artifactualCavalier

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it was episode 6 that changed my mind actually that episode rules

I was reading one story where the apocalypse was impossibly-rising oceans. Like, water is appearing from *waves hand* the Earth's crust or something, and literally all dry surface land on Earth is going to become underwater in X years. Part of the story was about a giant research project to invent FTL to send a few hundred humans to a nearby star which might have a habitable planet. You know what they were hoping to find? A planet with liquid water. Their plan was to descend from their starship and restart civilization using just the tools they brought with them, on a world with no life and no breathable air and the wrong gravity and the wrong temperate and the wrong sunlight and the wrong day-night cycle, just because it had liquid water. You know where else has liquid water? The flooded Earth you just abandoned. Instead of researching starship technology, you could have spent that time loading up all the same civilization-restarter tools into boats.

With the finale out now I think a central theme that I've recognized and really adore is "all of these characters are more complex than an audience would appreciate." They are all being squished into a child-friendly set of archetypes, be that by Caine, Jax, or metatextually, the fandom. Caine doesn't want them complaining, swearing or having sex, they just have to go on endless, mindless, youtube-monetizable adventures. He's the ringmaster, he puts them in a bright poppy's playtime ass stage and demands for funny to happen. Meanwhile, Jax doesn't want to address the dire reality of their situation and copes by playing along, treating himself and all the characters as flat archetypes with no internality, so that the elephants in the room can safely be ignored. The fandom, meanwhile, is quietly guilty of all the same things. "Why isn't my favorite character acting in accordance with my headcanon? Which characters are flatly evil so we can hate them? Will they achieve my perfect happy ending? Because if not I'll be mad about it."

It doesn't work. Because they're more complex than that. They're people, they need more, they have emotions and traumas and wants and needs. Ragatha isn't always cheerful, she's not just the mom friend, and she's not some manipulator either. She's a person, trying her best, and very often failing. Pomni isn't always anxious, she's a natural leader and she wants the best for everyone, but she's not perfect either. She's a person, trying her best, and very often failing. And Jax isn't just a villain, he's a very complicated ball of traumas whose consistent first instinct is to push everyone away, hurting others so that he won't get hurt himself. He's a person, trying his best, and very often failing. She might even be a girl. Zooble isn't just a grump, Gangle isn't just a wimp, Kinger isn't just crazy. They're humans. And humans aren't always good. They're messy, screwed up, complicated things. They're things that can't be flattened down to archetypes, no matter how much Caine, Jax, or the fandom wants it.

The fandom wanted a bunch of cookie cutter adventures with good guys and bad guys, but what we got is just a bunch of people, stuck together, their traumas rubbing up against eachother until something catches fire and explodes. And I think that's way more interesting. I'm glad the show is that. I understand not everyone feels that way, though. A lot of people wanted something less nuanced. But I don't think the show not matching your expectations is the show's fault. I think people just need to come at it with the right mindset. Meet the story where it's at.

It's really, really good, but I think for a lot of people it was so subtle they never realized it was happening. They got boiled like a frog. Episodes 1, 2 and 3 all have big action scenes and a central Adventure Plot to be resolved... still, every episode has a subplot where deeper emotional conflicts happen during the adventure.

However, this structure instantly falls apart by episode 4, when Caine takes a suggestion and has them work in a fast food place. That episode has no action scene, no "adventure plot" to solve, they just have to work a job for a whole day. The entire episode is just character drama. Then by episode 5 the structure is just gone. The lightning round format means none of the adventures even have time for a plot, it's just scenario, scenario, scenario, one after the other, and it becomes clear that the real point is the character drama, the history of these people, their traumas, the way they interact.

Episodes 6 and 7 (haha) are the last dying gasps of the adventure format. Episode 6 doesn't have an adventure plot beyond "shoot eachother" because Caine literally doesn't care anymore, and so the episode is really all about exploring the tenuous burgeoning friendship between Jax and Pomni, again focusing almost exclusively on character drama. And episode 7 is the calm before the storm, the characters trying one last time to get out of the circus, the show's last attempt to be formatted like a normal story that adheres to narrative convention, only for the complexity of Pomni and Jax's characters to deny Caine the narrative format he wanted.

The Last Act is not an action movie. I understand why they included episode 8 with it, because 8 and 9 form a pretty cohesive single two-part episode. And it is ALL character drama. The show was never about running away from monsters or going on adventures. It's about people, exploring their dysfunctions, the struggle of relating to eachother. That's all the movie is.