10 November 2012

Who is Virgil Webster?

I started to watch The Inside today. It's really quite good. What has impressed me the most so far is the character Virgil Webster. He is the federal director of a violent crimes unit and he works with his own agenda in mind, to put it lightly. What fascinates me is how the show treats Webster. The man isn't so very unpredictable as much as he's exceedingly calculating. This seems like manipulation, however. Here is where the show proves most interesting: he always withholds his motives from his subordinates. Or when they're revealed, they seem wholly opportunistic and dangerous. He makes these decisions so as to provoke the two other main protagonists, Locke and Ryan. When interacting with Locke, Webster seems creepy and manipulative. Locke is a genius profiler and Webster relies on her intuitive grasp of her demons to operate at peak level. Sometimes Webster will assign cases that seem to work to Locke's disadvantage. The show pushes quite subtly the dimensions of this dangerous game. The question becomes: who is using their power to what ends here? By all appearances, Webster has a callous attitude toward his subordinates. He sees them only as materials to shape to great ends. But are those ends in the best interests of the law and his subordinates? This is a key question to the show and one that is presented with a lot of dark ambiguity. It's quite interesting to consider given the themes of the show. Still, who is Virgil Webster? What is inside the man? This is what we're left to wonder.

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