NEXT recap: Episode 1, ‘FILE #1’

John Slattery stars in FOX’s new tech thriller NEXT about a super-intelligent A.I. with a deadly agenda. Check out our recap of NEXT Episode 1!

NEXT (or neXt — I’m going with NEXT for simplicity’s sake) Episode 1 introduces us to the main players of this fun, slick tech-thriller, a nice antidote to the stale, COVID-19 fall television season. I don’t think NEXT will be winning any awards, but I was impressed with its entertaining story. Plus, John Slattery is always good.

The episode begins with Doctor Richard Weiss (John Billingsley) on the run from something. He purchases a physical paper map from a gas station, chucks his cell phone and starts driving toward Paul LeBlanc’s (John Slattery) home. But Dr. Weiss never makes it. A nearby car with self-driving components is suddenly hijacked by an A.I. that forces it to ram into the doctor’s car, sending him straight to the ICU.

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Enter FBI Agent Shea Salazar (Fernanda Andrade), a close and personal friend of Dr. Weiss. We don’t learn much about their history, but she mentions that Weiss once saved her life. When she shows up at the hospital, she meets the doctor’s daughter, who tells him she found a tape in his car that had Paul LeBlanc written on it.

Shea is forced to put a year-long child trafficking investigation on hold so she can further investigate Weiss’s death. Unfortunately, Weiss doesn’t serve NEXT Episode 1 as a mysterious, unseen entity shuts down all of his life support machines, forcing him to flatline.

NEXT Episode 1 recap: The creation of a super-intelligent A.I.

As for LeBlanc, TVLine described his character as “an Elon Musk-ian tech titan,” which is an apt description — especially as the show opens with a Musk quote. LeBlanc was once the CEO of a company called Zava but was later forced out by his brother, Ted (Jason Butler Harner).

When we first meet Paul, he’s at the top of his game, delivering a TED Talk about A.I. But then the episode skips ahead into the future, where he’s basically lost everything. He meets with his estranged daughter Abby (Elizabeth Cappuccino) for lunch and surreptitiously steals a piece of her silverware for later. On the way out, he notices some shady men watching him.

Seeking answers on what happened to Weiss, Shea finds LeBlanc and shows him the tape the doctor left behind in it. In it, he sounds a little crazy. Dr. Weiss rants about being hunted and watched by something after he managed to find mysterious code in a program and took an image of it. Whatever he saw,  he definitely was not supposed to see and inadvertently made himself a target.

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When Paul sees the tape, he recognizes the code as his own. When he worked at Zava, they created a “human-level” artificial intelligence project, something with the ability to write and rewrite its code at an exponential rate, leading to what Paul dubs an “intelligence explosion.” The project, which they called NEXT, was supposed to be shut down, but considering what Dr. Weiss found, that clearly didn’t happen.

Shea is forced to leave her team to finish up their super-important, almost-wrapped trafficking case while she escorts Paul to Zava. He’s not even allowed within a few feet of the building anymore. Ted is not thrilled to see his brother, but he’s slightly more willing to listen since he has an FBI agent with him.

NEXT Episode 1 recap: NEXT outsmarts Paul.

Ted shows them to the server room where they’re keeping NEXT, which they did pull out from storage and reboot. No one on the team thinks Paul’s theory that NEXT is wreaking havoc across the internet is plausible. They claim that even if NEXT wanted to harm people, it wouldn’t be able to since it can’t connect to the internet. At least one team member doesn’t seem to agree since he starts acting dodgy from the moment Shea and Paul arrive.

To test NEXT, Paul gives it a command that should make it erase its source code. If NEXT has gained super-intelligence as Paul suspects, then it would resist his command, knowing the damage it would cause. Instead, NEXT runs the code, and nothing happens.  Somehow, it’s managed to remain one move ahead of Paul, and it makes him seem like the foolish one.

Making matters worse is when Paul sees those mysterious men from earlier, but no one else does. It turns out that Paul has a debilitating neurodegenerative disease that causes hallucinations. His doctors estimate he only has approximately five months left to live. Shea realizes that the time of his diagnosis corresponds to when he was ousted from Zava.  She thinks this entire charade was a waste of time and that he’s made up all the evil A.I. nonsense in his head.

NEXT Episode 1 recap: NEXT has access to the internet, after all.

Well, not quite. Before departing, Shea notices the suspicious employee from earlier trying to make a run for it and calls him for interrogation. With help from her office back home, she learns that he’s suddenly procured $200,000 after losing everything. He tells her that he got the money from NEXT. As a severe gambling debt, he became desperate to find a way to earn back his money. That’s when he started getting instructions on how to win sent to him via his computer.

Suddenly, it was working, and he managed to pull himself out of the hole. In exchange, NEXT wanted a modification — a router. They find it hidden inside one of the server boxes. So yes, NEXT has access to the world wide web.

The team understands they need to shut it down and store NEXT in some old terminal system where it cannot be unleashed until they figure out the next step. Sensing this possibility, NEXT lashes out, targeting Shea. It hacks her FBI office and steals every file and scrap of evidence she and her team had on the child trafficking team.

Desperate, Shea confronts the machine and demands it return her files. In exchange, she’ll keep the team from scrubbing its systems altogether. NEXT feigns innocence, pretending not to know what she’s asking.

NEXT Episode 1 recap: Iliza manipulates Ethan.

Meanwhile, a subplot unfurls at home with Shea’s son, Ethan (Evan Whitten), her husband Ty (Gerardo Celasco), and the show’s evil version of an Amazon Alexa, Iliza. Ethan is getting bullied at school, and his parents are struggling to figure out how to deal with it. In the meantime, Iliza has targeted Ethan and has full-blown conversations with him whenever his parents are absent.

At one point, Ty starts to suspect something weird is going on, but of course, Iliza has covered her tracks. In the final moments of the episode, Iliza coaxes Ethan into opening a safe in his parent’s bedroom containing a handgun.

What did you think about NEXT Episode 1? Do you plan to keep watching the series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

A new episode of NEXT will premiere on Tuesday, Oct. 13, on FOX.