Prodigal Son (TV series)
| Fandom | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Prodigal Son |
| Abbreviation(s): | |
| Creator: | Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver |
| Date(s): | September 23, 2019 – present |
| Medium: | Live-action TV show |
| Country of Origin: | United States |
| External Links: | at IMDb at Wikipedia Official Website  Poster made by the fan BYoungWeb (2019) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Prodigal Son is a Fox crime drama and procedural television show. While Prodigal Son is mostly drama, it has a healthy bit of humor as well.
Canon
The story follows Malcolm Bright, a forensic profiler whose father Dr. Martin Whitley is a serial killer better known as The Surgeon. At its heart, the show is a family drama dealing with the fallout for the family (he, his mother, and his sister) of the dad being a serial killer. In the pilot, he is fired from the FBI, and recruited by the NYPD. Every week has a case of the week, as well as an ongoing mystery of what actually happened all those years ago.
Main Characters
- Malcolm Bright (formerly known as Malcolm Whitly)
- Gil Arroyo
- Ainsley Whitly
- Dani Powell
- JT Tarmel
- Edrisa Tanaka
- Jessica Whitly
- Martin Whitly
Fandom
This article or section needs expansion. |
Reception
The show was highly anticipated, due in part to the casting. Several actors brought with them fans from other projects they had worked on, including Michael Sheen (Masters of Sex, Good Omens (TV)), Bellamy Young (Scandal), and to a lesser degree, Tom Payne (The Walking Dead), Halston Sage (The Orville) and Lou Diamond Phillips (Longmire). Some of the earliest fan fiction on AO3 was posted prior to the airing of the pilot, based on the promos alone. Despite mixed critical reception, fan reception has been mostly positive.
Fanworks
There is a decent amount of fan art for the show, likely due to the fact that the fandom was beginning to form just before the start of Inktober.
Most of the fan fiction is gen, and focuses on Malcolm's trauma or his relationships with surrogate father figure Gil, his new colleagues, or his family. The most common genres are angst, hurt/comfort, and whump with Malcolm's PTSD often examined in fics.
Pairings
While some fans say they ship Malcolm / Therapy, or think he doesn't need a love interest, ships are beginning to take shape. Pairings include:
- Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell (ship name: Brightwell)
- Gil Arroyo/Jessica Whitly (ship name: Gilica)
- Malcolm Bright/Edrisa Tanaka (ship name: Maldrisa)
- Dani Powell/Gil Arroyo
- Malcolm Bright/Martin Whitley
- Malcom Bright/ Gil Arroyo
Save Prodigal Son
On 10 May 2021, with two episodes remaining to be aired in Prodigal Son season 2, it was announced that the series would be cancelled. This news was not unexpected; a fan petition to save Prodigal Son was launched several days before, with many fans already fearing cancellation as Fox had yet to announce the series renewal.[1]
The reaction from Prodigal Son's small but dedicated fandom was swift. #SaveProdigalSon began to appear on social media. Some fans following the example of the Save Lucifer campaign encouraged increased engagement with Prodigal Son content on social media and live viewings of the final two episodes.
The Save Sunshine campaign took inspiration from earlier fan campaigns. This campaign encourages fans to post packets of Bird Seed, for Malcolm's parakeet Sunshine, or packs of Twizzlers for Malcolm. The campaign organizers specifically aimed their fan action at the production company Warner Bros., believing any action would be unlikely to reverse Fox's decision to cancel the show. "[FOX] have never undone an official cancellation and never will, FOCUS ON WARNERBROSTV, THAT'S WHO CAN REHOME IT ON ANOTHER NETWORK/SERVICE! SEND IN actual, physical, stamped letters to the studios, which are going to, in the end, be far more paid attention to (according to all past examples)."[2]
Effect of COVID-19
Production Hiatus
Spring 2020 represented the second half of Prodigal Son's first season, and like fans of many other TV shows, Many Prodigal Son fans have been impatient to hear whether or not the show would get a second season. That future became much less certain, however, with the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prodigal Son is filmed and produced in New York City, which has been hit particularly hard by the virus. When New York City banned gatherings of more than 50 people, the show was forced to go into a production hiatus. There were two episodes of the season that hadn't been filmed yet, but because they had filmed out of order, it wasn't the final two episodes of the season. Instead, it was episodes 19 and 20 of the 22 episode season order that couldn't be made. The available episodes are still going to be aired, but it seems unlikely that the missing two episodes will ever get made.
The pandemic has likely also made renewal decisions much more complicated and difficult for networks. With no way of knowing how the state of things will unfold, or what restrictions might be in place when, it will likely be difficult, if not impossible to figure out what the fall TV schedule will look like. For the time being, neither existing shows, nor new shows can be filmed, which seemingly makes the discussion of renewal somewhat abstract.
ProdigalCon
In a time of a great deal of uncertainty due to the COVID-19 outbreak, a number of Prodigal Son fans decided to get together and show their support for the show. Since the pandemic prevented being able to gather in person for any kind of gathering or convention, they decided to organize a Twitter convention they named ProdigalCon. It was announced a couple of days earlier, and took place on March 22nd, 2020. It featured a number of different threads, each representing a convention "room". Threads included a fanart thread, a character appreciation thread (including a lot of "5 things I love about X" type posts), a thread linking to various articles and interviews related to the show, an episode repacp thread, and more. They also sprinkled throughout the day questions that fans had for cast members and/or writers. Many of these questions actually received replies from people associated with the show.
Notable Fanworks
| Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples. |
Fanart
- Dr. Ezra Fell by toadstoned, a Aziraphale and Dr. Martin Whitly mashup
Fancrafts
Archives & Links
- Prodigal Son works on Ao3
- Tumblr tags: Prodigal Son, Prodigal Son Edit
References
- ^ Save Prodigal Son ! at change.org
- ^ Save Sunshine announcement post by brightwhump, 10 May 2021.