Being Human 5.06 The Last Broadcast
Mar. 12th, 2013 06:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which the internet expression "I don't even know", which I never used before, and probably will never use again, comes in handy.
Let's start with the end: apparantly Toby Whitehouse has watched and liked Inception. This had unfortunate results. If the origami wolf at the end is meant to indicate that we are, in fact, still in a devil-created dream world (Hatch having taken Hal's point when Hal said he should have put the three of them together in the same scenario), and so the happy ending is really an ending where the devil won and is presumably driving the world into collective suicide elsewhere, then this was a coy way to do it, and coyness and nihilism make for a singularly unattractive mixture. (I mean, I actually love Blake, but if you want to do a B7 type of rocks fall, everyone dies, then do it unflinchingly.)
If, on the other hand, the origami wolf was just a tease and meant to be a coincidence, and we're to take the ending on face value (i.e. the trio lives, has defeated the devil himself and turned human as a reward! Yay!), you have a betrayal of themes and a sell out of an ending, and I feel ike I did at the end of s2, when I thought we would get no follow up on the fact that Mitchell has just committed a massacre as a way of temper tantrum and then dared to blame someone else for it. Except this is the series finale. And here we have Hal, having committed a massacre, blaming someone else for it (at least Alex didn't fall for that attempt to guilt trip her for daring not to trust him enough, which is extra galling since other than not killing Natasha, he did lie and kill repeatedly), and we're just supposed to handwave that because hey, in an emergency he finally did come through and donated his own blood (after trying to use someone else's again) and was ready to die. And that makes the people in that bar, their deaths and five minute stint as vamps before Tom stakes them all not matter, I suppose. Didn't we have an entire season devoted to the point that this is crap reasoning and every single victim's life matters? But Hal not only gets humanity but a shot with Alex (who, admittedly, doesn't know what he's done in the bar because she only arrives there when it's all over)? Excuse me while I hurl.
I suppose I could take some small comfort in the fact that after bringing back the two Hal silliness YET AGAIN for this episode Hal finally says he's both and neither, or by Alex' "You always find new ways of being a dick" line, but I can't, I feel to much let down.)
Hatch, risen, had an okay turn as the devil here, with plausible temptation scenarios, and good monologing, complete with traditional "God liked humans better than me" issue, but you know, I just did a BSG rewatch, and BSG in its flawed fourth season did that better with Cavil and especially all his scenes withhis god his creator Ellen in No Exit. When fourth season BSG does it better, you're in trouble. In the end, Rook was the more interesting seasonal antagonist. I could see that his shooting Hatch was a fake out of a good ending - at first I thought that was the surest sign they were still in a wish fulfillment scenario, but the devil possessing Rook instead also works. Even with my prediction that Rook would take someone else's place at the end to atone, though it wasn't one of the trinity. And his and Hal's cooperation - Rook immediately realising the full implication and telling Hal to kill him as soon as the devil was back in his body - was the one point of the big show down that really worked for me. They had been the two characters mainly responsible for the devil getting unleashed, and Rook's was a case where choosing death actually works as an in character action and from a Doylist pov, meaningful atonement for the horrors he's been responsible for. If, only it wasn't part of such an overall failure of a story. Because either it didn't happen at all, if we're still in a wish fulfillment world, or it did happen and then there's the Hal problem, grrr, argh. How I would feel about the whole "killing the devil makes everyone human" thing if Hal's storyline had been resolved in a more satisfying way I have no idea, because I can see how that thematically provides an ending to the show (and means no more on the wagon/of the wagon scenarios to be imagined for the future), and God knows I wanted Tom and Alex to survive rather badly, so I should be happy.
It's just - this really wasn't a good finale. It was a sell out of a finale. The worst case of "wanting to have a cake and eat it" type of finale. And it's such a shame, because the show was capable of so much more.
I would say "it should have ended with season 3", except actually I like Alex and Tom better than Annie and George (I went back and forth with George - loved him with Nina, sometimes banged my head in frustration otherwise), and I used to like Hal better than Mitchell except not anymore due to this ending. Also, s4 brought us great guest stars in the form of Yvonne who was a really refreshing take on the succubus subject, the only non misogynistic one I've seen, there was in the episode a good follow up on what happened with Adam, and I also loved Allison; s5 had Lady Mary, whom I loved. So - I wouldn't want not to know them. But oh, their stories deserved a so much better ending, and in terms of sheer story telling honesty, s3's finale definitely would have been infinitely superior.
In conclusion: I don't even know. I don't even know.
Let's start with the end: apparantly Toby Whitehouse has watched and liked Inception. This had unfortunate results. If the origami wolf at the end is meant to indicate that we are, in fact, still in a devil-created dream world (Hatch having taken Hal's point when Hal said he should have put the three of them together in the same scenario), and so the happy ending is really an ending where the devil won and is presumably driving the world into collective suicide elsewhere, then this was a coy way to do it, and coyness and nihilism make for a singularly unattractive mixture. (I mean, I actually love Blake, but if you want to do a B7 type of rocks fall, everyone dies, then do it unflinchingly.)
If, on the other hand, the origami wolf was just a tease and meant to be a coincidence, and we're to take the ending on face value (i.e. the trio lives, has defeated the devil himself and turned human as a reward! Yay!), you have a betrayal of themes and a sell out of an ending, and I feel ike I did at the end of s2, when I thought we would get no follow up on the fact that Mitchell has just committed a massacre as a way of temper tantrum and then dared to blame someone else for it. Except this is the series finale. And here we have Hal, having committed a massacre, blaming someone else for it (at least Alex didn't fall for that attempt to guilt trip her for daring not to trust him enough, which is extra galling since other than not killing Natasha, he did lie and kill repeatedly), and we're just supposed to handwave that because hey, in an emergency he finally did come through and donated his own blood (after trying to use someone else's again) and was ready to die. And that makes the people in that bar, their deaths and five minute stint as vamps before Tom stakes them all not matter, I suppose. Didn't we have an entire season devoted to the point that this is crap reasoning and every single victim's life matters? But Hal not only gets humanity but a shot with Alex (who, admittedly, doesn't know what he's done in the bar because she only arrives there when it's all over)? Excuse me while I hurl.
I suppose I could take some small comfort in the fact that after bringing back the two Hal silliness YET AGAIN for this episode Hal finally says he's both and neither, or by Alex' "You always find new ways of being a dick" line, but I can't, I feel to much let down.)
Hatch, risen, had an okay turn as the devil here, with plausible temptation scenarios, and good monologing, complete with traditional "God liked humans better than me" issue, but you know, I just did a BSG rewatch, and BSG in its flawed fourth season did that better with Cavil and especially all his scenes with
It's just - this really wasn't a good finale. It was a sell out of a finale. The worst case of "wanting to have a cake and eat it" type of finale. And it's such a shame, because the show was capable of so much more.
I would say "it should have ended with season 3", except actually I like Alex and Tom better than Annie and George (I went back and forth with George - loved him with Nina, sometimes banged my head in frustration otherwise), and I used to like Hal better than Mitchell except not anymore due to this ending. Also, s4 brought us great guest stars in the form of Yvonne who was a really refreshing take on the succubus subject, the only non misogynistic one I've seen, there was in the episode a good follow up on what happened with Adam, and I also loved Allison; s5 had Lady Mary, whom I loved. So - I wouldn't want not to know them. But oh, their stories deserved a so much better ending, and in terms of sheer story telling honesty, s3's finale definitely would have been infinitely superior.
In conclusion: I don't even know. I don't even know.
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Date: 2013-03-12 09:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-12 09:52 am (UTC)