Ilandar

This would be amazing!

My problem isn’t that rhetoric targeting anti-Trump Americans is mean but that it’s counterproductive.

Typing this after you've just whined about "Europeans" is peak irony. You guys are so fucking clueless.

Many of your examples are just the US fucking up the lives of citizens in other countries. The average American at home does not give a fuck about the people being murdered by his government, he isn't going to skip a day of work to protest against that. I think maybe you are forgetting how much Americans loved the idea of invading Iraq, for instance. It took a long time for support to decrease, and even then it was only to like 50/50 levels. Americans weren't the ones protesting against that war, it was the rest of the world who saw it for what it was. When it comes to foreign affairs the American citizen has consistently been blinded by a mixture of patriotism, ignorance and the myth of American exceptionalism.

Why shouldn't they be? Americans have long had a superiority complex, always confidently mocking the problems of others around the world as if they were immune to them. It may feel bad for you now but the schadenfreude the rest of the world feels is completely justified. Frankly, the way some of you are suddenly crying about the rest of the world being mean to you is only further contributing to this image of Americans thinking they are above everyone else.

No that's all good, I appreciate you hearing me out anyway. To be clear, I didn't hate Season 2, I just think the most interesting talking point about it is the shift in direction it has taken so that's why my overall takeaway from this season seems more negative. The mystery box genre is popular for a reason, so I don't think anyone who loves Season 2 is objectively wrong or anything. It's not my favourite genre, though, and I feel like I have seen a lot of this before whereas Season 1 is always going to stand out to me as something quite unique in television.

I mean, maybe? But what does the revolution even want?

I have no idea, but it's important to always remember that many of the Innies, particularly our leads, are extremely mentally underdeveloped relative to the age of their physical body. Mark has less life experience than a 2 year old, Helly even less. Basically the only existence they know is Lumon, so they probably don't even understand the concept of a revolution nor do they fully understand the risks involved. I think that's the direction the show is heading, but I'm not suggesting they actually have some clearly thought out master plan that will lead to their happily-ever-after Innie world. Batshit goat lady had no fucking idea what she was doing either, she just went mental like a very big toddler having a violent tantrum.

I’m cautiously optimistic there’s something else Helly R and Mark S can do (or think they can do) and we just don’t know where they’re running to yet.

Wasn't it quite obvious that they were about to begin a revolution from within Lumon? Dylan just recruited like 50 people (and Helly was with him prior to that) and Mark just revolted against Drummond with the help of the batshit goat lady (who was already close to snapping prior to Mark's intervention).

For the second half of the season I found myself on the 10-second-skip-foward button for a good chunk of the episodes.

I never skipped (I don't really skip anything on principle, if something is consistently that bad I just bail entirely), but the thought definitely began nagging me around the same point as you. To me this is a really bad sign for a show that I devoured every single second of in its first season.

Sure, I said REwatched though.

Your reply implied that the reason you disagreed was because you'd just rewatched the entire season again, as if doing so somehow added further weight to your argument. Fair enough if you didn't feel this week to week either, but stating this after the fact feels like goalpost shifting to me. I think my point still stands - binge watching the entire season doesn't make you any more of an expert with regards to potential pacing issues, and in fact is more likely to obscure them.

Do you feel like the pacing was any different from season 1?

Yes, absolutely. The most notable difference is that it was much more consistent. Season 2 is all over the place, in terms of pacing within episodes but also with its setups and pay-offs. It jumps around a lot more and has multiple episodes that are completely severed (pun intended) from the previous episode, to the extent that I sometimes felt like I'd missed an episode or forgot to finish the last one. It is too often verbose in its storytelling, taking a long time to get to the point and there are countless scenes that drag on far too long. It many instances they tried to disguise this by making shots as visually striking/creative as possible, which led to constant praise from some about the cinematography. But to me, great cinematography is not about making a scene visually interesting - it's actually about using visuals to enhance the ideas or emotions of the narrative. It's about communicating something to your audience. Season 2 consistently fails to do this because there is often not much there to enhance. It is shallow television, pretending to be deeper and more interesting than it actually is (relative to its runtime).

To me, Season 2 is much more stereotypical mystery box television in the sense that it spends a lot of time distracting you with new questions and mini twists whilst rarely delivering conclusions to anything that has come before. This is a genre that is notorious for farming engagement through convoluted and confusing storytelling and overloading viewers with questions to generate discussion and fan theories that keep them engaged to see if their predictions were correct. Season 1 was a much more interesting and unique blend of comedy and thriller, gradually transitioning from one into the other as the season progressed. The narrative was a lot tighter; it asked questions but in moderation, and you always understood their relevance to the characters and their stories. To some extent you are always going to have a broadening of scope as a multi-season serial progresses, particularly when it transitions into a more serious genre as Season 1 did. However, the gap between the end of Season 1 and the end of Season 2 is just way too big for me to believe this is a natural progression of the original story. I think it has clearly been a victim of artificial inflation due to the unexpected success of the first season and the subsequent pressure to turn this into a massive moneymaker going forward.

I’ve watched through the whole season again this week in advance of the finale and I just couldn’t disagree more.

This is a misleading way to form an opinion on pacing, because this season didn't release in a binge watch format. Apple have milked 3 months worth of subscription fees from their audience between the airing of the first episode way back in January and the finale in the latter half of March. The vast majority of paying viewers have been watching from week to week and they've maintained their subscription throughout that entire period.

A great episode to end the season, though it did confirm my suspicions that the writing has been heavily padded. If they had tried to build up to this episode any more than it would have likely spoiled some of the big moments and reveals, so instead they had to have several episodes (including one that was egregiously short) where very little happened to tread water until the finale. To distract from that, they tried to make those episodes as visually interesting as possible. I predict that once future seasons have aired, it will become quite obvious that the finale of this season should not have been a finale at all but rather the culmination of a second act coming in somewhere around the episode 7 - 8 mark.

You'll realise pretty quickly if you watch the film. Ruffalo's character definitely makes some unflattering allusions to a certain US political figure, and many people are very easily triggered these days by any form of political satire.