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KAS's avatar

I'll foment unrest: the reason the show doesn't hold up week-to-week is because its story mechanics are bad. (By this I mean, the actual building blocks of what a story is, setups and payoffs, character arcs, etc.) They don't do the work to earn the stories they seem to be trying to tell. If you just float along with the show based on style and vibes, then I'm sure it's great. If you're actually expecting real storytelling, it's not.

Mark, the lead, does not have a character story in season 2. At all. He has a plot (get Gemma back), but no emotional journey. So, too, with many of the other characters. Innie Mark's choice between Gemma and Helly at the end should have been a grand climactic choice point for the character - and maybe it would have if reintegration didn't end up being absolutely pointless - but instead it was never even a question. There was no reason for innie Mark to go with Gemma, whom he doesn't know. The fact that they even played it as a choice is absurd. He starts the episode saying he wants to live and be with Helly and he ends it in the same place, no arc there. Innie and outie Mark arguing at the beginning should have been the climax to a season-long interplay between the two - asking the question of who's real, who gets to live, who is the priority, how do you decide - but instead it was just a thing that happens, as if outie Mark never considered that his innie would have his own POV. Over and over again, we get these scenes that should be the landing points of long-form stories, but they just... skipped over telling the story.

The show wants all the payoffs, but doesn't do the work to get there. Which is how you get that false finale choice for innie Mark, how innie Dylan proposes to Gretchen after seeing her like 3 times, how outie Burt and Irving are in love after only one dinner. They're not bad end points, but because we didn't see the work to actually get there - building up these relationships so that the choices matter - it all just lands with an unsatisfying thud.

The show is well-shot and well-acted and again, if you're just bopping along with the vibes, then it's probably a fun time. But if you apply any kind of story scrutiny, it falls apart. Which is why it feels so empty at the end of it all.

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Malcolm's avatar

I liked the finale but also had an unexpected feeling come over me about two-thirds through: I started to hope that I was about to watch the series finale, and the wool had been pulled over all of our eyes.

I think it comes from a mix of wanting to see the boldness of it (a mystery show where everyone is expecting a cliffhanger, ending without any advanced warning from the producers or network and thus not priming the audience for a series finale) and also some fatigue with the usual mystery show cliffhanger song and dance.

It was a great, if uneven season, overall. An excellent show - and yet still, probably because I rewatched the first season just before and also let myself get too hyped by Alan’s season preview, it was a bit of a step down. Everything through Woes Hollow was on par with season one though.

Last bit - I’m not alone in noticing this - but it seems like it’s Helena and not Helly R in the hallway at the end, based on the small smirk she sends Gemma’s way (“Helly R is never cruel”). Doesn’t seem to matter in terms of Marks decision to stay though

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