This was what you would call a transition episode, a slow-paced but necessary evil.

All the players were brought together on The Alienist Season 1 Episode 2, and Kreizler laid out his game plan for the pursuit of the sadistic killer who has been killing and mutilating young boys.

A subtle act of Sara pasting a newspaper clipping into a scrapbook revealed that Kreizler managed to clear the corrupt police's "suspect," the dying prostitute Henry Wolff.

So Captain Connor and some of his thugs with badges roughed up Mr. Santorelli at his tenement and intimidated those who lived there, then suggested to Sara that that line of inquiry wouldn't yield any further results.

In other words, no sense wasting any more time on the death on one of "those people," especially a degenerate.

But Kreizler doesn't accept such a cruel fate for any child, whatever his sexual orientation might be. Also, he...