jaketest

Several episodes seem to lack luster at the beginning. I began with an expectation of supernatural involvement, and was constantly irritated at the slow development.

But, the relationships between husband and wife, the mysteries, and the emotional turmoil kept me in it. I am not easily surprised, yet this did exactly that. The end is well worth the wait. You can argue that it's unbelievable, but I don't think that comes into it. It's explanatory and dramatic. You will be hard-paced to find any single season drama that resolves so well.

The key to any resolution is that it meets some criteria: 1) It is not fantastical. It could happen without violating physical laws. 2) It has a certain bitter-sweetness. Not a requirement, but definitely helps. 3) It resolves the crisis of the main character. 4) It lets us love the character, after having had her character impuned upon throughout. It redeems her believably.

Give it a try. Relax.

By the time I got to the third season, I was feeling a bit tentative. I was worried that the show, though exciting up to that point, would fail to deliver in this season. But it does.

One thing, not a spoiler, but the third season starts out very slow. I hope that if you know that going in, you might be more patient than I was. Many things in life are more effective when they're allowed to build slowly, even excruciatingly slowly. By S3 E6, I realized that the writers had outdone themselves, going a completely different way than I'd expected.

I confess that the nature of evil, and nature vs. nurture, what can and cannot be healed, what is the limit of experience, what is love - all these questions, when framed in a serial killer/detective format, are really just extreme philosophy 101. These questions are cute in a movie like Steve Martin's Parenthood. What is the meaning of life? All fine and grand, but for some of us, life went dark early, and the answers that Friends (the series) gives us are wanting. We are not slaked.

The Fall brings these questions out in stark relief, extending both black and white to their maximum contrast, and yet with an infinity of gray behind every seemly clear interpretation.