somehow this guy was hearing all kinds of exposition that wasn't there. I think that may also have been the review that said Pony Man (the guy in the mirror) was the killer from the ep and that he was licking a severed hand like an ice cream cone. Well, no. I guess maybe these critics are doing their laundry while watching or something.

That's wacky, Tim.

I'd hate to be a psychoanalyist for a TV Critic.

I guess maybe these critics are doing their laundry while watching or something.

I guess that means I'm qualified to be a critic. I'd still give a better (meaning, more intelligent and coherent) review than that doofus.

alked about how Rebecca was "kidnapped by a serial killer called 'The Apostle.'

Okay, I read that one too. I was very confused about it until we watched the episode. I had completely forgotten that line and had no idea where The Apostle thing had come from.

I thought maybe someone had been watching that Robert Duvall movie in another room.

Since I actually have time this morning I'm going to explain my 'pulp fiction' comparison a bit more. I think where it differs from Buffy ( I won't say anything about Tim written eps -even as a joke it is starting to wear thin) and to some extent Angel is that rather than stretching genre conventions or playing within them it is playing with them. Buffy to my mind though original a brilliant stayed solidly within the vampire movie conventons. The one convention it reversed (the petite frivolous blonde being the first victim) struck me as something it tended to be more earnest than playful with. Not that there was not a lot of play in Buffy, but it was playing within the coventions rather than using the conventions themselves as objects of play. (And yes I can think of lots of exceptions - Buffy had enough episodes that you can find an example of most things. But I think I'm describing the overall trend - the contrast of kickass Buffy with the victim cliche was something the show was pretty earnest about.)

OK Angel I think did more of the type of play with tropes (as opposed to play within them - though there was plenty of both). For example Angel as deeply stupid , manipulative, inclined to manipulate people for their "own good" and misjudge the nature of that good was a great playing with the dark brooding "good vampire" trope.

In spite of in no sense being a comedy, The Inside takes the serial killer trope and is playful with it. To be playful with that particular trope (as opposed to Western, Sci-fi supernatural horror) takes a lot of guts. Pulp Fiction IMO was the last major work to do that well. These are not world or nation threatening villains a la 24; they are the kind of danger you can imagine encountering in real life - and yet The Inside dares to be playful with in a way the CSI franchise, and the whole cop drama thing never is.

OK I know a very individual reading - probably getting out of it something the creator did not intend. But part of my experience in watching the show; don't neccesarily expect anyone else to see it.

a sleazy charm all its own

I love that.

P-C's link hates me. And in my own out in the wilds, I had the same problem ita had at the 57% mark. Twice. Going to see if there's anything new out.