Summary: Fitzjames talks with Blanky and decides that they have to leave the ships and walk. Fitzjames chooses to have a carnival before they leave. Crozier continues to recover from withdrawal. Goodsir realizes that their food is poisoning the crew and must be dealt with. Lady Silence cuts out her tongue to tame the Tuunbaq. Stanley kills himself during the carnival while Crozier makes a speech and burns down the carnival. Hickey saves the crew by cutting them a hole to escape.
The Good: The opening scene did a good job of establishing Fitzjames' motives for the carnival. The decision to leave the ships is logical and it's easy to understand why Fitzjames would choose to give the crew some time to celebrate before hard times await them. I liked that there was some follow-up from the underwater scene in episode 1. Collins isn't somebody we know well but I was happy to see that his character is still feeling unsettled after his short underwater trip. There is a clear theme of losing yourself in this episode with this storyline as well as Stanley's which was pretty tragic. Speaking of that, the climactic carnival scene definitely delivered. The happiness was certainly needed to relieve some tension and it set the scene perfectly for everything to go wrong. The immolation of Stanley was well done as it, along with Lady Silence's sudden arrival, cut off Crozier's optimistic return speech and interlaced the episode with dread and horror. The sudden aspect of Stanley's death was very eerie and the fire added a good source of tension which needed to be overcome. It was quite scary to see Hickey brutally kill a crew member to save the rest too. The acting is really good on this show. A lot of what happens only works because the performances do a superb job of conveying each character's emotions. The Bad: The characters in this show remain too shallow. So many of the crew members have no real character and that makes it extremely difficult for me to feel anything for them. Unfortunately this also includes Fitzjames who was presented as a central character, but hasn't done anything much of note since the first episode. As a central character for this episode, he desperately needed to get some depth like Crozier in the last episode, but we got practically nothing for him. The other crew members suffer from this too and that makes all of the side characters lack any impact. There were several character transformations in this episode which didn't feel earned. First was Collins' sudden reveal that he was depressed and scared. This may have made an impact if we saw him slowly get overcome with fear or something along those lines, but we haven't really seen him since episode 1. This "character development" feels so inorganic because of this and doesn't pack a punch at all. The same goes with Stanley. At the beginning of the episode he is calm and collected but he suddenly pulled a murder suicide by the end of the episode. Why? Was it because of the lead poisoning? Who knows. It's bad that such a major scene happened without any understanding of why the character did what he did. I also think that the show has done a poor job of conveying how desperate the situation is. There are far too many timeskips and not nearly enough time is being dedicated to showing how awful it must be to be trapped on these ships for so long. If the point is supposed to be that these men are going mad, then that process needs to be shown. Nobody just goes from zero to a hundred like that. I feel like this episode was bogged down by too many side characters giving unnecessarily long stories which add nothing of substance. Blanky's story about the first mate on his previous voyage is only there for thematic relevance which is not good for such a lengthy scene. A scene like that should have been used to characterize both Blanky and Fitzjames. Maybe we can learn about what drives Fitzjames? Or maybe how Blanky feels about having only one leg now? Unfortunately we get nothing like that. We get more scenes like this too with Collins and Jopson who tell dull stories to pass off as character development. In the slow middle episodes we need much more character than we are getting, and filler like these scenes is just inexcusable. The Unknown: Has Lady Silence tamed the Tuunbaq now? Why did she have to cut out her tongue? What does that signify? How injured is she from it? Best Moment: The immolation of Stanley was so shocking and sudden that it ended up easily being the best thing about this episode. The climax saved this from being a total dud. Character of the Episode: Stanley. Conclusion: This was disappointing. There hasn't been enough character development done and these slower middle episodes are being wasted by not developing characters. In a 10 episode series, we can't afford to have episodes like these. Score: 54
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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