No spoilers. Just my thoughts. I'm close to 50yrs old, and have seen my share of stereotypes, and people do things for particular reasons. And what I've noticed time and time again, is that people don't just suddenly become incongruous with who they were, as happened here in this last episode of Season 1. People who want to be astronauts and train and exhibit signs every day of their desire and fervor to be an astronaut, just don't suddenly talk about being an astronaut over lunch and then proclaim that they have suddenly 'seen the light' and now want to be a janitor for the rest of their lives. The way a person goes about interacting with the world just doesn't change in the course of a few minutes. For example, Superman doesn't use guns and knives to fight, so you wouldn't see Superman do that in any of his scenes, however that is basically what the writers here have done in this last episode - i.e. the basic M.O.s of characters in this TV Series is thrown out the window and they start doing things totally incongruous with who we have seen them to be. This is highly unrealistic even for a drama such as this. They might as well develop and start using an unknown super-power, that is how unbelievable the final scene is.
You have to gradually set-up how people change. Game of Thrones did this well, developing their characters over a number of seasons, giving you enough back story to understand how they changed. Doing it in the course of one episode, nay, even in one scene is just too much, too unbelievable. While the motives for the people doing what they did at the end of this episode might have sounded 'thrilling' and 'suspenseful' when the plot/script writers were putting it down on paper, even the director should have picked up how the audience needed to be carried through the change process gradually.
There are so many other more realistic and just as dramatic ways the main protagonists could have interacted in this final episode that actually would have made it more dramatic and more believable... something that the audience could relate to on some meaningful and equally powerful, gripping and thrilling level.
I am a big fan of less is more. The final scene in particular should have ended about 2 minutes before it did. That way, the script writers could have carefully constructed the next episode to develop the characters as they were. Developed more back story and engaged the audience with something they could believe in and relate to more.
That's really what this episode feels like. It's all wrong. The characters, while somewhat 'over-dramatically' flawed (yes I get it's a drama and can look past some of the over-dramatisation of the characters) in their own ways, have not shown any signs of really doing what they did in this episode, before now. There are so many flip-flops in the final scene it leaves the viewer wondering what on earth is going on - and not in a good way.
It's about striking a balance between predictability and unpredictability. Realism and fiction. To my mind the scripting and directing did not take that on board for this episode. The actors, production and editing did their best here. No, the blame for this episode being so poor in many people's eyes lays somewhere on the shoulders of the writers and director.
From here on in it will be hard to believe anything form a real, flawed person point of view as I cannot trust the writers to portray real motivations sensibly or accurately anymore. I half expect anyone to do something thoroughly -out-of-character now which takes away from the real human 'drama' that could have been unfolding before our eyes. Arghhh!
I gave it 1\10 primarily for the last scene which ruined everything that came before it (which wasn't too bad, if I am to be fair). :( :( :(
Maybe if they had cut the last 2 minutes out and continued with what we saw there, then this episode would have scored at least a 7/10, maybe even higher. However I'm sorry to say they didn't, and so a 1 is the score it gets. Such a sad way to end the season. :(
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