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The Alienist

416 statements
81 feature instances
15 referencing feature instances

The Alienist	type	TVTItem
The Alienist	label	The Alienist
The Alienist	page	TheAlienist
The Alienist	comment	Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })The Alienist is a television miniseries broadcasting on TNT beginning in January 2018 in the United States and on Netflix in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Based on the 1994 novel written by Caleb Carr, it stars Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning.New York City, 1896. The city is expanding under a new wave of immigration. Poverty and street crime are rampant, and no less rampant is police corruption. The newly-appointed Commissioner, one Theodore Roosevelt, strives to clean up the police department, navigating a minefield of crooked cops, corrupt politicians, and decadent aristocrats. Meanwhile, the Alienist Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) practices his emerging field of medicine with troubled children, and freelance artist and notorious cad John Schuyler Moore (Evans) drinks and whores his way through high society.Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_2'); })In the midst of all this, a heinous crime is discovered. A young boy is found murdered, his body horribly mutilated. The scandalous and unusual details of the crime - the boy was a prostitute who would dress like a girl, he was sexually assaulted and his body was left on a barely-accessible rooftop - get Kreizler's attention. He theorizes that this is a new kind of criminal: a serial killer. Whoever killed this boy will kill again, and he must be found before that. But the case is so disturbing and unseemly that the regular police are content to simply sweep this thing under the rug, and Roosevelt already has his hands full with everything else going on, so the investigation must be done discreetly, and out of sight of the regular department. With Roosevelt's tacit approval, Kreizler assembles a team consisting of his friend Moore, Roosevelt's secretary Sara Howard (Fanning), and two young detectives who dabble in the new science of forensics. They plunge into the investigation, trying to determine who this killer is, why he's killing, and how to stop him from killing again.Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_3'); })As a miniseries adaptation of a novel, the story is expanded significantly from the source material, exploring some elements in more detail that were present in the background of the book: classism and racism in 19th Century America, and some exploration into gender identity issues.A second season, titled The Alienist: Angel of Darkness, premiered on July 19, 2020.
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The Alienist / int_1439161f	type	Heroic BSoD
The Alienist / int_1439161f	comment	Heroic BSoD: After Mary's death, Kreizler closes the investigation, and then spends the entire episode sitting alone in his dark quiet house, brooding, drinking, and occasionally breaking things in fits of anger.
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The Alienist / int_1bf4581	type	Being Tortured Makes You Evil
The Alienist / int_1bf4581	comment	Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Japeth Drury wasn't the most sane young man to begin with, what with his fanatically-religious parents and being witness to grisly events on the frontier, but being sexually assaulted by a trusted adult friend was what finally pushed him over the edge.
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The Alienist / int_21d70919	type	Crapsack World
The Alienist / int_21d70919	comment	Crapsack World: It doesn't get much more crapsack than 1890's New York City. This is a place where thousands of impoverished immigrants are crammed into stinking hovels that the police don't bother coming to unless they want something, and a brutal serial killer can work with impunity so long as he doesn't prey on anyone who "matters".
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The Alienist / int_230d64	type	Screw the Rules, I Have Money!
The Alienist / int_230d64	comment	Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: A running theme in the narrative. The Van Bergens use their money and influence to shield their son Willem from the investigation despite him being a prime suspect. Willem tries to invoke this when Connor chases him down, but it doesn't save him.
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The Alienist / int_2bbcd1c2	type	Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest
The Alienist / int_2bbcd1c2	comment	Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: As noted below, Moore behaves this way with Sara.
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The Alienist / int_2c437b06	type	Violently Protective Girlfriend
The Alienist / int_2c437b06	comment	Violently Protective Girlfriend: Not too long after Kreizler and Mary begin their relationship, Connor breaks into Kreizler's house to find him. Kreizler wasn't home but Mary had no problem picking up a knife and attacking Connor to make sure no harm would come to Kreizler. Mary would get killed in the scuffle.
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The Alienist / int_30de7a51	type	Chivalrous Pervert
The Alienist / int_30de7a51	comment	Chivalrous Pervert: Moore gets it on with any willing lady, but he's not vulgar or abusive about it, and he's otherwise a decent guy. And he always acts the perfect gentleman toward Sara. He never really hits on her, except in a fond half-joking manner.
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The Alienist / int_34dcfc96	type	Kick the Dog
The Alienist / int_34dcfc96	comment	Kick the Dog: Kreizler likes to do this to his friends to push them away.
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The Alienist / int_3545b7df	type	Proper Lady
The Alienist / int_3545b7df	comment	Proper Lady: Brutally deconstructed with Mrs. Van Bergen. She is an elegant, well dressed, primly mannered upper class lady who, on the surface, appears to be a model wife and mother. However, it is eventually revealed that she is an aloof, careless monster who has not only turned a blind eye to her son’s perversions, but has actively enabled them. There are even subtle hints that she may have molested her son at some point.
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The Alienist / int_36c73fcf	type	It Always Rains at Funerals
The Alienist / int_36c73fcf	comment	It Always Rains at Funerals: At Mary's funeral, after the pall-bearers lower her coffin to the ground and the service ends, only Laszlo and John stay, and it immediately starts to rain, turning the ground to mud, and reflecting Laszlo's mood.
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The Alienist / int_3923297a	type	PsychopathicManChild
The Alienist / int_3923297a	comment	Psychopathic Man Child: Willem Van Bergen, one of the team's prime suspects. He likes to drug and rape young boys, and when confronted by it he throws a temper tantrum like a spoiled eight-year-old.
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The Alienist / int_3e2125f5	type	Scary Teeth
The Alienist / int_3e2125f5	comment	Scary Teeth: The main suspect in the case is a regular the prostitutes refer to as "The Man with the Silver Smile." This turns out to be a side effect from contemporary medical treatment: at the time, syphilis was treated with mercury, which could stain the teeth. Willem Van Bergen has such silver-colored teeth. The actual killer does not have the same issue.
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The Alienist / int_40cbee83	type	Wretched Hive
The Alienist / int_40cbee83	comment	Wretched Hive: Late 19th-Century New York City is a hotbed of filth, crime, and corruption. Which is somewhat Truth in Television.
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The Alienist / int_40cc0c7e	type	Bittersweet Ending
The Alienist / int_40cc0c7e	comment	Bittersweet Ending: Japeth Drury is killed and his murder spree stopped, but he dies before Kreizler has a chance to talk to him and try and discern his motives, meaning his efforts to find some kind of explanation for his murderous impulses were for naught. In order to quell the rising tide of dissent in the police department, Roosevelt has to whitewash Connor's dirty past and posthumously honor him for bringing down Drury (and to be fair, he was the one who mortally wounded him). And of course, Mary is gone. But our heroes have survived and moved past their own defining emotional traumas to become better people and good friends.
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The Alienist / int_4217402f	type	Power Dynamics Kink
The Alienist / int_4217402f	comment	Power Dynamics Kink: Kreizler and his servant Mary have a very weird power dynamic in their relationship, where on the one hand, Kreizler is Mary's boss, but on the other hand, he is highly dependent upon her because of his bad arm. Mary seems to enjoy Laszlo's timidity whenever he needs her to do something for him.
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The Alienist / int_4435aa66	type	Attractive Bent-Gender
The Alienist / int_4435aa66	comment	Attractive Bent-Gender: A dark twist, almost to the point of deconstruction-some of the boys who dress like girls actually make very convincing and very pretty girls...which is, of course, the reason they're being preyed upon. When the team dresses Stevie up as part of a sting, he turns out to make a pretty girl too, much to his own consternation.
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The Alienist / int_443b78cd	type	Tranquil Fury
The Alienist / int_443b78cd	comment	Tranquil Fury: Everything that's happening puts Theodore Roosevelt in an almost constant state of slow burn.
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The Alienist / int_463da046	type	Ambiguous Gender Identity
The Alienist / int_463da046	comment	Ambiguous Gender Identity: There is a subtle trans subtext in the series that was not present in the original book; the concept of transgender identity was poorly understood in 1896 and wasn't mainstream in 1994 either. In some cases it's not clear if the boy prostitutes identify as girls or if it's just an act they put on for work. The backstory of at least one of the victims - Kreizler's former patient - points to them having some kind of non-cisgender identity: the child apparently liked to dress and act like a girl, and rather than "cure" him of this behavior, Kreizler advised acceptance and understanding. When the victim's mother learns that her son was most likely targeted because of this behavior, she blames Kreizler for his death.
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The Alienist / int_4781adbb	type	Jerk with a Heart of Gold
The Alienist / int_4781adbb	comment	Jerk with a Heart of Gold: John Schuyler Moore is a cynical, ill-tempered drunk, but he's basically a good guy. He genuinely cares for Sara, he loves his grandmother, and he befriends the boy prostitute Joseph, making sure he stays safe and talking to him about how he might help him escape this life. Kreizler can be a jackass and has his own hang ups, but he feels genuinely responsible for a pair of children being murdered under his watch and just wants to stop the killer before he hurts more people. It's also clear he does value his friends, even if he comes off as unappreciative, especially in regards to Moore and Cyrus.
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The Alienist / int_47fea76b	type	Butt-Monkey
The Alienist / int_47fea76b	comment	Butt-Monkey: Moore simply cannot catch a break. In addition to his long dead little brother, he gets the shit kicked out of him, drugged, (multiple times) in all likelihood sexually assaulted, Sara doesn't take his feelings seriously, Laszlo treats him rather poorly, he struggles with alcoholism, gets dragged into a depraved serial's killer ritualistic murder spree of young children, and you can count on one hand the characters who don't give him shit about something.
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The Alienist / int_4aaffbd5	type	I Never Said It Was Poison
The Alienist / int_4aaffbd5	comment	I Never Said It Was Poison: Downplayed. Lucius and Marcus question Constable Doyle why he was at Kreizler's house when Mary was killed. Doyle says Mary had invited him in and mentioned she flirted with him. Only for Marcus to point out Mary was mute and cannot speak. Regardless, Lucius and Marcus unfortunately did not have enough proof to arrest Doyle.
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The Alienist / int_59907e4f	type	Police Are Useless
The Alienist / int_59907e4f	comment	Police Are Useless: The New York City Police Department is so corrupt that they'd rather ignore these horrible murders than actually investigate them, for fear of opening a number of worm-filled cans about their own activities or those of their wealthy patrons. Roosevelt's trying to change that, but he's got a steep uphill battle to fight.
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The Alienist / int_5f861d0f	type	Only Friend
The Alienist / int_5f861d0f	comment	Only Friend: Moore seems to be Kreizler's just because he puts up with way more of Laszlo's shit than he strictly speaking has to.
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The Alienist / int_653c5c73	type	Cannot Spit It Out
The Alienist / int_653c5c73	comment	Cannot Spit It Out: Kreizler is really bad at communicating with other adults (he's fine with kids). Especially Mary; an attempt to tell her how he feels comes out all wrong and ends up pissing her off.
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The Alienist / int_694da243	type	At the Opera Tonight
The Alienist / int_694da243	comment	At the Opera Tonight: Played with. Moore and Kreizler spend a part of the finale at the opera, but they're there mainly as decoys to distract the attention of the corrupt cops looking to shut down their investigation. It's there that Kreizler reveals to Moore that he knows where the killer is, and that they must go alone while everyone else's attention is somewhere else.
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The Alienist / int_69ac64a0	type	Too Broken to Break
The Alienist / int_69ac64a0	comment	Too Broken to Break: In the second season finale, after interrogating Libby, Thomas concedes his inability to break her will. Laszlo retorts:
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The Alienist / int_6b05b601	type	Jerkass Has a Point
The Alienist / int_6b05b601	comment	Jerkass Has a Point: It in no way justifies him hitting her, but when Moore confronts Kreizler about him slapping Sara, Kreizler points out (in so many words) that Sara brought up his disability and Dark and Troubled Past completely unprompted and had the nerve to call him a 'coward' for not facing it after he repeatedly (and in greater and greater agitation) told her to just stop. Admittedly, she may have a point, but what she said was still unnecessary and way out of line.
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The Alienist / int_6ee10e0	type	My Greatest Failure
The Alienist / int_6ee10e0	comment	My Greatest Failure: Kreizler takes the case very personally and very seriously, once he learns that one of the victims was a former patient of his, and that his advice might have been indirectly responsible for his death.
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The Alienist / int_71105dfc	type	Everybody Smokes
The Alienist / int_71105dfc	comment	Everybody Smokes: As appropriate for the time period. Moore in particular steps up his smoking habit once he stops drinking.
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The Alienist / int_71329e49	type	Turn in Your Badge
The Alienist / int_71329e49	comment	Turn in Your Badge: After Connor misleads Roosevelt about Willem Van Bergen's location, causing him significant embarrassment, a seething Roosevelt kicks him off the force right there.
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The Alienist / int_729c69f3	type	Politically Incorrect Villain
The Alienist / int_729c69f3	comment	Politically Incorrect Villain: Walking Irish stereotype Captain Connor, a Dirty Cop who verbally abuses his wife and children, subjects Sara to low-key harassment and intimidation at every opportunity, and has no tolerance for "fairies and sodomites." He's also quite liberal with slurs like "wop" and "guinea." His attitudes wouldn't be too far afield of what would have been socially-acceptable at the time, but he is an unnecessarily massive dick about it.
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The Alienist / int_7301ae04	type	Serial Killer
The Alienist / int_7301ae04	comment	Serial Killer: As in the novel, the series talks about the idea of a serial killer - a murderer who kills repeatedly, in adherence to a pattern, for seemingly no material motive - as a relatively new concept. Jack the Ripper is briefly discussed in reference.
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The Alienist / int_730d3664	type	Adaptational Angst Upgrade
The Alienist / int_730d3664	comment	Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The team meshes quite well in the book, despite a few differences that they quickly put aside. Not so in the series. Moore and Kreizler in particular almost hate each other.
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The Alienist / int_7453bc5b	type	Spared by the Adaptation
The Alienist / int_7453bc5b	comment	Spared by the Adaptation: Joseph is killed in the book. Here he just barely survives.
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The Alienist / int_780a078e	type	Self-Made Orphan
The Alienist / int_780a078e	comment	Self-Made Orphan: Japeth Drury murdered nearly his entire family in his first act of killing. Only his older brother, who had already left the area, was spared. The massacre is so brutal that the locals actually chalked it up to an Indian raid, and the remains of the Drury farmstead has become the local "scary old house on the edge of town."
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The Alienist / int_7815ba15	type	N-Word Privileges
The Alienist / int_7815ba15	comment	N-Word Privileges: Kreizler refers to himself quite frankly as a cripple due to his disabled arm, but doesn't take kindly to anyone else doing so, especially when they're trying to condescend to him.
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The Alienist / int_7e74d66f	type	Politically Correct History
The Alienist / int_7e74d66f	comment	Politically Correct History: Several characters have more progressive opinions than would be expected for their time period, though they do face some pushback. Kreizler, of course, demonstrates a decidedly modern insight and understanding of gender identity. And after Roosevelt mentions witnessing similar mutilations during skirmishes with Plains Indians, the team consults with the Docent of the Museum of Natural History, who demonstrates an atypical knowledge of and affinity for Lakota culture. He quite firmly insists that the murders couldn't be the work of anyone from that culture: desecrating the body of a fallen enemy is done to ensure that he's crippled in the afterlife, and no self-respecting Lakota warrior would ever see a child as a threat deserving of such treatment. This knowledge is what leads the team to conclude that the killer is imitating acts he may have witnessed or seen images of, without understanding the context behind them.
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The Alienist / int_7eebe99c	type	The Alcoholic
The Alienist / int_7eebe99c	comment	The Alcoholic: Moore. His grandmother gets him to quit drinking partway through the series, and he's got clear withdrawal symptoms from then on.
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The Alienist / int_8e20979	type	Wham Episode
The Alienist / int_8e20979	comment	Wham Episode: "Psychopathia Sexualis": the team uncover the identity of the killer, and Moore and Kreizler barely survive an assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Connor and his thugs break into Kreizler's house and kill Mary.
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The Alienist / int_8e20b0f7	type	Private Detective
The Alienist / int_8e20b0f7	comment	Private Detective: Sara becomes one at the start of Season 2, having left the NYPD to open her own agency focusing on cases brought by women.
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The Alienist / int_90d44f44	type	Karmic Death
The Alienist / int_90d44f44	comment	Karmic Death: Captain Conner was thoroughly unpleasant and disrespectful towards women, verbally abusive towards their spouse, subjects Sara to harassment frequently and was the one who killed Mary. In the end, it was a woman who killed him.
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The Alienist / int_95db314b	type	Casual Kink
The Alienist / int_95db314b	comment	Kreizler is an ambitious psychiatrist and quite a high-ranking member of the New York society, but there are some hints that he enjoys a submissive role in romantic relationships. This shows up in his conversation with the professional dominatrix Mrs. Williams (he mentions that he enjoyed her stories of "men's vulnerabilities"), and in his relationship with Karen Stratton, who takes him to various kinky places. His relationship with Mary also has strong undertones of this kind: he is highly dependent on her due to his bad arm, and she enjoys his timidity whenever he needs her to do something for him (and whenever he pisses her off, she just leaves him on his own, and he cannot even tie his own shoelaces without her). Besides, while Mary was away, he sneaked to her room to sniff her clothes.
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The Alienist / int_966da803	type	Defiant to the End
The Alienist / int_966da803	comment	Defiant to the End: Mary. Connor kills her in the end, but she gives the son of a bitch a good beating, stabbing him in the chest before she goes down.
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The Alienist / int_9cc1a329	type	Upper-Class Twit
The Alienist / int_9cc1a329	comment	Upper-Class Twit: Nearly all of the upper class men presented in this series (save Kreizler, John, and Roosevelt, who are presented as consummate outsiders) fit this description, but Willem Van Bergen, Roosevelt’s “friend” Hobart Weaver, and Jack Astor stand out as particularly apt examples of this trope.
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The Alienist / int_9d7be19d	type	Dr. Psych Patient
The Alienist / int_9d7be19d	comment	Dr. Psych Patient: Kreizler briefly encounters this trope when he visits the D.C. military asylum, and an institutionalized former field surgeon recognizes him from a medical seminar.
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The Alienist / int_a8a5e4ed	type	Christianity Is Catholic
The Alienist / int_a8a5e4ed	comment	Christianity Is Catholic: When Kreizler discerns the killer's pattern, corresponding to Catholic Saints' feast days, he refers to it as the "Christian Calendar." It's inaccurate to call it a "Christian" calendar, as not all denominations of Christianity recognize the concept of Sainthood and honor feast days the way Catholicism does. This may be Creator Provincialism on his part, since New York is predominately Catholic, and he was apparently raised catholic.
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The Alienist / int_aabe2fb	type	Deliberate Values Dissonance
The Alienist / int_aabe2fb	comment	Deliberate Values Dissonance: Sara Howard is frequently harassed and looked down on by the police force, as the first female employee of the department. She's even marginalized by Kreizler's team, although that's mostly out of a misguided desire to protect her.
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The Alienist / int_acecb17d	type	Chekhov's Skill
The Alienist / int_acecb17d	comment	Chekhov's Skill: It's mentioned once or twice in passing over the course of the series that Sara knows how to shoot.
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The Alienist / int_b11ac9f5	type	Abusive Parents
The Alienist / int_b11ac9f5	comment	Abusive Parents: As in the book, Laszlo Kreizler's father was physically abusive, breaking his young son's arm so badly he became permanently disabled. This informs Laszlo's understanding of the killer's pathology.
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The Alienist / int_b5788780	type	Jewish and Nerdy
The Alienist / int_b5788780	comment	Jewish and Nerdy: The Isaacson twins.
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The Alienist / int_b6caa5b4	type	Operation: Jealousy
The Alienist / int_b6caa5b4	comment	Operation: Jealousy: When Moore learns that Kreizler and Sara are out together, he treats Mary to a night on the town. It's heavily implied he did this to make both of them jealous.
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The Alienist / int_b7e0c5ff	type	Love Triangle
The Alienist / int_b7e0c5ff	comment	Love Triangle: Moore-Kreizler-Sara and briefly, Moore-Kreizler-Mary, but that was mainly Moore trying to rattle Kreizler's cage.
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The Alienist / int_b8ccfb2	type	Weakness Turns Her On
The Alienist / int_b8ccfb2	comment	Weakness Turns Her On: Laszlo relies on Mary for a great deal and when the two of them are in close proximity the frosty doctor turns into an awkward schoolboy. It would be much weirder if Mary wasn't so visibly into it.
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The Alienist / int_bd0d6395	type	No Social Skills
The Alienist / int_bd0d6395	comment	Kreizler has No Social Skills, is blunt to the point of rudeness, and has trouble relating to his peers socially.
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The Alienist / int_c007c53	type	Cool and Unusual Punishment
The Alienist / int_c007c53	comment	Cool and Unusual Punishment: Though Laszlo is formally Mary's boss, in fact he is highly dependent on her in everyday tasks like changing his clothes or tying his shoes due to his crippled arm. He also has a bad temper, and when he misbehaves towards Mary, she is not above "punishing" him by leaving him to do these tasks on his own (which would not be a problem for a person with two functioning arms, but renders Kreizler basically helpless).
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The Alienist / int_c3585f4a	type	Boom, Headshot!
The Alienist / int_c3585f4a	comment	Boom, Headshot!: Connor takes out Willem Van Bergen with a single shot right between the eyes.
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The Alienist / int_c3c6b8db	type	Powerful People Are Subs
The Alienist / int_c3c6b8db	comment	Powerful People Are Subs: Kreizler is an ambitious psychiatrist and quite a high-ranking member of the New York society, but there are some hints that he enjoys a submissive role in romantic relationships. This shows up in his conversation with the professional dominatrix Mrs. Williams (he mentions that he enjoyed her stories of "men's vulnerabilities"), and in his relationship with Karen Stratton, who takes him to various kinky places. His relationship with Mary also has strong undertones of this kind: he is highly dependent on her due to his bad arm, and she enjoys his timidity whenever he needs her to do something for him (and whenever he pisses her off, she just leaves him on his own, and he cannot even tie his own shoelaces without her). Besides, while Mary was away, he sneaked to her room to sniff her clothes. There is also the unnamed brewery foreman who is one of Mrs. Williams' clients. In her own words, he's "used to giving orders", but "in here, he prefers taking them".
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The Alienist / int_c6c5ce4	type	Bedlam House
The Alienist / int_c6c5ce4	comment	Bedlam House: The team visit several in the course of their investigation, which is actually pretty period-appropriate. Sara visits a particularly disturbing one, where a restrained young woman who has just urinated on herself desperately tries to convince her that she's not really crazy - which could well be true: given how lax mental health regulation was in the 19th Century, she might well have been nothing more than an orphan who had one bad day in view of some crooked doctor. Kreizler's institution where he treats troubled children in a more gentle and progressive manner is the notable exception.
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The Alienist / int_c7839568	type	Nice Jewish Boy
The Alienist / int_c7839568	comment	Nice Jewish Boy: Lucius Isaacson. He is presented as kind, intelligent, polite, hard working, and deeply devoted to his mother and his religious faith.
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The Alienist / int_cd8aa3e8	type	Smoking Is Glamorous
The Alienist / int_cd8aa3e8	comment	Smoking Is Glamorous: Elegant professional Sara and dashing detective Marcus both smoke in especially attractive ways (for Sara it also marks her off as something of a rebel, as well as one of the guys).
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The Alienist / int_d2102da0	type	Bad People Abuse Animals
The Alienist / int_d2102da0	comment	Bad People Abuse Animals: As is often the case with real-life serial killers, the killer here began with torturing and killing animals. He seems to have a particular enmity against cats.
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The Alienist / int_d3a4af1e	type	Sympathy for the Devil
The Alienist / int_d3a4af1e	comment	Sympathy for the Devil: After digging into Drury's past, some members of the investigative team, such as Kreizler, cannot help but feel sorry for the serial killer, as he had a Dark and Troubled Past and went through many traumatic events in his childhood and adulthood.
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The Alienist / int_d547fb	type	SurprisinglyGoodEnglish
The Alienist / int_d547fb	comment	Surprisingly Good Hungarian: Brühl's delivery of Kreizler's Hungarian lines is nearly flawless.
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The Alienist / int_d62184c3	type	Theme Serial Killer
The Alienist / int_d62184c3	comment	Theme Serial Killer: The killer's pattern corresponds with Catholic Feast Days, likely a result of his messed-up religious upbringing, which enables Kreizler's team to predict and track his attacks.
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The Alienist / int_d87ba943	type	Combat Sadomasochist
The Alienist / int_d87ba943	comment	Combat Sadomasochist: Japeth Drury got his taste for killing while serving in the Army. He was part of the force that put down the Haymarket Riot, and his former commanding officer is visibly disturbed as he recalls finding Drury in the thick of things: surrounded by bodies, naked, covered in blood, and, "down there...stiff as a flagpole."
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The Alienist / int_dae5c997	type	Action Girl
The Alienist / int_dae5c997	comment	Action Girl: Sara Howard, the first woman to work for the New York City Police Department, is determined to join the hunt for the killer, despite the sexist assumption of her male colleagues that, as a woman, she will be in need of male protection and only prove an encumbrance to the group. Ultimately, she ends up contributing more breakthroughs to the search for the killer than any other group member. When Kreizler quits the group in a fit of heroic BSOD after Mary’s death, Sara rallies everyone back to action, and takes over as the impromptu leader of the group. In the climactic final scene, she saves the lives of John and Kreizler by shooting Connor.
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The Alienist / int_dbca2c99	type	Red Herring
The Alienist / int_dbca2c99	comment	Red Herring: Willem Van Bergen, the most likely suspect, is not the killer, as evidenced by the fact that another murder is being committed almost at the exact same time that Connor tracks him down and shoots him dead.
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The Alienist / int_dd7cfe55	type	Apophenia Plot
The Alienist / int_dd7cfe55	comment	Apophenia Plot: Kreizler has a gift for stringing together evidence in order to construct detailed psychological profiles, but his unchecked biases often lead to the profiles being far off the mark. In the first season, his attempt to tie the murder of his former patient to a string of murders leads to the wrong suspect, with terrible results, and in the second season, he tries too hard to make a plausible case against a crooked doctor against whom he had a grudge, while missing the real killer, a ward nurse who happened to work for the doctor but was acting out her own agenda.
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The Alienist / int_ddeaea82	type	Miscarriage of Justice
The Alienist / int_ddeaea82	comment	Miscarriage of Justice: Martha Napp is wrongfully executed for her daughter's murder.
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The Alienist / int_deea2fb5	type	Idle Rich
The Alienist / int_deea2fb5	comment	Idle Rich: The Van Bergens, and nearly every other upper class individual in the series, save Dr. Laszlo Kreizler and Roosevelt. John Moore starts out showing some tendencies of this trope—he is a wealthy, hard-drinking playboy who only half-heartedly dabbles at his job as a crime illustrator for the New York Times, and who, by his own admission, “likes to avoid" what he calls "an honest day's work." However, as the series goes on, he begins to take on quite a bit of hard work in an effort to contribute to the investigation. Midway through the series, moved by his love for Sara Howard, he begins to change in earnest, giving up alcohol, working harder, and even attempting to learn how to type so he can take up reporting.
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The Alienist / int_e46f71c3	type	Hollywood Costuming
The Alienist / int_e46f71c3	comment	Hollywood Costuming: In two episodes Sara is seen in her undergarments, including a corset. Historically women would have worn chemises underneath corsets to protect their bodies from possible welts and to protect the corset from sweat and body oils. Because of Fanservice, Sara is not seen wearing a chemise under her corsets.
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The Alienist / int_e83f211c	type	O.O.C. Is Serious Business
The Alienist / int_e83f211c	comment	OOC Is Serious Business: Stevie is probably the toughest kid outside of a Charles Dickens novel. Very little rattles him. When he meets the killer face-to-face during the stakeout, he is shaken to his very core, unable to even speak in full sentences for a while afterwards. It takes him the space of two episodes to recover.
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The Alienist / int_e8cfde67	type	Ambiguous Disorder
The Alienist / int_e8cfde67	comment	Ambiguous Disorder: Several characters are troubled in non-specific ways, mostly stemming from childhood traumas: Mary can neither speak nor write, with the implication that she was born with aphasia and agraphia. Kreizler has No Social Skills, is blunt to the point of rudeness, and has trouble relating to his peers socially. Moore demonstrates some signs of clinical depression, self-medicating with alcohol and promiscuity.
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The Alienist / int_eb251937	type	Dirty Cop
The Alienist / int_eb251937	comment	Dirty Cop: Burns and Connor are both deep in the Van Bergens' pocket, and they have dealings with almost every den of ill-repute in New York. They start actively obstructing the investigation on the order of the Van Bergen family when their pedophile son Willem becomes a suspect.
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The Alienist / int_ecbf37ff	type	Disposable Sex Worker
The Alienist / int_ecbf37ff	comment	Disposable Sex Worker: The killer's victims are young male prostitutes, which unfortunately means very few people actually care about their deaths.
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The Alienist / int_ecd78a30	type	Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male
The Alienist / int_ecd78a30	comment	Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male: Early in the investigation, a brothel-keeper slips a drug into Moore's drink to keep him from asking questions, turns the working boys loose on him, and then has him dumped out on the street half-conscious and half-naked. It's not clear exactly what the prostitutes do to him, but he's definitely assaulted in some way. It's never treated as a crime or a violation by any of the characters; everyone just chalks it up to another of Moore's drunken shenanigans, Moore included. He's more embarrassed by the fact that he wakes up with no pants. This may or may not be Deliberate Values Dissonance.
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The Alienist / int_f2a232ef	type	Wound Licking
The Alienist / int_f2a232ef	comment	Wound Licking: Lampshaded when Dr. Kreizler offers to lick a cut on his servant Mary's hand. He tells her that saliva contains a natural coagulant.
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The Alienist / int_f5c3983a	type	Camping a Crapper
The Alienist / int_f5c3983a	comment	Camping a Crapper: Cyrus tries to do this to Captain Connor (unsuccessfully) as a payback for killing Mary.
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The Alienist / int_f8e010ce	type	Evil Cannot Comprehend Good
The Alienist / int_f8e010ce	comment	Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When Kreizler turns down J.P. Morgan's offer of assistance, knowing full well it's a Deal with the Devil, Morgan is absolutely baffled. It's almost as if he can't process meeting someone who can't be bought off.
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The Alienist / int_fed93e1b	type	Dark and Troubled Past
The Alienist / int_fed93e1b	comment	Dark and Troubled Past: In scads, elaborating on the novel's central conceit of heroic characters with a history of trauma (in particular Laszlo Kreizler) seeking to understand characters whose history of trauma leads to their shocking crimes.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

The Alienist	hasFeature	Apophenia Plot / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Authoritative in Public, Docile in Private / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Big Applesauce / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Brains and Bondage / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Definite Article Title / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Naturalized Name / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Officer O'Hara / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Power Dynamics Kink / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Powerful People Are Subs / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Public Bathhouse Scene / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Theme Serial Killer / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Too Broken to Break / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Wound Licking / int_1643cc6d
The Alienist	hasFeature	Young Future Famous People / int_1643cc6d

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