Very few TV shows stick the landing like that but wow, they did it

I would say that considering it gets a very rocky start on the runway, the heights this show achieves, creatively, as amazing

Also it never caves to the lesser instinct of explaining a mystery that does not, and cannot be satisfactorily explained

My greatest desire is for more fiction to toss aside the shackles of feeling the need to provide logical and satisfying answers to things that simple can’t exist in the first place, and in the process, take focus OFF narrative consistency or the

Most interesting and compelling process of just using the medium to tell more allegorical narratives

Like, SO MUCH of this show is just, increasingly allegory and dreamscape

I want to play every character from this show in a game

The characters are SO good, and it feels like equal part writing/acting/direction that pretty much every role in this show went in an unexpected direction.....and not in a shocking way. But in a way where i wasn’t expecting the characters in this kind of show to feel so

Grounded, and humans and flawed in these very believable ways

I think the moment I knew this show had the right priorities is when they were explicitly like “I can tell you this, but it will disappoint you because it won’t heal the hurt inside you” and she asks to hear it anyway but we never get to hear it.

It’s just a really special show about grief

Especially mass scale grief that touches everyone

It’s the kind of writing I guess i just don’t expect out of mainstream sci fi/fantasy/spec fic whatever, because it’s usually more interested in its own premise than characterization

And how people assign meaning and try to find solace wherever they can

And this show is VERY interested in its own premise, but only insofar as how that premise creates a fascinating environment to tell very human stories

safelybeds: YEAH. I LOVED THAT, what a good fucking instinct on part of the writers

And that ultimately the show puts the audience in that same position, needing to find out what happens, desperately trying to figure it out, until the show teaches us that figuring it out is ultimately not why we care. We care because not knowing is challenging and uncomfortable and leaves us with this stressful lack of closure, which is.

It really is just, you could strip away all the artifice and it would still just be a brilliant story about grief (but you can’t strip away the artifice because it is very important to the precise story being told)

What ever single character is going through

Yeah

I think mainstream media consumption is very structured around the tease and the reveal

It’s just a really interesting way of putting you in the shoes of and making you empathize with the character. And it’s validating that the show really understood that’s what they were doing and the kind of message they wanted to create.

And this show on its most foundational level rejects that, because it HAS to reject it, in order to walk its talk

And i respect that a lot

It just feels very smart, and intentional

I feel like we are awash in stories that have a great concept and

Writers who don’t know what to do with it

Dragging narrative carcasses through season after season with like, increasingly complex stakes and twists (generalizing obviously)

Like the first season lays all these magical metaphysical breadcrumbs and ultimately you realize “it takes so little to convince people of something when you tell them that their grief and pain is real in a world that seems eager for everyone to move on”

But this show was just like, WHATEVER

Mhm, yeah

It never M. Night Shyamalan’s it

Which i was really dreading at first LMAO