Sense8 (Netflix)

[CaptainWacky]

Well, that was really long. When they said "feature length" they meant "two and a half hours" and it did feel too long. The problem is that the conspiracy story, the BPO (What does that stand for? Did we ever find out?) stuff is a real slog. It always has been. The show's never been good at that stuff and making us care abut the details. The finale is frontloaded with the mytharc stuff and there are a LOT of details. There are some good parts when they're dealing with the bad guys. Any scene where the Sensaes all work together is always fun. Doona Bae gets to beat people up again so that's good. But I found the gun stuff a bit boring? They just kept gunning down goons (who I assume are all very bad people and deserve to die!) and it got repetitive. They also bring back EVERY recurring character ever and in some ways that's good because we get cool people like Bug and Sylvester McCoy but we also that weird sex guy (who is terrible) and some woman who's a bit like Galadriel, I guess? I didn't remember who a lot of them were, basically. And we get all this build up to the identity of "The Chairman" and he's just...some guy. Who dies instantly.

Could anyone follow the Daryl Hannah/Naveen Andrews plot?

BUT I'M NOT SAYING IT WAS SHIT. The first two seasons were always a bit of a mess when they delt with the plot, so it makes sense the finale will be too. And stuff that was good about the first two seasons is still good here. The main characters are all great and we care about them. It looks beautiful and has great locations. There's funny bits! There's sexy bits! Really the whole final twenty five minutes, after they'd blown up all the bad guys, were great. I even got emotional when Noomi's mother called her by her right name. And we got an orgy! And you can see how much love went into the show and how they did this finale for the fans.

 

[CaptainWacky]

Did anyone else watch the finale.

 

[Fuddlemiff]

I finally saw it. I agree with all your points really. It was entertaining and made with a lot of love, but still much longer than it needed to be. They could’ve cut quite a lot from the gunfights as they went on a bit and were quite repetitive. There were a couple of times that it looked like a fight was over, only for a van load more goons to show up.

And of course I had no understanding of the plot. Maybe partly because I’ve only seen the show as it’s gone along without rewatching or paying much attention to the conspiracy stuff, but also probably because it’s not well explained. Naveen Andrews gets the driest lines that go in one ear and out the other for me and then the constant changing of bodies makes it difficult to infer what you’ve missed from the visuals.

Anyway, it was really good and I’m glad they got a chance to finish the story. The best bit was the orgy IMO. The editing was so good, it was like really classy porn.

 

[CaptainWacky]

I felt bit bad about being negative about it when I saw a big passionate post on TrekBBS someone made about how well it reflectss the "queer experience" and how much the show mean to them. And as I said it did still do those parts really well, like you said the orgy was the best edited orgy in tv history. It's just that they spent about 90 minutes talking about "Whispers" and "BPO" and I didn't know what was going on.

 

[Fuddlemiff]

Yeah it’s great to have a show which is so inclusive, and explores gay relationships a bit more thoroughly than would usually happen (though they’re highly unusual relationships so I’m not sure I’d agree about them reflecting much). They still could’ve stood to explore those aspects more instead of focusing on the conspiracy theories. It’s quite similar to Orphan Black in that sense.