It’s very difficult to watchSense8without a smile on your face.
The Netflix serieswhich returns Friday with a very long conclusion moviehas paradoxical charms.
It has been ambitious and silly, cheerful and bloodsoaked, cry-your-eyes-out moving and bloated beyond words.
Credit: Segolene Lagny/Netflix
But its best moments have a tossed-off flair.
The concept took forever to develop, with lots of filler reflecting the first wave of Netflix bloat.
But there was a wonderful spirit here.
The sensates (and their supporting casts) were unilaterally stoked about their new superpower.
The tone was ebullient: I’ve got so many friends now!
A lot of the grander plot elements felt rickety, too conventional.
Too many elements of the grander narrative felt repetitive, reductive, just kinda dumb.
Naveen Andrews kept on popping up with unhelpful advice.
The story-surfing smoothed over the rough patches.
This genre affectation could reduce complex characters to their bare tactical essentials.
Capheus (Aml Ameen in season 1, Toby Onwumere ever since) was The Driver.
Sun (marvelously deadpan Doona Bae) was the Martial Artist.
Will was Good With Guns, whereas Wolfgang was Really Good With Guns.
Nomi was the Squad Tech Whiz, Kala the Squad Medic.
Riley was, like, a fly DJ.
His very public coming out (on location at Sao Paulo’s Pride Parade!)
was a distillation of all the show’s best instinctsgrand, intimate, glittery, humane.
The Wachowskis experienced their own very public variations of this sequence, havingboth come out as transgender.
So there was passionate resonance running through this global epic.
All are welcome on the polyamorous friend-family sex pile!
Netflix canceledSense8last year mid-cliffhanger.
It wasrescued by a loud fan response, and now the finale is directed by Lana Wachowski.
(Lilly stepped away from the show after season 1).
Together they’ve crafted an overstuffed wrap-up story.
(“Why doIalways have to get shot?”
asks one character, an old tragedy repeated as a self-referential farce.)
For the most part, everyone’s all in the same physical space.
What’s left is, essentially, a heist movie.
Or ratherminor spoilertwo heist movies.
Faceless men with guns keep knocking down doors and getting shot by our plucky heroes.
For all its generous affectations, this series isviolent, man.
The last act features a very old-fashioned shoot-out, complete with one very big explosion.
What sticks out is the humanity, the little moments that feel much larger.
There is a mid-movie road trip punctuated by a high-speed Depeche Mode musical number.
There are passionate declarations of love punctuated by the actual Eiffel Tower.
At one point, everyone pretends to be tourists, a goofy game of dress-up played for sincere laughs.
I can feel my mind, my ideas of self, expanding!"
Sense8really could feel mind-expanding.
(A romantic triangle is resolved in the finale in a perfectlySense8-ish way.)
There’s not much feeling of danger in this finale; the villains are all still so lame.
It wore eight hearts on its sleeve.
