Contributor: Gregg Wright
Written by Brad Falchuk
Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
If there’s one thing this episode got right, it’s that a whole lot happened in it. I guess that’s what happens when you ignore two of your main plotlines in favor of a possession story for most of the season, which eventually goes nowhere, finally allowing your other two main plotlines to return to prominence. Suffice to say, this season has been kind of a mess.
Maybe it’s just a case of the writers trying to throw too much into one season, but this season has been nowhere near as honed and straightforward as the first season. There’s just so much going on, and at the beginning, I’d hoped that the writers would find a way to make it all work together. The audacity of it all was what I liked, but it seems like the season has still crashed and burned.
In fiction, there is a real difference between “things happening” and strong storytelling. This season has not lacked for good ideas; what it has lacked is a way of meaningfully putting them all together in a single story that makes sense. There needs to be meaningful character and story arcs that lead to logical and satisfying conclusions.
For the most part, this season has not accomplished that. There are arcs here that seem on the verge of being good. Lana’s arc has probably been the best, but it’s still a problematic arc. Sister Jude’s has been another potentially good character arc, because it includes a clear descent and transformation of the character. But again, this arc has been fraught with problems.
I think a lot more time could have been spent molding this season into something leaner and meaner; more plot-driven, and ultimately more coherent. Strangeness, style, and bold ideas just weren’t enough to carry this season. This season did start out with a rather strong run of episodes, and then somehow went off the rails somewhere during the Anne Frank two-parter. Why did this happen?
It may have simply been inevitability. Before that point, the season had been focused almost entirely on setting up pieces of the puzzle; on world-building. This was undoubtedly the most fascinating segment of the season. But once the world had been set up, the problems started to arise. There wasn’t much more for the writers to reveal (or perhaps not much more they were allowed to reveal); until the finale, perhaps.
All that said, I’m happy to see the “Devil” storyline come to an end. To at least a small extent, it feels like a return to form for the show, now that it can focus entirely on the aliens and the Bloody Face arc. It’s still not very clear what it’s all leading up to, but a lot did happen, and a lot of time passed. It feels like the writers were suddenly given the chance to prepare for the finale, so everything feels a bit rushed. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
And it helps that there is one more episode this year than in the last. We have two more episodes in which the show can continue to course-correct and progress towards some kind of satisfying resolution. This all makes me wonder if this season would have benefited from being a whole lot shorter; say, six episodes long. As it is, the season just didn’t seem to know where it was going most of the time, and much of it still seems a bit pointless.
Score: 7/10
