Four lead characters, three timelines. That’s what viewers have to keep track of in order to really get into FX’s suspense thriller Class of ‘09. Premiering with two episodes on May 10th, Hulu is banking on viewers getting hooked by Tom Rob Smith’s latest mystery. The scribe already has a built-in audience from his novel-turned-film Child 44, the BBC series London Spy, and FX’s own The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. But in all three cases, there were true events that inspired the author. In Class of ‘09, Tom Rob Smith is truly on his own, creating a cast of characters and taking them through the past, present, and future.
(Steve Swisher/FX)
The past is Quantico in 2009, in which four new FBI recruits – Tayo (Brian Tyree Henry, Atlanta), Poet (Kate Mara, A Teacher), Hour (Sepideh Moafi, The L Word: Generation Q), and Lennix (Brian J. Smith, Sense8) – establish themselves and build unbreakable bonds. The present is 2023, in which their lives and careers begin to pull them apart, with decisions made based on their past and consequences that directly affect their future. And the future is 2034, which finds Tayo in charge of an FBI overreliant on artificial intelligence and his former peers challenging his every move.
The ensemble cast isn’t too big to manage, but Class of ‘09’s biggest hurdle is introducing these characters in a way that feels digestible. Because it bounces forward and backward in time, it feels like not enough time is devoted to letting viewers build a connection with them. Add to that the fact that they’re all different versions of themselves across the three timelines, and you’ve got yourself a formula that instantly makes its audience feel like they’re working overtime to catch up. It’s not in a way that makes you feel like an armchair detective solving a mystery, but in a way that instantly lets you know this will all end badly, which sucks some of the fun out of the experience.
(Richard Ducree/FX)
The show takes a queue from the Lost playbook of trying to simplify things by focusing more or less on one character’s time jumps per episode. The premiere centers around Poet, while the second episode gives more insight into Tayo. But unlike Lost, which let characters grow around a central love triangle between Jack, Kate, and Sawyer in the early seasons, Class of ‘09 hedges all of its bets on you caring that one member of the team will go against the grain in the future. And since that future is offered upfront, it feels like there’s little mystery to it. Tayo will double down on artificial intelligence, while his peers will see the risks of overreliance on technology.
Billed as a suspense thriller, it’s hard to feel much when the characters aren’t given a chance to bond with the audience. And despite having so much ground to cover, Class of ‘09 has a shockingly slow pace. The aging up and down rarely works effectively in the decade leaps on either end of the present. And unless Tom Rob Smith is holding back some exciting surprises without much foreshadowing in the double-episode premiere, it leaves little reason to draw viewers back the following six weeks to complete the course.
(Richard Ducree/FX)
I give Class of ‘09 2 out of 5 FBI lanyards.
Class of ‘09 premieres Wednesday, May 10th, exclusively on Hulu.