Sense 8 (Review)

[selenak]

Without spoilers: I liked it, depite some obvious flaws. Not least because what it did well, it did really well.



Flaws first, because I love ending on a high note: if this is meant to be self contained as opposed to the first season of several, it left A LOT of open questions. The bad guys' motivation was barely hinted at and doesn't make much sense (they want mind controlled assassin zombies, it seems? But how is that more effective than "normal" assasssins and soldiers - who one would think can react more flexibly than zombies? I suppose you save salary for mercenaries, but other than that...), we never find out whether or not the Icelandic scientist said the truth about Jonas and Angelica, why does a cluster consist of eight participants anyway, etc. While the show's determined diversity is one of its strong points (praise to follow below), it's regrettable that the Indian storyline is the least fleshed out and most annoying, since Kala's dilemma for the majority of the show centres around the fact she's about to get married to a man she doesn't love. Now, the show goes out of its way to make this less clichéd by making her parents kind, and her fiancé a lovely, nice (in the unironic sense) guy who adores and supports her; it's simply that she can't love him. This is all very well (and better than if he were an evil bastard or her parents were browbeating her into marriage), but it also means Kala would not have a problem anymore if she simply had one single honest conversation with her fiance. Nothing in the way he's written and acted lets us to believe he wouldn't accept it if she explained how she truly feels. And given what's going on in the other storylines, it feels bizarrely flimsy and self indulgent as a dilemma. Late in the season the show tries to inject more weight via her fiance´s father's near assassination, but unfortunately that only threw me out of further re: my suspension of disbelief, because I really can't buy that in current day India, with the BJP as the governing party, and Hindu fundamentalism such a powerful politicial force, a rich agnostic/atheist (which is what the almost father-in-law is supposed to be) would be influential/powerful enough to push for a law against some religious practices. I do not claim to be an expert on India, but what? Add to this Kala is the main character who interacts the least with the other main characters (other than Wolfgang, she interacts with the others really only in the last two or three episodes), and the Indian storyline is really the weak link.

I'm not that keen on Riley's storyline, either, while we're still at the complaints, but for different reasons. Because of her backstory trauma (which isn't a rape, I hasten to add - Riley is that rarity on current tv, a female character with a backstory tragedy which has absolutely nothing to do with sexual violence), she spends most of the season sad and haunted (which is understandable given what happened to her! But unfortunately, this makes her a rather passive character), and while she interacts with the other characters more than Kala from India does, her big moment, when she finally gets to renew her will to live and save the others as they saved her, happens entirely off screen. That's, well, frustrating. Especially if this season is going to be a completed and not followed up miniseries. (If it's just the first of several, then both Kala's and Riley's storylines can be easily turned around, there's nothing wrong there that can't be fixed by giving them other things to do.)

Let's see, do I have other nitpicks? Not really. I mean, this is a very wordy show, but given the three authors, I knew that going in. It's also a slow burner, but frustrations already voiced outside, I was okay with that.

Now on to the good stuff, or: why I had no trouble marathoning through the season. Not surprisingly, it's visually gorgeous. The main characters and their significant others also endeared themselves to me a lot, and was rooting for all of them (well, in Kala's case, I was rooting for her to FINALLY have an honest conversation with her fiancé, but enough about that). Some characters were earlier fleshed out than others - it's not until the third and fourth episode that you get a sense of who Sun is as a person, for example -, but that's okay if you don't have to wait for weeks until said episodes. And speaking of Sun, here a cliché (like the "unwanted marriage" for Kala in India) was filled with enough life to not make me mind but enjoy the twists on it (i.e., yes , it's a cliché to let the Asian character be the martial arts expert, but Sun's own story isn't about the martial arts expertise (which she mainly uses to help the other main characters), it's about her business and family problems, response to them and consequences of her choices).

The central premise - that "sensates" are, after being "awakened" , able to share each other's thoughts, sensations and skills when they're in the same cluster (of eight), and able to communicate telepathically with other sensates outside the cluster as well - is carried out very determinedly on a global and diverse level, and the show appears to have been filmed on location (so no California standing in for Kenia, Mexico, Germany, Iceland, Korea or India). It's very pro families of choice over famlies of blood (in case we missed the message via Nomi's awful mother as opposed to her wonderful girlfriend, Wolfgang spells it out for us in dialogue near the end of the season when talking about his best friend Felix) without going to the opposite extreme of letting every blood relation be vile (Nomi's girlfriend Amenita, Capheus from Kenia and Kala in India all have loving, supporting mothers), though two parents have Lost or Joss Whedon show levels of evilness (Nomi's mother and Wolfgang's father). This is a show where the two het couples are still in the budding romance stage and staying chastely clothed while the gay couples have explicit sex on screen. Also defying the tv cliché that UST couples are the interesting ones: the gay couples are both already together when we meet them and are among the show's strongest attractions (not just because they're played by gorgeous people, this is still American tv, everyone looks good). Nomi (who is a transwoman - played by a trans actress, if you're wondering) and Amenita (played by our very own Martha Jones, Freema Ageyman) feel just gloriously real, both as a couple and as a team - genre-savy Amenita thinks they should make their crime fighting dynamic duo activities permanent, and I'M ALL FOR IT).

The other gay couple, Lito the Mexican (closeted) actor and his lover Hernando, pick up a third party early on, Daniela; originally Lito went out with her two times to maintain his straight cover, but Daniela after discovering his secret reveals she's the ultimate slash girl ("I love gay porn!") who then gets to live basically fanfiction - moving in with the gay couple the story 'ships as their bff. I was a bit uneasy with Daniela at the start because I remembered the debate a couple of years ago about fetishizing gay men, and she came across as doing that a bit, but then the series established her relationships with Lito and Hernando via more than just her enjoyment in the free to watch m/m action. By the time the season ends, they really have become an OT3.

One more note on the sexuality subject: the whole sensation sharing premise goes there, too, and the two non-gay men (I'm not calling them straight, because seriously, we have no way of knowing whether they're bi or straight, it's just that their main romantic interest of the season happens to be of the opposite gender), Chris and Wolfgang, are part of the big bisexual mental orgy of episode 5 without the show pretending they don't touch the other men, which leads to a great moment in the finale, when Chris, who hasn't talked with Lito until this point, asks whether they've met, and Lito cheerfully replies that well, they've had sex. Fluid sexuality all the way!

Mind you, this all wouldn't work if the non-sexual encounters between the "sensates" weren't interesting. The later half of the season, when they've figured out how to communicate with each other and do so in varying combinations, and the show makes these human connection moments between very different people charming and incredibly sympathetic. I was a bit frustrated that other than Chris and Riley, no one thought of exchanging cell phone numbers, but hey. Evil coorporate villains, bigoted parents and Russian gangsters living in Germany aside, the show's pretty optimistic about the human condition, with compassion and decency winning more often than not the day. When one subplot ends in prison, this even includes most of the other inmates.

And a few trivia observations:

- "We Germans aren't ashamed of nudity" says Wolfgang when encountering Kala while he's naked; JMS and Wachowskis, this is true, but I have to point out it's saunas we visit naked, not swimming pools like you have Wolfgang doing (not that I object to male frontal nudity on my tv screen, of course)

- Felix is Foggy Nelson's long lost German skinnier brother, isn't he?

- on that note, the entire German plotline is so asking for a Daredevil crossover where Matt has to decide whether Wolfgang reminds him more of the Wilson Fisk or himself

- one of the scenes when Lito is on set, filming action scenes, includes a hilarious self parody of the famous Neo/Agent Smith showdown from The Matrix

- I do love that Lito gets to contribute his (acting) skills to the cluster in two critical situations

- perhaps because some of the parents are evil, JMS avoids working in his tried and true "never start a fight, always finish it" quote somewhere (it's in Babylon 5 as well as in The Changeling); I was wondering about the lack of anyone with the initials JS among the eight main characters until I remembered that Naveeen Andrews' character is called Jonas Maliki

- "BFF with Cheney? He must be evil!" I hear you, Amenita, though the fact he's called Dr. Metzger ("Metzger" being the German word for "butcher") is already a less than subtle hint to that effect

- I wonder which royalties were more expensive - for the songs used, or for the Conan the Barbarian and Jean-Claude Van Damme movie clips

Comments

[ratcreature]

it's saunas we visit naked, not swimming pools

Also I think the nudity tolerance actually varies quite a bit regionally. At least I've met several people originally from further South who kept complaining about how prudish people in Hamburg were, presumably because people aren't sunbathing naked in public parks or something. I mean, I never thought people here were all that bodyshy or anything, but there must be more naked frolicking going on in Freiburg.

[selenak]

re: North versus South - otoh there the beaches in Sylt where at least in my childhood nudism was the norm? Anyway, as far as sunbathing in public parks are concerned, barebreasted in Munich's Englischer Garten isn't unusual, but complete nudity, no.

But in the show Wolfgang swims in the nude in a Berlin public swimmingpool, and that's definitely not the norm anywhere in Germany. At least I've never swum in one where the swimmers didn't keep something on. I suspect whoever did the research for Sense8 got sauna and swimmingpool customs confused, like I said.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I'm sure you're right about their confusion, or maybe it is because iirc male nude swimming used to be common in the US in public pools before they opened them to women, so maybe they thought less issues with nudity would automatically lead to that?

The local prudishness my acquaintances bemoaned was mostly about bare breasts acceptance, and also about informal naked swimming in quarry ponds, iirc, definitely not regular public pool customs. I've only been to Sylt once on a school trip (a horrible, horrible school trip), so I wouldn't know how blurry the lines between FKK and non-FKK beaches are there, but yeah, I doubt anyone would be outraged at seeing naked people on a beach there even if it wasn't designated.

[ruuger]

I agree with you about Riley being too passive (though I did like that for a change it was a woman who got the obligatory dead-spouse-and-child background). I was dissapointed that she didn't ultimately contribute any specific skills or attributes to the cluster like the others.

Kala's storyline worked better for me, though, because I felt that her dilemma was exactly the fact that there was no dilemma. There was no reason for her not to want to marry Rajan, and I thought she was afraid that people would think that she was being ungrateful (in a way it also mirrored Lito being afraid of being himself and accepting that he was gay - I kinda wish that Nomi would have given her a pep talk as well).

JMS avoids working in his tried and true "never start a fight, always finish it" quote somewhere

I was a bit disappointed when it didn't turn up :) But though the words weren't actually said, the theme was nevertheless definitely present. And I was also trying to spot the JS but totally missed the JM.

but I have to point out it's saunas we visit naked, not swimming pools like you have Wolfgang doing

So you don't have nude spas in Germany? Because my first thought was that it was place like Yrjönkatu Swimming Hall.

[selenak]

If we do, I haven't been in one. Like I said, the usual spa I'm familiar with asks you to wear something for the pools but has nudity in all sauna variants.

(Beaches at the Northern Sea are different; when I was a small child, we went on holidays to Sylt and certainly most people, including my family, ran around naked everyone at that beach.)

re: Riley not contributing any skills: I suppose you could say she's contributing music, since both the karaoke singing and the birth/concert moment were initialized by her experience which she then draws everyone else into. But what the others contribute always helps out of a critical moment, and the one time Riley gets to rescue someone, it happens off screen!

[hendrik89]

At many saunas in Germany -- Therme Erding outside Munich or Vabali in Berlin, for instance -- there are pools where bathing suits are not allowed. It is less common than in Dutch or Belgian spas, but nude swimming is not that unusual at German saunas, especially if you visit a large therme. I presume that Wolfgang was at such a facility in the scene you described.

[selenak]

Since writing the review, I've found out they filmed the swimming scenes in the Stadtbad Neukölln, where according to its website there's nude swimming from 20:00 - 22:30 every Wednesday. Problem solved. :)