So I clicked an old, familiar "yes" button on Amazon Prime Video yet again to rekindle my subscription with the since renamed Apple TV having dropped its "+" sometime a few months back, and started my one night binge. Yep. One night, all nine hours. Well, it felt like one night. There may have been a nap thrown in the middle and I definitely interspersed my viewing with a recap or two from Pete Peppers for clarity and a sense of community.
This show's wildly praised by both fans and the press, and now that I've gotten through it, I can say I kinda agree. What!? I'm not absolutely gobsmacked? Whoa there, now, don't go collapsing down to the ground shaking seizure-like and getting eleven million people killed, I'm not unhappy about it, I'm just a little -- meh.
Pros: Shot gorgeously, acted tremendously, and let's face it, it has that BB and BCS "mouthfeel" fans of those shows, like me, can really sink their teeth into. Gilligan obviously still has it.
Cons: Dare I say pacing? Some settings seemed very "backstage" looking (but that could have been to enhance the dysmorphia so...), and the overall plot, yes, is VERY familiar (even having been pretty much outed as such by Carol, Rhea Seehorn's character, the main protagonist in the show, in an early episode when she says "We've all seen this movie."), but the bigger plot issues are the many technical "holes" that fail to suspend my disbelief time and time again (again, perhaps due to a desire for screwball comic effect or just overall gaslight fumes or something else as yet unrevealed, who knows...).
I may be calling out a lot of what I might be thinking "smells" like sloppy writing when in fact it's just made to "look" like it in order to trick us viewers because a few of my "issues" have already been answered as episodes progressed and more of the backstory was revealed. But you see, my uneasiness in these points stems from the fact that the story is not expositioned out to us like a lot of other similar fiction. We don't get the comfortable full explanation of the Who, What, Where, When and Why of it all and then feel more complacent, we're left in the dark with so many frustratingly unanswered questions in these regards for a very long time. But of course that's how the writers are crafting this, isn't it? Yet old fucks like me remember well a similar uber-popular mysterious sci-fi show from sometime around almost I guess two decades ago now -- LOST. And we remember the promises broken and the horribly disappointing conclusion.
There is one aspect of the show I can really get behind though -- Carol's diehard, stubborn independence and general nihilism. Of course I feel I am even more of the "hermit-set" in that I don't even need the romantic, or in her case, cognitive dissonant romantic companion once she falls for Zosia since she must know she isn't ever going to be able to love her back "in that way." In my real life, it seems the world, by my choice, I certainly agree, has "abandoned Albuquerque" because it "needs its space." For me it's been a fuck lot more than 40 days too. And I'm lovin' it.
I'm visiting hot springs and museums (going on cruises and to theme parks), going out to fancy restaurants (dine out nights and "Metairie Chickens"), and setting off my own personal fireworks show in front of my house (okay, I'm not doing that!). And I show no signs of getting tired of any of it.
Just no one better give me a hand grenade simply because I facetiously asked for it...
I'd rather have an atom bomb.