Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Saint X’ On Hulu, A Time-Hopping Drama About A Teen’s Death On An Idyllic Caribbean Vacation

Are we tired of the “rich people being awful” genre yet? It seems like we can’t get enough of it. A new Hulu series continues that theme, this time with some time jumps and some implications that we’re not 100 percent comfortable with.

SAINT X: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man runs through rainforest as a storm arrives at a resort.

The Gist: The man is being chased by people who work at the resort, as well as police. He hides and says “I’m sorry” to himself. Meanwhile, near a waterfall, a young woman’s body floats in the water.

In Flatbush, Brooklyn, Emily (Alycia Debnam-Carey) is still getting used to her new neighborhood, where she moved with her boyfriend Josh (Pico Alexander). She claims she feels safe there, though Josh isn’t sure, given her history.

Meanwhile, a group of travelers are waiting for their transport to Indigo Bay, a resort of the Carribean island of Saint X. Princeton freshman Alison Thomas (West Duchovny) is there with her parents Mia (Betsy Brandt) and Bill (Michael Park), whom she seems to be appropriately embarrassed by. She dotes on her little 7-year-old sister Claire (Kenlee Townsend).

When they get to the resort, one of the first people to greet them is Edwin (Jayden Elijah), an overly-friendly employee who seems to take a liking to Alison — and the attraction is mutual. Edwin finds his buddy Gogo (Josh Bonzie), who talks about getting a good tip from an “American anti-man” who just wanted to have sex with his wife.

A notably older Mia and Bill are at a dockside restaurant and they see a little girl. Mia tells the girl’s father that they have “a daughter,” an indication that something bad happened to either Alison or Claire. Then, Emily pauses outside a bodega when she sees a particular Caribbean soda she remembers from her time on Saint X, and we realize that Emily is a grown-up Claire. It’s driven home when she gets in a cab and recognizes the driver’s voice. A look at the license shows it’s Clive Richardson, aka Gogo. She hides her phone under a mat and dashes out, scared for her life.

Back on the island, we also find out that Gogo’s life isn’t as carefree as Edwin’s; he has a son he’s trying to support. When Edwin calls the baby’s mom a “Pickney pain in the ass,” Gogo snaps at him. That’s when we flash back to when a young Clive (PrinceYarcadova Lewinson) starts his first day at a new primary school, getting laughed at for his stutter (his nickname is “Gogo” because he stuttered when he asked “May I go” in class). A gregarious Edwin (Carter Burney) seems to be the only one of the kids who wants to be friends.

During their first night at the resort, Alison goes to the beach; she sees Edwin and Gogo and hangs out with them a bit as they smoke some weed; again, the mutual attraction between Alison and Edwin is evident. But she is there to meet Tyler (Caleb Lowell), a Yalie she met during a volleyball game.

Meanwhile, back in present-day Brooklyn, Emily calls her phone and gets Gogo, who found it in his cab. She arranges to meet him to get the phone back.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Saint X, based on the novel by Alexis Schaitkin, can slot right into the “Rich white people being awful” category where The White Lotus, Big Little Lies, and The Undoing reside.

Our Take: With all the time jumping going on in the first episode of Saint X, adapted for TV by Leila Gerstein (The Handmaid’s Tale), it was really hard to figure out just where the story was going. By, the end of it, though, we know the main players and we know what the story is. We’re just not sure we’re all that comfortable with where that story is going.

When Emily’s friend Sunita (Kosha Patel) tells her, after Emily runs into an older Gogo in a Brooklyn cab, “everyone knows those guys raped and killed your sister,” we’re assuming that “they” are Gogo and Edwin. And we suspect that one or both of them had nothing to do with Alison’s death. But the implication is unmistakable, and we’re unsure just how Gerstein will be able to handle that implication without making viewers squirm in their seats.

It’s not like the source material for Saint X is decades old; the novel was published in 2020. But the idea at the center of this show can be handled with some subtlety over hundreds of pages. From what we’ve seen so far, though, that what’s supposed to be subtext is actually text: Emily is afraid of Black people because of what she assumed happened to Alison on Saint X.

Again, we hope that turns out not to be the case. The flashbacks to Gogo and Edwin’s childhood should show that the two of them have a loyalty to each other that might get Gogo in more hot water than he ever intended. And there are other people at the resort who could have had something to do with Alison’s death, namely Ethan (Josh Cooke), an oversexed father-to-be who gets ticked at Alison during the volleyball match but may have another agenda.

The first episode plays a little too cute with all of the information that is in front of us, and it does seem that we’re going to be given pieces of the story, like how Gogo found himself in Brooklyn in the intervening 20 years, or just what Emily’s relationship is with her parents, Mia and Bill, a little at a time. It’s certainly a valid storytelling method, used liberally in the prestige TV era, but sometimes viewers just want information instead of twists. That’s what we were wanting while watching this first episode.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: As a slowed-down version of “The Tide Is High” plays, Emily gets off the phone with Gogo and writes on her arm, just like she did when she was 7.

Sleeper Star: We hope Betsy Brandt has a lot more to do than what we saw in the first episode. Given what happens to Alison, we’re pretty sure of it, and we can’t wait to see just what kind of mom Mia is.

Most Pilot-y Line: “In general, I don’t ogle children,” Ethan tells his wife when she talks about the “sumptuous” Alison, whom they saw at dinner the night before. What an ominous line that is, right?

Our Call: SKIP IT. Saint X may successfully dance around some of the uncomfortable implications its making in its first episode, but the show’s disjointed storytelling isn’t helping its cause.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.