I'm coming into this show as a complete outsider. I've never watched "Yellowstone," nor am I necessarily interested in watching it. It's not that it doesn't look good, it's just not a real priority for me. However, with the announcement of all its many spin-offs, the one that really got me was "1923" and mostly because of the inclusion of Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. I also thought that this premise sounded the most interesting, and therefore, I decided to give this one a go. And the first episode shows a lot of promise, although I'm unsure about some of the subplots and their direction.
A good first episode is one that does a good job of setting the direction and the tone of a specific show. Now, the tone has already been set by the predecessors, so there wasn't a desperate need for it to do that. However, as someone who hasn't seen the other shows, I found that they did a good job of telling us what kind of show this is. A gritty, realistic take on the state that things were in back in the early 1900s. As for the direction, that's where it starts getting a little muddier. There are certainly a variety of storylines going and most of them seem to have a clear narrative. However, there are a few that felt like an afterthought for this specific episode, mostly referring to the boarding school storyline. It definitely helped set the tone and that's where I appreciated it a lot, but the overall arc of that seems to be coming a bit later, so it felt a little out-of-place in this specific episode. There's also not a clear lack of distinction in the show's characters. I was constantly confused about the relationship that most of them had to each other, and that may just be me not following it properly, but to me, it felt like the writing wasn't as specific as it could have been. However, everything else came into place quite perfectly, especially with powerhouses like Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren at the helm, giving their legendary skills to the growing TV landscape.
"1923" was a good premiere episode, and it did a good job of setting the tone for the show and introducing us to the characters. The writing could have been a bit stronger, containing the subplots a little better and making the characters stand out a little more, but all of that's probably coming soon.