In the pilot of “Evil,” a forensic psychologist and lapsed Catholic named Kristen (Katja Herbers) lies in bed, frozen in terror, her eyes open wide, as a demon—black and shrivelled, with bright-green eyes and long claws—taunts her. He ducks under her nightgown and says, “Hey, you got a scar down here. What is that, a Cesarean?” He skitters into a corner of her bedroom and urinates as she looks on, humiliated and paralyzed.
The next night, however, Kristen foils the demon, who has introduced himself as George. She tapes a sign on the ceiling above her bed, and, after George slices off one of her fingers, she stares up. “I can’t read it!” she says in relief—he’s only a night terror, since, she explains, Wernicke’s area, the part of the…
