The Delirium trilogy was originally written by Lauren Oliver and was picked up by Fox for a television series; however, the show was dropped after the pilot was made.
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The novels follow a seventeen year old girl, called Lena Haloway, who lives in a dystopian future where love has been classed as a curable disease. At the age of eighteen, people receive the antidote to love and from that point forward they are unable to love another person. After looking forward to being cured her entire life, Lena finds herself showing symptoms of the disease only weeks before her eighteenth birthday.The pilot episode was created in an interesting way, with the events from the entire first book as one episode. Like any dystopian novel, the first book has a lot of world building, which can be shown a lot easier and faster through a visual medium like a television show; however, a large premise of the narrative is a love story, so I was a little worried that the emotional connection between certain characters would be rushed.
And that's exactly what happened. The chemistry between the actors was there, but not enough time was given for Lena to form a believable connection to Alex. In the books, it is clear that Lena's emotions develop over a sustained period of time, yet in the pilot episode, Lena falls in love with Alex in a matter of minutes.
The love story was very poorly done. There were so many ways that could have made the option of having the entirety of book one as the pilot episode more realistic, and I was extremely disappointed. When using a visual medium, there are so many interesting ways to tell a love story, like flashbacks and montages of events that skip over several years. I just feel like not enough time was given to the development of the character's emotions, which was something that could have been done properly in so many ways.
The love story wasn't the only thing that was rushed. There were many scenes from the books that were emotionally huge, and while some of these were left out of the pilot, one of the most heartbreaking scenes was included. The prison scene. That scene in the novels was so incredibly depressing and heartbreaking, but in the episode it lasted for only a minute or so. Even then, we didn't really care much about Lena's parents because they were given hardly any time to feature in the episode at all.
The other thing I found incredibly disappointing with the pilot was the lack of new content. There were so many opportunities for some more back-story to be released and talked about, but there was nothing. The book series has so many holes: who created the cure? what was the original public opinion on the cure? what happened leading up to the creation of the cure? what's it like in the other cities and countries? what really happened with Lena's parents? how did the resistance start? and so on, yet the show dealt with none of these questions.
The one thing I did enjoy was being able to see the perspective of other characters. It was interesting to see Julian's house and his relationship with his parents from his point of view, rather than Lena's. I also enjoyed the scenes with Julian's father and his ex-girlfriend from before he was cured, because I thought that was a really interesting dynamic to add. However, the topic wasn't dealt with in more depth, and I feel like it would have been dealt with in future episodes.
Overall, I wasn't very impressed with the show. I thought it was rushed unnecessarily and there were so many flaws it made me irritated. While I did enjoy the multiple perspectives and Emma Robert's performance, I was disappointed in so many aspects of the show I doubt I would have continued with the series if it wasn't dropped. I wouldn't really recommend anyone who hasn't read the first book to watch the episode.
You can see the trailer for the series here.
You can find out more about Lauren Oliver's series here.
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