Lost in Space (2018) s03e08 – Trust

Remake show creators Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless are back with the script credit for the series finale. It’s an entirely acceptable conclusion, with competent but unambitious direction from Jabbar Raisani; most plot threads get resolved. However, the big one—Toby Stephens and Russell Hornsby playing “My Two Dads” with Taylor Russell—gets rushed through while raising the question about Hornsby’s age difference to Molly Parker. If he went into cryosleep twenty years ago and just woke up, he was in his mid-forties when he fathered Russell; Parker was in her twenties. But they already established they were in astronaut school together, so maybe she was just better at it than him?

Doesn’t matter.

There are big resolutions for Mina Sundwall, Maxwell Jenkins, and Parker Posey. Everyone else—including Russell—has smaller, mundane ones. Actually, almost entirely professional ones. Sundwall and Posey get the most character development. Jenkins gets another chance to do his messiah arc, with “Lost in Space” leaning in on as many last-minute deus ex machinas as it can fit in the episode.

It’s too bad there wasn’t more for Russell since it was her show for the first half of the season, and no one replaced her; things just got busy.

The evil robots attack, and thanks to some entirely predictable and very convenient plot developments, there’s both a full robot battle. The action focuses on the kids—Sazama and Sharpless’s recurring theme for these finales is putting as many children in immediate danger as possible—but the special effects work is all solid.

Speaking of the robots, the show cops out once and for all on the “humans enslaved intelligent beings” story thread.

It’s a better episode for Posey and Sundwall than anyone else; Posey because she gets an actual character arc, Sundwall because she gets to run the episode for a good while. They take it away from her to focus on Jenkins, having to get in a last-minute appeal to the tween male demographic.

Parker’s big moment this episode involves a continuity-lite recollection of her marriage to Stephens (forgetting she spent the first season and however much time before very angry with him). Stephens has even less, playing second-fiddle in his scenes with Hornsby.

With a stronger show bible, maybe a shorter second season, and a different male lead—sorry, out of the twenty-eight episodes, there’s probably two Stephens is good in—“Lost in Space” would’ve been more successful. As is, it’s much better than expected. Though Parker and Posey both have their moments, Russell and Ignacio Serricchio are the standout performers. And Sundwall and Jenkins are about as good as can be expected for whiney super-kids who whine they’re not super enough. They’re always sympathetic.

It’s a decent show and a nice sci-fi adventure production, albeit highly derivative.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e07 – Contingencies on Contingencies

This episode has such an exhausting amount of Toby Stephens being macho someone calls him on it to his face. Stephens is convinced the robot—now on Alpha Centauri with the humans—has gone rogue. Raza Jaffrey, who points out he almost stole a space-camper and abandoned over a hundred people to the elements, tells him to take it down a notch and think it through.

Complicating the issue isn’t the robot’s guilt or innocence, it’s his “victim.” Douglas Hodge, the guy who enslaved the alien robot, lied to the people of Earth (and the colony), tried to kill a bunch of mechanics, and so on; he’s got the only key to saving the colony from the imminent alien invasion. If this guy had died or been incarcerated after his first blatant act of murderous villainy, the show could’ve been a season shorter. For all his macho posturing, Stephens never held him to account for trying to kill his kids or whatever either.

Instead, Stephens wants to take it out on the robot. If they just included the subtext about the robot being a better dad than Stephens, it might be something; the whole family is like, “Maybe the robot’s not a bad guy,” and Stephens telling them he’s smarter. Though “Lost in Space” is always about Stephens never being smarter.

Too much Stephens and too much green screen hurt the episode, which is otherwise a fine Leslie Hope-directed outing. Easily her worst episode, but not her fault and still better than most.

The episode begins with the Robinsons arriving at Alpha Centauri to discover… the alien robots haven’t beaten them there. Everything’s jimdandy, other than Mina Sundwall having to decide between nerdy poet Ajay Friese and bro Charles Vandervaart. But all the stakes are otherwise chill. Even Parker Posey just gets to get into an SUV and autopilot off to her own little plot of land.

At least until the robot goes rogue and Sundwall and Taylor Russell decide Stephens is wrong, so they go looking for it, bringing along Ignacio Serricchio. They’ve got a race against time, race against Stephens plot going, while Molly Parker and Russell Hornsby try to figure out how to prepare the colony for an eventual attack. We get some backstory on Parker and Hornsby. It’s relatively boring stuff, which tracks since it never should’ve been a plot point in the first couple seasons—mixed-race Russell and her mostly ginger family. The biggest question gets resolved with an institutional cop-out to alleviate responsibility or accountability from everyone. “Space” really has no idea what to do with its long-running story arcs.

Eventually, there’s some Rock’ Em Sock’ Em robot action and a deluded callback to the first episode for Russell, plus potential character development for Sundwall. Though the script—credited to Zack Estrin—has a chance to give her the agency for it and instead transfers it to Friese, which could be better.

But it’s a compelling episode. Way too much hinges on believing Stephens is a brash, thoughtless asshole, but what can you do.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e06 – Final Transmission

Yet another short episode. And it’s got a huge dramatic beat in the latter half, but not for the cliffhanger. In fact, everything after the dramatic beat just serves to reduce the impact of that beat. It plays very awkwardly, which isn’t director Julian Holmes’s fault, just the script’s. Katherine Collins gets the credit; as per her usual, there’s a lousy sappy monologue from one of the cast members. It’s worse than usual because it’s not in dialogue but pre-recorded monologue, so they’re trying to edit to match.

Despite crashing on a bog planet—Dagobah without matte paintings—for once, the space-camper is almost ready for flight. They just need to clean things up and wait for Ignacio Serricchio to arrive. He’s busy walking with his pet chicken in a long shot. Maxwell Jenkins and Toby Stephens go up top to watch him approach and have a painful conversation about Jenkins getting older. I think he’s as tall as Stephens or taller, but I don’t remember them mentioning it.

There’s a better check-up scene between Molly Parker and Parker Posey, harkening back to their original bonding scenes in the first season. It’s okay, but a reminder the show never really gave the two of them anything to do together.

Then we get some earth-shattering news (well, not really) about how the Cylons found Earth in the first place (and when), and it changes everything, meaning Jenkins is going to have to go out and have a showdown with the alien boss. There are a handful more revelations (“Lost in Space” really does go with “It’s okay to enslave artificial beings”) before the huge dramatic beat and fallout. The fallout is everyone scrambling to get to the next episode so they can have their narrative stakes and eat them too.

The episode features Stephens’s worst acting on the show (I’d say so far, but it’s almost over, right… this season’s it). A lot of it is the script’s fault, though the show has never written Stephens’s character to suit the performance, so what can you really do about it. We’re in the final three episodes, not much.

What’s so much worse about it is when the show acknowledges the deficiency—Parker Posey comments on it this time—only it never improves.

There’s also some middling acting from Jenkins, but it’s big swing stuff—embracing his Messianic possibilities—so it’s easier to let it slide. The Stephens stuff isn’t even disappointing; instead exasperating and tedious.

The episode resolves one of the show’s longest-running “mythology” arcs, and it’s the weakest weak sauce. You’d think with so much activity on this arc, they’d have something better planned for the finish.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e05 – Stuck

It’s another short episode, but it’s also a Leslie Hope-directed episode, and she does not disappoint. Even saddled with flashbacks to when Taylor Russell was a baby, and Molly Parker has taken her home to mom Colleen Winton’s farm to raise her. It’s where we find out Parker gave up being an astronaut to have Russell and, even though most of their relationship development’s in the flashback, it’s a reasonably good episode for the two of them.

The Robinsons’ space-camper has crashed on an unknown world, having diverted away from the Alpha Centauri colony at the last minute to keep the evil robots from finding it. Everyone except Parker and Russell could eject, but their seats malfunctioned. So the episode’s the two of them in danger—not only is Parker sitting on a seat of dynamite, they’re sinking into alien goop, and the engines are offline. I wonder how many times the engines work on “Lost in Space.” I feel like it’s less than a third of the time.

Anyway.

The rest of the cast is paired off on adventures, even if it’s just Ignacio Serricchio and his pet chicken. The pet chicken sequences are outstanding, with Hope finding humor in the absurd dangers.

Toby Stephens and Mina Sundwall go looking for the robot together, bonding along the way. It’s a good sequence for Sundwall, not so good for Stephens. It’s probably Stephens’s best work this season so far, but—once again—it relies on his character not actually being anywhere near as with it as he’d need to be to survive so long “Lost in Space.”

Maxwell Jenkins and Parker Posey have the least amount of material, which has Jenkins trying to recover his backpack from a precarious hanging situation while Posey yells at him to hurry up. There’s a little bit of character work for Posey, who’s on—if not a redemption arc—at least a considered failed redemption arc. Though it’s a little weird her confidant is a kid. They don’t quite make that angle work.

But the stuff with Russell and Parker is where the episode excels, thanks to Hope, Russell, and Parker. While “Lost in Space” isn’t really anyone’s showcase, Russell’s gotten the best arc throughout the series, with this episode just drawing attention to the differences in her story and the other kids’. Jenkins has his tween boy adventurer thing, which isn’t character development, and then Sundwall’s got a love triangle. Unfortunately, that love triangle is thinner than the relationship stuff she had before because they can reduce it to tropes.

It’s so well-done, it makes up for the finale’s solution being something they could’ve done the entire time and even talked about doing. They just had to put it off for dramatic tension’s sake.

Hope’s direction is “Space”'s greatest discovery.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e04 – Northing Left Behind

So far, this season has had fifty-ish-minute episodes. This episode’s only forty. It’s got a couple things to do, and it does them expediently, which makes it a bridging episode of sorts.

While the kids are safely in spaceflight, thanks to Taylor Russell and Russell Hornsby, their parents—half a galaxy away or whatever—are in more danger than before because the evil robots know where they’ve got their spaceships hidden. So it’s going to be a countdown to disaster episode for Molly Parker and Toby Stephens. They’re out of time (again) and have to prepare for imminent destruction (again), but they’re going to make sure the robots can’t get to their kids (again). Or to the Alpha Centauri colony. They’ve got to destroy all their records.

It ends up being a reasonably amusing Ignacio Serricchio sequence, where he gets to pal around with former boss and now subordinate and good friend Tattiawna Jones. We also get to see some other familiar faces, though not Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who I think got killed off offscreen so they wouldn’t have to bring him back.

Except the evil robots aren’t just satisfied destroying the adults, they want to get rid of the kids too, so when the kids get ready to fly to safety, an evil robot possesses their robot. Again, so convenient the robots have the technology to communicate across galaxies in real-time with no lag. It’d be such a pain for the narrative if they couldn’t.

But even if the kids do go save the adults, they’re still no match for the Cylon fleet, which means they’re going to need a great plan to succeed. After some character development masquerading as escalating action for Russell and Hornsby, Maxwell Jenkins takes the lead on the “saving the day” stuff. Because Jenkins isn’t just trying to save the adults, he’s also trying to figure out how he and his robot can go off on their secret mission.

Despite the stakes being weird—the adults burning documents like they’re expecting the SEC inspectors to serve them a warrant, the kids bickering like a Disney after-school special—once the episode gets going with the sci-fi action suspense, it does pretty well. Julian Holmes’s direction is outstanding on those sequences.

There are some decent reuniting moments, and the cliffhanger setup is appropriately harrowing, even if it does just get the show right back to its… end of season one ground situation? Makes you wish someone would just say, “Oh, no, we’re lost in space… again!”

Another notable item—there’s finally a gay couple in “Lost in Space.” They don’t get names, they don’t get dialogue, but they do get to embrace each other, waiting for the robots to blast them out of the sky, just like all the straights in a montage sequence.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e03 – The New Guy

While I’m sure they didn’t bring in Russell Hornsby—as Taylor Russell’s long-lost (in space) biological father—to offset Toby Stephens’s energy vampiring, but Hornsby does have that effect. The nicest “Lost in Space” has been in ages is when Mina Sundwall, being introduced to Hornsby, gives him a hug.

Hornsby will have an arc, mostly with Russell, about being a real spaceship captain and not one who lets the computer fly for him. They’re prepping the ship for take-off, and he can’t stop talking about the importance of real experience over autopilot, even an autopilot programmed by Molly Parker. The show’s cagey about Parker and Hornsby’s history, allowing for a backstory bombshell in the resolution. Well, as much as a twenty-year-old, mostly inconsequential reveal can be a bombshell.

Parker spends the episode with Stephens, Ignacio Serricchio, and their robot. Regular robot is just helping get the ship ready for take-off, but the new robot (the one the humans enslaved to fly them across the galaxy) is helping Parker and company get an alien engine to save the day.

Stephens doesn’t trust the robot (what with the enslaving thing), while Serricchio tries humorously to bond with it, and Parker tries to form a meaningful connection. That plot is an action-thriller one, involving planning, a chase sequence, and last-minute twists and turns. The CGI is a little off—not the action, but the rock formations where Parker and the robot hang out (down the block from Kirk and the Gorn). The director, Sarah Boyd, directs for better scenery than Parker ends up with. It’s okay—thanks to a good twist—but ought to be better.

It’s not all the CGI’s fault. Mopey Stephens drains the energy out of scenes.

Meanwhile, Maxwell Jenkins has a sci-fi Indiana Jones plot in the alien ruins, complete with Indiana Jones-esque music. Sure, it’s more like a Kingdom of the Crystal Skull spin-off than Raiders and kind of tedious for the payoff—he finds a giant space pipe organ and plays tones while he ought to be getting ready to get on the spaceship.

His delay does give Parker Posey something to do, in this case, ominously threaten Russell because the kids are planning on putting adult Posey in cryosleep for take-off. They’d rather have Hornsby be the awake adult, sucking up extra oxygen. Posey’s got a decent arc about not wanting to be put under since she’s kind of a fugitive. The writing on it’s not great, but Posey’s panic is good. Plus, it all ties up neatly with Jenkins needing a co-conspirator.

The tense action finale—space action John Williams riffs, not space grandeur John Williams riffs—has a lot of emotional impact, which is cool. But, on the other hand, the hard cliffhanger is less effective because it’s a wheel-spinner.

The episode’s better throughout than its conclusion, with some definite highs.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e02 – Contact

It’s only taken twenty-two episodes, but “Lost in Space” finally addresses some fundamental questions about its robots. Did something make them, or did they make themselves? The show skirts around the robots having agency and sentience to make the human eagerness to enslave them a little less creepy, presumably. Though Molly Parker salivates over the idea of doing it in this episode. It’s so funny how they brought it up once and then completely forgot about the morality issue.

Everyone’s got something to do this episode, even if it’s staring into the main action of the scene like you’re superfluous (both Parker Posey and Ignacio Serricchio do it). I haven’t checked, but I’m assuming season three is the last one for “Lost in Space,” so they’re trying to wrap things up. And doing it very quickly; thank goodness the robots come equipped with a walkie-talkie feature allowing communication across half a galaxy or so.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The episode starts with Taylor Russell finding real dad Russell Hornsby alive in his cryotube. It’s unclear whether he escaped the ship or if the ship moved him over to an escape vessel without waking him up. It seems like the latter, but there’s also not a lot of talk about Hornsby. See, Russell can’t bring herself to tell him he’s her dad, so instead, they talk around it. When they finally start getting on the same wavelength… well, the writing’s not good, but Russell’s sincerity carries through.

Zack Estrin has the writer credit. It’s not his first (though the last episode he got a credit on was episode two of season three, so exactly one season before), but he’s not particularly impressive. Combined with Kevin Rodney Sullivan’s direction and the frantic but good special effects, it all feels like “Lost in Space” is in a hurry to wrap up. The time for character development has passed.

And not just for surprise reveal characters, but the main cast as well. Mina Sundwall has reverted back to her sarcastic mode, which has some okay lines, just nothing for the character. She, Maxwell Jenkins, and Parker Posey are trying to find the robot, who wandered off last episode with the reveal of an alien civilization in the distance. There are some setbacks and fretting about Posey’s reliability as a comrade, but eventually, the episode gets to setting up its way out of the current predicament. Luckily, Jenkins and Sundwall get into position at just the same time Parker and Toby Stephens do in their plot.

Parker’s full of life again, ready to go get her kids and stop feeling sorry for herself. So she and Stephens are flying down to a planet to recover a destroyed robot, so they can torture it into flying them where they want to go. Serricchio is along for the ride, which just means wisecracks. There are some all right ones too.

One Aliens riff later, they find themselves in danger from an unknown robot. And over in the other plot, the robot keeps telling Jenkins they’re in danger. Shame the robot’s got such a limited vocabulary because if he could string two sentences together, they wouldn’t have needed the episode.

It feels like the end of the first act (of “Season Three”). It could be better, could be worse. But trying to wrap up the series in eight episodes gets “Lost in Space” a lot of leeway. As does avoiding having all the little kids in it. The action just sticks to the main cast; it also seems we’re leaning in on Jenkins as messiah, which will at least be a flex, something the show’s managed to avoid doing for almost its entire run.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e01 – Three Little Birds

When I said “Lost in Space” was going the “Battlestar Galactica: The Revival” route, I didn’t realize how far “Space” remake creators Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless were going to go with it.

This season premiere opens soon after the previous one, with Taylor Russell in a spacesuit in the spaceship wreckage they found last season finale, looking for information about her dad. Her real dad. He was lost in space too! And he was lost in this ship, information the show didn’t divulge until the very last moment it could. If it was always in the show bible, someone did a lousy job surfacing it.

Because it’s “Lost in Space,” there’s a disaster, and Russell has to leave the ship without the desired information. We get a teaser—there’s an evil robot on the wrecked ship—and then we resolve the “Parker Posey stowed away” hint from last time real quick, with Posey saving Russell from tumbling through space for eternity.

Then it’s a year later, and the humans live in encampments under Cylon control and… wait, wrong show. But only sort of.

The year later jump lets the show account for Maxwell Jenkins having his big boy voice now and being much taller and barely looking like his kid-self. They’re stuck on a destroyed planet in the one good valley, where they can farm and mine for titanium to repair the spaceship. It’s taking longer than anyone expected, which is just aggravating the tension between siblings. First, Mina Sundwall is mad at Russell for saving her and all the kids from death last episode, then Jenkins is just being weird (which makes less sense after a plot reveal), and Russell is feeling the weight of leadership.

Russell’s trying to contact her real dad if he made it to the planet, something Sundwall resents. Sundwall’s busy with hot boy Charles Vandervaart, which makes ex-boyfriend and frequent collaborator Ajay Friese very sad. It’s actually a good subplot, even if Friese’s mooning gets obnoxious, just because he’s at least likable in it. Sundwall, Russell, and even Jenkins are positioned not to be particularly likable initially. It’s about how much they’ve lost their luster without their parents around.

Or because they’re marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet. I was worried “Lost in Space: Season Three” would be a Children’s Crusade and obnoxious with all the little kids, but so far, the show ignores all them kids. Posey’s teaching them French, which is apparently giving them structure—and Posey positive purpose—but otherwise, the kids are just worker drones, mining titanium.

The second half of the episode has disaster imminent—because, of course—and Sundwall, Russell, and Jenkins having to work together to save the day. It feels more like a big-budget kids’ show than any other time at that point. There’s a lot of Jurassic Park-y music throughout, and director Frederick E.O. Toye does the Spielberg-esque “Space” take.

Now, also like “Battlestar” are parents Molly Parker and Toby Stephens’s story. The adults have mostly survived, hiding from the robots and doing guerrilla missions to get resources from planets. Parker’s lost purpose without having children, leading to a rift in the actually quite tenuous marriage.

Stephens has his beard back, which helps his performance. Shouldn’t, but it does.

Ignacio Serricchio’s clean-shaven and somehow an officer now. He’s charming but doesn’t have much to do.

It’s kind of a good episode for Parker, acting-wise. Like, the “why live without my kids giving me attention” reveal is terrible, but her performance itself is darn good and raises the show above its even more than usual derivative feel.

“Lost in Space: Season Three” is off to a much better start than I thought it’d be.

Lost in Space (2018) s02e10 – Ninety-Seven

After spending most of the season away, this episode’s writing credit goes to reboot creators Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. I figured they were back to get the show in shape for season three, but I didn’t realize it’s all they were going to do. Sure, they spend fourteen minutes to resolve all the cliffhangers and themes from the last two or three episodes (including opening credits). But once Molly Parker and Toby Stephens stop the bad guy, the episode’s all about staying busy until the season cliffhanger.

There’s a reasonably good action plotline involving dozens of robots trying to take back their warp drive. The episode teases the idea Maxwell Jenkins isn’t okay with Parker’s plan to vaporize all the robots—he says they’re intelligent beings, she says they’re not. But, as it plays… they’re kind of one-note villains, so she’s more right than wrong. There will be a big-budget rock’em sock’em robots sequence, and it looks excellent—Alex Graves does a good but indistinct job directing—but there’s no character there. Not even the vaguest implications. So, basically the old series Cylons? Only CGI.

The mothership is once again in danger. This time from a robot alien fleet, and they only have two hours to get out of there. Two hours quickly because thirty minutes, as the show gets ready to set up season three. The script lays in heavy on the foreshadowing, too, possibly because the hook for next season is… well, a big change for the show. A potentially obnoxious big change for the show.

The episode’s got some good acting from Parker Posey and Ignacio Serricchio. Taylor Russell’s arc is all about her being ready to be a grown-up, so it’d usually hinge on her acting. But it barely gets a focus—though Russell gets the only real arc, with even Jenkins (who’s got lots to do with robots) getting downgraded as the episode progresses. There’s just so much other stuff going on.

For a season finale, it feels off. Between blowing off the resolution to the outstanding arcs and rushing into another crisis… I mean, I guess “Netflix Lost in Space” really is just “Battlestar Lost in Space,” or so it seems whenever it’s Sazama and Sharpless on the writing credit. Heck, the episode title, *Ninety-Seven*, is a “Battlestar” nod (or rip).

The second season started much stronger than it finishes, even without the concept refresh for next season. The cast still—mostly—got it through, but there’s a lot of excess material in “Season Two,” which is particularly bad since most of the episodes ran forty minutes. They just didn’t have enough story. And no one seemed particularly invested in the story they did have.

It’s a better episode than the worst in the season, but the next season teaser seems like it’s at best slowed the decline, not stopped it.

The sci-if special effects are excellent, with Graves seeming to get the Star Wars feel of it. There’s also a nice Alien 3 nod. “Lost in Space” is still okay, just less so than before. And next season's setup is primed for a game of chicken with a shark tank.

Lost in Space (2018) s02e09 – Shell Game

This episode may be the perfect example of “Lost in Space: Season Two.” It’s got a bunch of problems, and they’re all ginned up and exacerbated by the main cast. Mostly Toby Stephens and Molly Parker because they’re the parents. But this device—ignore an obvious problem and then act surprised when it becomes a dire situation—kind of sums up season two’s storytelling. When JJ Feild and Douglas Hodge joined the supporting cast as the eventual villains, “Space” had a chance to go somewhere.

Instead, it keeps creating problems to delay any movement. If these were actual problems—which might have been what made the metal termite episode so good—it’d be one thing. But this episode’s all about how Parker Posey teams up with Hodge after Stephens pisses her off by dismissing her. Posey and Stephens were temporary pals—Stephens gave speeches about how he learned as a Navy Seal to lead people, but then it turned out he was full of shit as far as reading his comrades. Sure, Posey had the sads because she saw Nevis Unipan, the daughter of the guy she killed, but Stephens doesn’t know she’s a second-degree murderer; he just saw her in distress and ignored it. It’s not so much inconsistent characterization as lack of it. “Lost in Space: Season Two” lets the events dictate character, only there aren’t enough events, so the characters are spinning out.

So Posey and Hodge are after the kids. Maxwell Jenkins and Mina Sundwall are going to help the robots, even if it means Hodge and Feild don’t get to torture the regular robot until a little later. Jenkins remains entirely obtuse to what’s going on around him, which would work if the show were from his perspective, but he’s not. He’s too befuddled to be functioning as well as he does here. Though it’s Sundwall and Taylor Russell who come up with the plans. Once the kids are all together, the episode works better, so it’s weird they keep the kids apart so much this season. The show refuses to play to its strengths.

Feild, Hodge, and Posey are hunting the kids through the mothership while Stephens is out in space rescuing Parker. Except since Stephens didn’t do anything about Hodge being murderous last episode, Hodge has locked them out of the ship, and they’re going to run out of fuel and die in the gas giant together. There’s a bunch of busy sci-fi action tropes they go through while in orbit, but no heart to any of it. Director Stephen Surjik can do all the effects stuff. He just can’t pretend it matters.

Things only go wrong at the end because of a character’s lack of, well, character and whether it can be overcome. It’s an episodes’ long C-plot at this point, and it was apparent from jump what needed to happen. But instead, the show moped along for four episodes just to get a drug-out finale before the season finale.

If the show’s only got as much story for the season as it seems now… the meandering to get here hasn’t been worth it. There’ve been some nice moments for the actors this season—primarily Russell and Ignacio Serricchio (who’s unconscious this episode, apparently Hicks’ing for the grand finale)—but I’ll bet it finishes with the exact narrative stakes where it started with. There’s been no progress, just a bigger supporting cast.

Fingers crossed I’m wrong.