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A solid ending to a flawed (but by no means bad and in many respects excellent) season, and to an overall fantastic series. I almost liked Amy Acker's turn as the Machine (especially in this episode where we got to see her) more than I liked her performance as Root, and I thought she was fantastic as Root. I also thought (and I'm sure this is what they were hinting at) that the Machine's half-remembered "everybody dies alone" lesson while it was in such a morbid mood was a callback to John's last words to Jessica: "Everybody dies alone and no one's coming to save you." And I'm glad it turned out to be something different. Alas poor Blackwell, we hardly knew ye (and cared even less).
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Jun 22, 2016 14:05
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Sinteres posted:I kinda think Finch should have been a little more alarmed that his Machine decided to take on the persona of someone who worshiped it as a god He may well have just been grateful that it didn't start simulating Nathan instead.
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Jun 22, 2016 14:09
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Shaw recognizes now that 'nothing personal' is a crock of poo poo. Blackwell had a choice and simply took the lazy path of not accepting responsibility for his choices. I did like Shaw's moment of "normally I would have just killed you without thinking about it, but I had some friends show me that human lives are actually important" turning into "so actually this IS personal, you cowardly murderer".
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Jun 22, 2016 17:47
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I think the idea behind Blackwell, of giving us a relatable face on the Samaritan side, someone who wasn't essentially a faceless drone, was a good one, and it's something this show has done very well in the past. (Notably the H.R. arc. Simmons, Quinn, Terney, even Stills once we got to know him in flashback a bit were all people you gave a poo poo about even if you hated them and wanted them to die.) They really, really botched the execution this time, though. By far the weakest element of this season. Even that FBI dude who didn't get to do much but give a menacing speech or two and forget to check Fusco for a vest felt more significant. And it's doubly a shame since their character work for most of the main cast was so good this year.
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Jun 22, 2016 18:22
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V-Men posted:Were Martine and Greer corrupted characters though? Greer was pretty much always like that and Martine was introduced as a Shaw-like stone cold killer. I haven't listened to the commentary yet, but the only reason it seemed they like bothered with Blackwell was because they couldn't get Claire back. Martine and Greer never had moments where we saw them teeter or be indecisive about the morality of their actions. I don't think we ever saw anything about Martine's past, and I'm not sure we ever saw a much of a personality for her beyond "likes hurting people". And Greer, if anything, corrupted Samaritan more than the other way around. He's effectively got the same motivation as Root did at the start; he decided, because of personal betrayal and loss, that humanity was hosed and started seeking out a higher power. Blackwell I'm sure was intended to put a human face on Samaritan operatives (and, as a few people have mentioned, to show how Samaritan brings out the worst in its people rather than, like the Machine, the best). We just got the Cliffs Notes version of his story so it didn't really land.
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Jun 23, 2016 00:34
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Also, as it turned out, both Samaritan and the Machine did have copies out there. (Samaritan's in the Federal Reserve vault, the Machine's in the subway that came online at the end of the episode, plus the one that Harold was carrying around). What, in retrospect, would have been cool was, after ICE-9 wiped out all electronic traces of both Samaritan and the Machine, a shot of a bunch of clerks at Thornhill Industries typing in a bunch of code from printouts. I'm still not really sure why just destroying the antenna before Samaritan could transmit itself to the satellite wouldn't have been fine, but (a) maybe they figured that if it went to the satellite they knew where the last functional copy was and could keep it isolated there until the Machine could (hopefully) destroy it, whereas if they destroyed that antenna it could have fled anywhere and (b) it's just a show, I should really just relax.
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Jun 23, 2016 16:29
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berzerkmonkey posted:Greer mentions that he didn't do anything to make Samaritan the way it is - he just didn't interfere with it like Harold did with the Machine. You could probably argue that doing nothing but telling a baby ASI "hi, we are your faithful servants, what would you like us to do" is, in effect, doing something to shape it whether that was Greer's intent or not. quote:I'm in the camp of "satisfied with the ending, but not happy with the season as a whole." There was a lot of sloppy writing this season (understandable, since I assume the writers were scrambling) and threads that were poorly executed. As was mentioned earlier, the arc of the two cops was far more satisfying than a lot of what appeared this entire season (especially Blackwell.) I think the writers are really good at writing slow-burn arcs that are deep and really make you think about things, but the compression of those arcs really didn't work at all. I am glad we did get closure though. Agreed pretty much with all of this. I think there were some individually fantastic episodes this season, but the pacing was off. Still, you know, better this than a LOL YOU'RE CANCELED three episodes before the end and them scrambling to form a coherent ending out of nothing.
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Jun 23, 2016 16:37
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Also, Ordos aside, John's not literally immune to cruise missiles. ...they should have sent Fusco instead. Since I'm pretty sure he is.
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Jun 23, 2016 17:09
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I think John's last fight could have been more spectacular, certainly. Him sacrificing himself for Finch was always how he was going to go out, though. (Really sucks for Finch, though, being once again put in a position where he's forced to watch his best friend die, powerless to do anything about it.) I feel like a broken record on the whole "this probably would have been better if they hadn't been rushed" thing, but Elias's final arc, more so than just his death, felt completely dissatisfying. Elias as the personification of the old world that Samaritan was trying to sweep away could have been really compelling. But since it's so easy to fixate on what went wrong (and worth doing, I think), I also feel like I need to say that Amy Acker and Michael Emerson were on fire in these last few episodes. The whole cast was at the top of their game, really, but those two were incredible.
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Jun 23, 2016 19:28
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I think having a full season would have given them more of an opportunity to explore the world under Samaritan, which they were clearly aching to do (and did do, a bit), as well as allow other elements like the other Irrelevant teams to percolate a little more. With the 13 episode season, they really needed to tell a tight, focused story. Sure you can blame some of their failure to do so on CBS insisting on maintaining the procedural side of things (which I don't actually consider a problem except to the extent that it was just one more thing for them to juggle). But I think it ultimately came down to them being unwilling (or unable) to cut out things could have been cool but were not well-served by the shorter episode count (like Blackwell), and being forced to accelerate other things that should have had time to breathe. (Shaw's storyline being probably the worst offender in this category, though that was pretty much unavoidable because of Sarah Shahi's lack of availiability).
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Jun 24, 2016 19:50
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raditts posted:That makes sense. I like to think that they cut out a couple months' worth of high-pitched squealing from the tape as the Machine passed on its memory in analog audio format, though. I'm assuming a numbers station broadcasting to a roomful of data entry clerks at a Thornhill Industries Transcription Center was involved.
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Jun 24, 2016 20:32
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I'm almost through my own rewatch and just watched The Day The World Went Away again. Definitely the best episode of the season. Since they've said in interviews that this would have been the end of the Samaritan storyline regardless, I really want to know what they'd have done next.
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Jul 18, 2016 22:35
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BoneMonkey posted:Also why didn't Gueer just shoot Finch rather than that dumb I'm gonna suffocate us both plan? Like he just dismissed two goons with guns? Because Greer is Evil James Bond, so naturally he'd go with a Bond Villain plan.
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Jul 19, 2016 00:28
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oohhboy posted:They showed you more than enough for the Machine fight to work. It's just that some of the details are almost background elements and it flows from every season before it. Given the choice between leaving things a little ambiguous and bogging the finale down with ten minutes of exposition about how THIS TIME IT WILL BE DIFFERENT BECAUSE, they one hundred percent made the right call.
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Jul 31, 2016 23:46
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Sober posted:I distinctly remember people saying they had no idea Matt Murdock was Daredevil after watching all of S1. I'm not sure that "watching" could possibly be the right word for whatever those people were doing.
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Dec 29, 2016 04:42
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Zaggitz posted:If they would ever revive the show, I would demand Leon play a pivotal role from then on. ...I suddenly want a spinoff where the Machine, instead of giving Leon numbers, just puts him in wacky situations over and over as a means of helping people.
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Jan 3, 2017 00:13
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Eh! Frank posted:Maybe the invisible ear communicator thingies they always use double as ear protection? Finch is a bazillionaire and can afford to spring for eardrum replacement surgery every three months. Much like I suspect there are a lot of anonymous donations to clinics around New York City for post-knee-replacement physical therapy.
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Jan 7, 2017 01:04
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Jerusalem posted:but 5 seasons of Emerson playing an idealist desperately trying to cling on to the hard learned lessons of his life and retain his morality (which also gave the Machine something to respect and even aspire to) ended up making the show worth it. I go back and watch his "I have played by the rules for so long" monologue occasionally and it absolutely blows me away every drat time.
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Feb 23, 2017 16:26
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Jerusalem posted:I wonder if Control ever got out of that hole.... I half recall them making noise about having wanted to get the actress back for one more episode but they couldn't make the scheduling work or something.
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Feb 24, 2017 03:13
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