yāall, it pains me to say this, it really does but... itās gotta be said. a little bit. spoilers and bummers under the cut, so if ur riding the positivity wagon i would go no further on this one.
i cannot possibly imagine that those of us whoāve been watching this show since S1 would disagree with the notion that it is 100% notĀ the same show it was during S1-S3. the first (3) seasons of this show were absolutely lovely and i would not trade them for the entire world.
as iāve already admitted, i didnāt fuck with S4, and i have barely fucked with S5. i watched the first couple episodes and skipped straight to last nightās episode and i gotta say, what the fuck. seriously. i love teresa. i love james. i love the two of them together, but when he saidĀ āi love you,ā i legitimately felt nothing. all the subtle character work that had been done in the first few seasons; the reason why we fell in love with them (and the two of them with each other) in the first place? essentially nowhere to be found. like, we knewĀ we were always gonna get there, but i had never hoped it would be in the midst of the most inane, rushed bullshit. iāve chatted with @mymostimaginaryfriend about this, but i just canāt imagine why youād try to wrap up such an involved plot in (10) freaking episodes instead of just enriching ur character work as much as possible. itās not as if ur gonna get cancelled; the showās over!
and jeresa aside, what is with the dialogue this season? thanks for telling me word-for-word that the CIA is essentially a cartel, i would never have been able to make the cognitive leap myself. the first three seasons of this show were good because they were challenging and they very much respected the intelligence of the audience. there was just so much to mine in almost every single episode. that was part of what i loved about it, and that energy is just... totally gone.
one final note here, because iād rather not wade in the muck of this for too long, but are they really expecting us to think that james would legitimately kill her? what are they trying to achieve here? we did the āmaybe james is a villain, maybe he isnāt,ā bit already, and it was far more nuanced than whatever the fuck the last few minutes of this episode was.
listen. i get that it must have been challenging, having a shortened final season on top of a S4 that was likely totally fucked with by peter gadiotās departure (and thatās just speculation on my part), but i have a hard time believing they couldnāt have done marginally better than this. there were distant echoes of what the characters used to be, but ultimately almost every gesture has fallen horribly flat. i know thereās one more episode, so maybe iāll be able to find something redeeming about it, but apparently the only writing team on earth capable of salvaging gold from the mud of early cancellation was for NBCās lifeĀ and no one will ever be able to do it again.Ā
fucking bummer, folks. just an absolute bummer.
