Reviews

What a twist of fate. The "noble" Toranaga turned out to truly be a self-serving megalomaniac who saw his friends, vassals, and even his own son as mere pawns to further his cause to rule Japan. It's almost cruel that Ishido and Ochiba were right about Toranaga's schemes against the heir all along, and that we as the audience have been strung along to root for a ruthless despot.

As for Blackthorne, his purpose gets revealed to us: he is merely a source of entertainment and ultimately inconsequential to the overall movement of Toranaga's schemes. Even the vision of Blackthorne being an aged grandpa in a lavish English home turned out to be no more than a "dream of a dream". Like Blackthorne, we have all been misled by the cunning Toranaga.

After the thrilling penultimate finale, I was almost expecting Shogun to end in some epic battle. After all, the real life Battle of Sekigahara took place on an epic scale. But in hindsight, I realise that portraying such an epic battle might have felt too rushed. Instead, all we get is a flash forward of Toranaga's machinations. Pure political scheming, from beginning to end.

I do not consider this to be a satisfying finale, and yet perhaps, it is a finale apt for a show that has told us multiple times that we are all mere cogs of a much larger machine at work. We live, and we die.

Sokka's characterisation has simply not won me over. I don't think it's necessarily the actor that's the problem so much as it is the showrunners deciding he should be annoying, but without the humour and goofiness.

And what made the character great was his character growth over the course of the original series. He went from being an overconfident, sexist pig to getting humbled, and shown the error of his ways. In this one however, the showrunners decided that Sokka's sexist attitudes were too much for audiences to handle, and instead turned him into generic, inexperienced young fighter.

In the original series, it was Sokka who started the provocation with Suki by arrogantly mocking her and her gender repeatedly, resulting in Suki showing him just how wrong he was about the female Kiyoshi Warriors. But for whatever reason in this series, the showrunners decided to turn Suki into the cocky one, with Sokka getting bullied by her. Just... why? Where's the growth opportunity for him?

I also cannot say I enjoyed how incredibly rushed Sokka and Suki's relationship felt. Did they really just fall for each other in a single day...? But I guess rushed plots are going to be expected for live action adaptations.

But for the good parts, I must say I enjoyed the creative decision to bring out Kiyoshi to represent Aang's avatar state. If only she stayed a little longer! As long as the visuals remain consistent, this series should continue remaining a fun watch.

I kinda figured Adam was going to die after Dede caught him, so his death came as little surprise to me, but whether or not it was necessary to move the plot forward was very questionable.

The biggest, and most glaring problem with this finale was related to "Dorian".

You would think someone who murdered 5 men and remained hidden under the radar for so long wouldn't make such catastrophically stupid mistakes, like coming up with the worst lie imaginable to get the intel off Maddy, and being careless enough not to notice Kara. This reeked of utter incompetence, and seemed like it was written that way because he writers just ran out of time.

And on top of this, how on earth did Kara manage to negotiate a ticket back to Russia, when she just killed the SVR's most valuable British double agent? Obviously, the SVR knew Patrick killed Kara's men, so the notion that they would somehow not know that Kara was involved in his assassination is complete fantasy.

This show has great directing and decent acting, but unfortunately the writers simply could not keep up.

The previous episode made it look like this episode was going to be an epic gunfight that would possibly end with a bullet in Roy's head. Surprisingly, and in atypical Fargo fashion, I get an ending that leaves me happy and satisfied.

Roy doesn't get to go out like some MGTOW martyr. Instead, he gets shot in the stomach by a woman he deems inferior, and arrested in the dirt like a common criminal. "Prison is the way the world should be; a natural order", he says. Well congratulations Roy, now you finally get to experience your own bs. Huge props to Jon Hamm for delivering such a villain.

Gator becomes what Joe Keery is best known for: a massive douche who somehow manages to garner audience sympathy, but him wandering about blindly was perhaps the comeuppance he deserved.

Lorraine shows us all that she's the alpha wolf by delivering vengeance on behalf of her newly proclaimed daughter. I never thought I'd grow to love her as much I did by the end of this season. I almost teared up when Jennifer Jason Leigh said "that's my girl" in her typical haughty tone.

Dot gets the happy ending she deserves, and once again amazes us with her unwavering positivity, winning over even a 500 year old cursed man. And in my opinion, she's the best protagonist Fargo has created so far.

And then there's Ole, the Mr Wrench of this season. Incredibly creepy and mysterious, but deeply tragic. Those scenes of him in the home of the Lyons balancing tension and humour were terrific. What a performance from Sam Spruell.

I did find Witt's death to be rather pointless, but I guess the show established that he wasn't one to accurately assess danger. And perhaps his death reminds us all that murder is largely senseless.

Never thought I'd leave a Fargo season finale with a smile on my face, but there we go.

Dot became one of my favourite tv characters ever since episode 1. She is resourceful, determined, and unbowed. And her foil? A caricature of the self-righteous religious nutjob who spins scripture to suit their own twisted worldview. A character who to no surprise of anyone, upsets the same kind of insecure pathetic creatures out there who think strength comes from trampling on the disadvantaged, while confusing stupidity for "telling it like it is".

What is deeply ironic for the offended is that the show is evidently not written along political lines, because Lorraine clearly espouses similar traditional values as Roy, and yet does not suffer from the same self-righteous delusion; the primary difference of course being that she isn't downright insane.

In a time of progressive media with the usual crudely written "strong women" tropes, Fargo shows us that nuanced characters can still be written.

This episode would've been almost perfect, were it not have been bizarrely out of character for Dot to leave her rifle out in the open before barricading herself. For someone who has been up till now very cool and tactical, it felt like a major slip up by the writers. The oddest part is that it didn't even need to serve as a plot device, because Ron's goons would've found her anyway.

Either way, this episode does exactly what a penultimate episode is supposed to do: create anticipation for the final confrontation.

This season has been captivating, but it feels like the ending was written the way it is because the writers didn't know how to stop Paul Marks. Cory spent such a long time looking for investors to save UBS, but Alex just puts together a deal overnight that would "save" the company? But the merger also produces a similar end result to the one Chip was ranting about on the show!

Also, what Paul Marks did was supervillain stuff. A false flag hack? Spying on everyone including Alex? If you're going to write someone this calculating and devious, don't make him slip up that easily with that "Hanover" bit. Not to mention it basically made no difference whether Alex changed the text onto Hanover, because he shouldn't have known about Bradley's plans to begin with! Not only that, but that final conversation between him and Alex was bizarre. This is a psychopath we're talking about. He didn't make some "oopsie" and ruined their relationship by getting off the helicopter. It just made no sense to portray him as a mere bad boyfriend.

The real winner of this episode and season was Cory. Massive kudos to Billy Crudup for his transition between the exec with that permanent corporate smile followed by shock and outrage. Never thought I'd ever sympathise with a c-suite type of guy, but Cory just might be the best written character on the show so far.

It is mind boggling to me that we only get 2 seasons out of Patriot with no awards, while Barry got 4 seasons and swept the floor at the Emmys. Barry is spectacular of course, but Patriot in my opinion, is equally comparable and one of the finest pieces of absurdist comedy I've ever seen.

I absolutely loved how the show went from the hilarious and absurd to diving deeper into the darkness, as the process of John repeatedly mentally checking out has left him to be a husk of a man.

The final scene of John staring into space before slowly breaking down as the realisation of him being okay finally sinking in was incredible. But is he actually okay? I guess we'll never know, which is perhaps pretty apt for the show, so I'd say it's kinda cool.

The writing on the wall was already in the first episode. "You shouldn't be here", says a random man who seemingly recognises Jake as an anachronistic individual.

There is a common trope amongst the vast majority of stories which involve time travel along a linear timeline. Mess with the past and it'll mess with you; basically, the butterfly effect. I was hoping for this show to break away from this trope, but as the show went on and the literal "signs" appearing in front of Jake, I knew I wasn't going to see any sort of unique take. It was also extremely disappointing that Lee also ended up being the lone, crazed shooter. So other historical events could be changed by Jake, but the historical shooter remained the same...? Why?

And putting that aside, there were so many unexplained mysteries. Who exactly was the yellow card man? What was he even rambling about? Jake sees visions and signs because he's a time traveller, but why did Sadie also experience the same phenomena? How and why did secret service come to the rescue of Jake when local PD and the FBI saw Jake as the shooter? The FBI knew Jake was living under a false identity and had no history before 1960, but everyone just let it slide? What about all the pictures taken of Jake by the press? You're telling me they never discovered who he was?

I am actually amazed people enjoyed this predictable soapy ending, because it felt like a complete mess to me.