I learned about the TV show In the Dark in March 2019, when the National Federation of the Blind, the largest and most politically active blindness organization in the country, announced a protest of the show. A few weeks later, just before the premiere, the organization staged demonstrations outside CBS's Midtown headquarters. The reason for the protest was that the show had cast a sighted actress in the lead role, a blind character. Blind protesters stood on West 53rd Street, holding canes in one hand and signs that read, "Let Us Play Us!" in the other. We have had enough! the N.F.B.s president, Mark Riccobono, said in his announcement of the protest. There are blind actors looking for work, and no sighted actor, however accomplished or talented, can bring the same insight and authenticity to a blind character. With production on the show already wrapped, the N.F.B. demanded that the network, the CW Network, trash the first season and reshoot it with a blind actor in the lead, replacing Perry Mattfeld. The CW Network ignored these demands, as did CBS Studios, which produces the show, and the series premiered on schedule.
In the Dark, which just began its third season, follows Murphy, a single blind woman in her 20s, as she navigates the contrived wreckage of her life. Most of Murphy's problems aren't directly connected to her blindness. Her foibles will sound familiar to any televised millennial living in her own post Veronica Mars' genre-blended soap opera: She hates her job at a guide-dog school run by her parents, but it's also her main source of friendship. She can't stop drinking and smoking and sleeping around. She might be falling in love with the guy who works at the absurdly named food truck (Dirty Sliders), but her self-destructive behavior keeps messing up their relationship as does his involvement in the cartoonish criminal underworld whose violence continually interrupts the show;s otherwise sarcastic tone.
In the pilot, Murphy happens upon the body of a teenage drug dealer she befriended, identifying him by feeling his face, whose contours she is familiar with because, conveniently, she felt it earlier that episode, on a lark. After the body disappears and the police don't believe her story, Murphy takes it upon herself to investigate her friend's murder, becoming a sightless eyewitness, a blind detective. Each episode follows Murphy as her guide dog pulls her around a CW-burnished Chicago (i.e., greater Toronto), her gaze wobbly and unfocused, her head cocked as she listens for clues.
I began watching the show with great interest because, right now, I'm caught somewhere between sight and blindness myself. I've been losing my vision slowly for my entire life. At first, it was imperceptible, to me, and to anyone else. Over the years, I passed various milestones of blindness: In my early 20s, I retired from driving at night; in my late 20s, I retired from driving altogether. A few years after that, I gave away my bicycle. Today, at 40, I can't see much of anything in low light, and my extreme tunnel vision means I'll probably leave you hanging for a handshake or a high-five. If I tried traveling without my cane, odds are that on my way across town I'd accidentally kick your dog, walk into a signpost and fall off a curb. But under the right conditions, I can still read print (especially if it's large), watch TV and generally pass as sighted.
