Sense8: Episodes Five and Six
First, the good news: Sense8 was renewed for a second season yesterday, August 8, which is the day all eight of the cluster were born. Yeah, they don’t all look the same age to me, either, but I’m not quibbling.
Second, Stracynski has walked back his comment about having a five-year plan, possibly because people kept pointing out that having a five-year plan was worthless if people quit watching after the first episode. I’m pretty sure they still have a five-year plan, I’m just hoping they also have a second season plan because they kinda didn’t have one for the first season.
Third, sorry this is late. But I did get you a nice protagonist analysis for all eight, so that’s something. Yeah, I was still late. Here’s Five and Six.
Episode 5: “Art is Like Religion”
Another title to make me turn the channel. I’ve got eight people I’m worried about, and the show wants to talk about art and religion? Still this is the episode that gave us Wolfgang, swimming naked in Berlin, and Kala, getting married in Mumbai. Some critics were complaining that the nudity was gratuitous, but it actually pays off in the next episode, so nope. Besides it had to be shocking enough that Kala, already wobbly under the weight of her wedding dress and jewelry and in emotional upheaval because she was seconds away from marrying a man she didn’t love, would faint dead away. It worked for me. As for the rest of the episode:
• I wish they’d quit making Lito the clown; he deserves better. This time they’ve linked him with Sun, who just got her period, so Lito gets mood swings, stomach cramps, and bloat.
• Will gets yelled at by his boss for trying to see Jonas; Wolfgang gets threatened by his uncle who suspects he pulled the diamond heist. Not sure why they’re paired since the captain will probably suspend Will but the uncle will definitely try to kill Wolfgang. One interesting detail: The diamonds Wolfgang stole were from Mumbai, which is where Kala is from. Diamonds as a metaphor for stealing the woman of great value from the rich man in India? If so, they never do anything else with it. Argh.
• Capheus and Riley meet for the first time; he has tea in her London apartment and she enjoys the heat in Nairobi. It’s a lovely, pleasant interaction which really doesn’t do anything except put two of the most pleasant of the eight together to smile at each other. Better is Capheus trying to deliver the bag for Kabaka, getting set upon by thugs, and calling for the “Jean Claude Korean Lady.”
• There are several quick cuts–Lito getting emotional in traffic because of PMS, Kala getting ready to be married and looking like death, Sun talking to her kickboxing teacher. The stuff with Sun would be fun if it weren’t so sad. I loved the “You are of two minds.” “At least.” exchange, and Lito and Sun flipping from traffic in Mexico City to a placid garden in Seoul, with Lito still talking on the phone to Hernando: “There’s a Korean lady standing next to me and she’s not crying the way I’m not screaming!” Okay, Lito’s really good at the comedy, but still, PMS?
• The Cluster seems to be coming together more. There’s a semi-chaotic series of bits where Will is talking to Nomi’s mother because he’s trying to find her to help her, and then Nomi is Will, telling her mother, “Her name is Nomi,” and then Kala’s father makes her a sweet dessert and Nomi tastes it in her coffee. That Capheus passes Kabaka’s test and that has nothing to do with any of the cluster. Then we’re with Wolf and Felix in a Berlin bar, and Felix is mouthing off about diamonds (that’ll be important later), and Wolfgang shushes him and goes into the restroom and Kala in Mumbai hears him and tells him to get out of her bathroom, and he starts going through stalls, thinking she’s some German girl who wandered into the men’s room, and then she recognizes his voice, and then Felix comes in. Then Will chases after a witness while Lito does an action scene, and they switch places back and forth. I know this paragraph has no unifying idea, but there’s a reason for that: ARGH.
You know what would be good? To know what triggers the switching places stuff or the “visiting” stuff. Riley and Will end up together because they’re thinking about each other. Sun and Lito . . . I dunno, they’re both emotional? Obviously when somebody is in trouble, one of the others is drawn in, except that Capheus gets the hell kicked out of him and nobody comes to help. I can’t see a pattern in the way the Cluster works.
• Sun and Capheus meet and talk in Seoul and Nairobi, and it’s one of the loveliest scenes in the series. She’s distraught and withdrawn; he’s amazed by Seoul but has his own problems. There’s a wonderful bit where she politely explains that her plate is full so she prefers to think of him as a hallucination, and he says he understands, but he can’t leave even though he tries. Their exchange about responsibility and promises made never rings as exposition or Big Ideas because they’re both heading into serious trouble because of what they owe their mothers. And it illuminates so much more of their characters. This is the stuff that brings me back every time.
• Sun takes her dog to her teacher because she can’t take care of him from prison (break my heart), Kala gets ready for her wedding, and Wolfgang goes swimming in the nude looking depressed. None of them are happy; everything moves slowly and silently, and there’s a real feeling of dread there. And then everybody gets five seconds: Lito’s with Hernando and Daniela, Capheus is stirring soup for his mother, Will walks into a cop bar in Chicago and sees Riley in a bar in London, Nomi and Amanita go back to their apartment and find it robbed and trashed by Whisper’s men, and Kala goes to her wedding. Then right before she takes her vows, Wolfgang walks out of the pool naked and up the steps and into her wedding, and says, “What the fuck are you doing? You’re not in love with him,” and she faints, and he faints, and the screen goes to black.
At some point in this series of posts, we need to talk about endings because these episodes don’t have any.
That bit at the wedding is definitely NSFW, so click on this link knowing you’re going to get full frontal nudity. Full back-al, too, come to think of it.
Episode 6: “Demons”
Great title: It’s what Kala calls Wolfgang as she turns away from her closet to find him naked in her bed, patting the sheets and inviting her to join him. Honestly, pull out Wolfgang’s scenes and Kala’s scenes and cut them togehter in one narrative and then give them an ending, for cripe’s sake, and you’ve got one hell of a romance/action movie. For the rest:
• Remember how Will walked into the cop bar and saw Riley in the last episode? He goes up to her (she’s in a bar in London), and she looks up, and he says, “I was just–” and she finishes “–thinking about you.” That’s key because it’s the first clue to how these people are going to connect purposefully. God knows why Capheus came to tea with Riley in the last episode, but at least Will and Riley connect when they think about each other, and there’s pretty good evidence that’s what was going on with Wolfgang and Kala at the end of the last episode. That was a really nice pool he was in and he did not look happy. But mostly I love this scene because they actually talk about how weird everything is. Riley says, “Are we going crazy?” even though she’s clearly enjoying the experience in general and Will in particular, and Will, practical guy that he is, puts his number into her phone and says, “Call me and we’ll see.” She hits the button, his phone rings, and to make absolutely sure, he gives his phone to Diego to answer. “It’s some girl with a weird accent,” Diego tells him, giving the phone back. “She sounds hot.” Boom, it’s real. Then Riley asks good questions, like “Have you had any more visitors?” Will tells her Jonas said there were eight like them–see, this is the stuff they should be sharing when they talk to the others, it’s HELPFUL–and then Will asks the wrong question and Riley says she has to go to bed. This is a bad move on everybody’s part.
• There’s an intercut section between Nomi and Sun that appears to based on Nomi’s line, “This isn’t fair, I didn’t do anything,” but it has serious consequences: Sun confesses to her brother’s crime at a press conference, and Nomi decides to fight back against Whispers. (YES. YES, YES, YES, and it’s about damn time somebody did.) Then Riley gets back to the apartment where she’s staying and Nyx is waiting for her, which also isn’t fair because she didn’t do anything.
• Nyx tries to kill Riley with a plastic bag and almost manages it until Will starts to suffocate in that cop bar in Chicago and takes out Nyx and his henchmen, freeing Riley to run. Unfortunately, he also takes out a couple of cops who were trying to help him when he started to convulse. This is not helping Will’s rep in the department. Lovely plot complication though.
• Nomi and Amanita go to stay with Amanita’s mother, who’s a crunchy-granola professor who teaches evolution, which is convenient for expositing Big Ideas. (It would have been so much more fun if she’d been middle class and conventional and still adored Amanita and thought Nomi was great. That happens.)
• Kala wakes up to her family gathered around her bed. They’re nice people but I’d be running for the woods screaming by now. Kala does say she doesn’t like being alone, but Jesus. They tell her Raj is downstairs waiting to talk to her, which is not what she wants to hear, but she dutifully gets rid of them and starts to get dressed. Except when she opens her closet, she’s in Berlin in Wolfgang’s closet, talking out his boxers, and he’s naked in his bed behind her. She turns around and he’s naked in her bed. This is the kind of visiting that’s just fun to watch; it’s not that they’re doing this location swapping stuff, it’s location swapping in the worst possible place at the worst possible time. Then Wolfgang smiles at her and pats the bed beside him, and she tells him, “You’re a demon.” When he says, “From the moment I saw you, I wanted you, and I think you want me, too,” (yeah, the constant visiting is pretty much a tip-off of that), and when she says, “You don’t know what I want,” he says, “You looked,” paying off the naked wedding scene. And then she smiles in spite of herself, and says, “You are a demon.” Watching these two is just nothing but fun, in part because they’re such opposites: he’s a dour atheist thief and killer who hates his sadistic family, and she’s a happy, devout pharmacist who loves her warm and supportive family. It’s a great romance dynamic which I did not expect to see in this series.
• Speaking of great couple dynamics, Lito is with Hernando and Daniela at a wrestling match and they’re not just having a wonderful time, they’re having a wonderful time together. Call it a triple dynamic; I think these three crazy kids can make it. (Honestly, this is the first time I thought an onscreen menage a trois was a good idea.) Then Hernando does some Big Idea ‘splaining, telling Daniela that the fight between the wrestler dressed in white and the wrestler dressed in black is a Manichean conflict (ya think?) and then goes on to explain that demons are just fears we’re afraid to face. At which point Lito looks over and sees Joaquin wearing a demon mask. Yep, that’s gonna pay off later.
• Then we’re back to goulash scenes. Raj still wants to marry Kala. Kabaka wants Capheus to take his daughter to her leukemia treatments. (You know, if the girl is that important to him, why isn’t he taking her in his heavily armored motorcade?) Sun is denied bail. Diego tells Will the other cops are starting to think he’s crazy. Capheus has to tell Jela that Kabaka has hired the bus for the week. Sun goes to prison, and of course there’s a Sun/Lito swap where Sun’s being interrogated by a creepy prison doctor and Lito’s being interviewed by a fawning entertainment reporter and hilarity ensues (not).
• So I have no idea what was happening in that last amalgamation of scenes, but I know what happens in the next series. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen an actual clusterfuck. I’m not sure what unites four of them this time: physical exertion? awareness of their bodies? Nomi wakes up and has sex with Amanita in San Francisco as Will is lifting weights in a hard workout in Chicago as Lito and Hernando are working out with weights in Mexico City, and Wolfgang is back in the water, this time a spa? in Berlin, thinking about Kala because she walks behind him in the nude as he basks, and I’m pretty sure she’s in Mumbai (doing god knows what). And then they start to . . . mesh. It’s hard to explain but at one point, Hernando is kissing Nomi while Lito kisses Amanita (that would be Lito and Nomi switching bodies, right?) and then Lito is in Chicago kissing a surprised Will doing push-ups (that’s visiting), and they all end up in the spa with Wolfgang who pretty much just lies back and thinks of Kala, and there’s a lot of heaving Renaissance-beautiful flesh. It’s all beautifully done, but it gives rise (ha) to a lot of questions, like is this going to happen every time somebody has sex? Because that could be a problem. Then everybody pretty much comes, Will looking around to see if anybody in the gym noticed, and we move to Capheus feeling uncomfortably hot as he watches Jean Claude Van Damme lifting a bathtub. Or something. Still, I finally know what a clusterfuck looks like, so I’m happy. It looks like this:
•Nomi has one of those Big Idea conversations with Amanita’s crunchy granola mom, but one of the things Nomi says is something I’d think they’d all be wondering about. Nomi thinks she has a brain tumor and that’s why she’s seeing all those people, and she wonders if what’s happening is like Alzheimers, that eventually her “sense of me-ness will disintegrate.” That’s a big question here, and this is the first time anybody’s raised it, but taken in context with the previous clusterfuck, it’s a real concern; the lines between their lives are blurring, and they not only have no idea how to control them, most of them have no idea what’s happening. Wolfgang and Kala are probably working on some version of “This person is a fantasy,” Riley and Will have actually talked about it, but everybody else is still firmly in WTF? territory.
• Riley and Sun have a heart-to-heart while Sun is despairing in prison and Riley is despairing after her near-death experience with Nyx. There’s a lovely bit where Riley points out the inscription in her park “I have conversed with the spiritual sun”–and they comfort each other in their situations, both of them in trouble for somebody else’s crime. Riley also drops the foreshadowing that there’s somebody in Iceland who told her she was hexed, and that bad things would happen if she didn’t leave, and then her mother died and she thought it was her fault. Sun says she thought it was her fault when her mother died, too. It’s a quiet scene, and I think it’s one of the reasons that viewers respond to Riley even though she doesn’t do anything: she’s a good person who joyfully connects with anybody who shows up in her life. Then Sun is back in prison, dreaming of her mother who tells her to be careful because people will be hunting her (and I thought, “You bitch, you knew this was coming and you didn’t tell her?”) and then Mom turns into Angel and tells her she’s the future. Fade to black.
Really, somebody has to talk to the writing team about these endings.
