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Spoilers!

Binged with the wife over Christmas Break. Extremely well-written, with deliberate and meditative sequences¹, truly breathtaking camerawork, fantastic background scores, and large doses of dark humor. All the stuff we’ve come to expect from Gilligan & Co. who appear to have used every single penny of the $15 million Apple and Sony lavished on each episode.

I’ve spoken to quite a few people whose interest waned after the first three or so episodes. Mine certainly did but I stuck it through and realized that remonstrations about length and how boring many episodes are (a) missing the entire point about inviting you to explore isolation and its effects and (b) borne of Social Media Attention Spans. Consider²:

“For instance, Netflix — the standard way to make an action movie, that we learned, was you usually have three set pieces. One in the first act, one in the second, one in the third — and the big one with all the explosions and you spend most of your money on that one in the third act. That’s your kind of finale.”

The Departed actor added, “Now, [Netflix is] like, ‘Can we get a big one in the first five minutes?’ We want people to stay tuned in. And it wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they’re watching.”

My wife, a writer and editor, told me about Gilligan’s stance on AI in creative fields (it’s not very complimentary) and it really shows.

I don’t know that a reasonable person would think they’re benevolent and harmless after the second half: The scene where The Hive abruptly stops chanting after Kusimayu’s transformation (and abandons the little goat) was very chilling.

Apple ordered two seasons and I cannot wait to see how the writers (hopefully) wrap things up. Lots of theories abound given the hints dropped throughout the first season (e.g. Finnegan’s Wake, mentioned in the very first episode, ‘loops’ to the beginning). Even if the second season sucks, I’d very much love to see what they do with Chekov’s Nuke:

We had an ending that was perfectly good. It would have been satisfying but not as satisfying. And we got a note. You know the old thing about how executives always have stupid notes. Actually, Apple and Sony said, “Is there an even better ending to be had?” And we listened, and I’m really glad they gave us that note. It made for a better ending.