Okay. I'll give it this. Whatever my gripes with the series as a whole, it ended well. Let's talk about episodes 7 and 8. The final pairing.
Episode 7 starts with "Infidelity" and ends with the third strike and a separation between Jane and John. Michaela Coel has what is probably the best line of the series. Which is a shame because unlike say the best line in Ted Lasso it has nothing to do with the show. It's a throwaway line about how "We're not bonding you have a gun on me". It's brilliant. In a world where no one seems to care about telling anyone they are a spy, it makes it very confusing to care about things like when spies take people hostage. Oh sure this time she turned out to be a spy as well but in the next episode the same thing happens but not. The show very clearly doesn't have any conception of what a spy is. To the point where they get missions and pretend they have to keep a secret but then they ... don't. Ever. pretend or keep secrets. This was a solid episode where I liked the interplay between them because they had something to do while keeping up that interplay. Sort of like how YouTubers hold microphones no matter what type or style or situation because they need to do something with their hands. This show needs to do something with it's background plot or the interplay between the leads just feels weird and pointless.
Episode 8 Our finale of course is going to have a lot of big moments. You have your requisite dramatic irony as two character try to kill each other for the crime of trying to kill each other a crime neither committed. It goes on for way way way too long as an audience member but it's balanced well with all the action. It comes to a nice conclusion fight scene wise. We find out who was really pulling their strings as well as who was pulling THEIR strings. And then we have an excellent cliffhanger ending. Once again we have a spy taking someone to extreme levels of violence but this time it's not a spy posing as a civy it's an actual civy. In a show that played this sort of thing for laughs that could be funny but this show has a mise that's fairly serious but doesn't make sense. You can't do that. As a counter example I just watched Jason Statham's Beekeeper recently. That's a movie that's ostensibly about getting revenge on tech support scammers from someone who has never actually seen a tech support scam. What I actually think happened is because of the complexities of the optics and racism they needed to modify the villains so they made them into wall street traders. Which is fine because this is a fairly goofy movie. Contrast that to MMS where everything about it is goofy (Title, Concept, Synopsis, even the poster) except the actual episodes themselves. Those are played far too straight to take with humor. So when the FBI gets a case that involves oval office members and they tell the Secret Service to put it aside? I can take that in a movie where some dude gets strapped to a car and driven off a bridge. But when you hold a gun to a Sotheby's agent and threaten to kill them except "nah it's ok". That's a little harder to take. It's a good episode. Top 3 of the series even, but almost all of the good is due to finale shenanigans. Not literally all but almost all.
I'm perfectly willing to watch a second season. I naively believe now that we have a lot of the awkwardness out of the way there's no way the second season is going to have the same problems that plagued the first. We'll have a more focused story because there's not a lot of story floating. We have direct questions that need to be answered now. I actually need to rewatch the whole thing because I think there's a lot of ending interstitial I might have missed. The one in episode 7 foreshadows some of the discussion about Hihi in episode 8.
Review by wolfkinBlockedParent2024-02-09T23:16:21Z
Okay. I'll give it this. Whatever my gripes with the series as a whole, it ended well. Let's talk about episodes 7 and 8. The final pairing.
Episode 7 starts with "Infidelity" and ends with the third strike and a separation between Jane and John. Michaela Coel has what is probably the best line of the series. Which is a shame because unlike say the best line in Ted Lasso it has nothing to do with the show. It's a throwaway line about how "We're not bonding you have a gun on me". It's brilliant. In a world where no one seems to care about telling anyone they are a spy, it makes it very confusing to care about things like when spies take people hostage. Oh sure this time she turned out to be a spy as well but in the next episode the same thing happens but not. The show very clearly doesn't have any conception of what a spy is. To the point where they get missions and pretend they have to keep a secret but then they ... don't. Ever. pretend or keep secrets. This was a solid episode where I liked the interplay between them because they had something to do while keeping up that interplay. Sort of like how YouTubers hold microphones no matter what type or style or situation because they need to do something with their hands. This show needs to do something with it's background plot or the interplay between the leads just feels weird and pointless.
Episode 8 Our finale of course is going to have a lot of big moments. You have your requisite dramatic irony as two character try to kill each other for the crime of trying to kill each other a crime neither committed. It goes on for way way way too long as an audience member but it's balanced well with all the action. It comes to a nice conclusion fight scene wise. We find out who was really pulling their strings as well as who was pulling THEIR strings. And then we have an excellent cliffhanger ending. Once again we have a spy taking someone to extreme levels of violence but this time it's not a spy posing as a civy it's an actual civy. In a show that played this sort of thing for laughs that could be funny but this show has a mise that's fairly serious but doesn't make sense. You can't do that. As a counter example I just watched Jason Statham's Beekeeper recently. That's a movie that's ostensibly about getting revenge on tech support scammers from someone who has never actually seen a tech support scam. What I actually think happened is because of the complexities of the optics and racism they needed to modify the villains so they made them into wall street traders. Which is fine because this is a fairly goofy movie. Contrast that to MMS where everything about it is goofy (Title, Concept, Synopsis, even the poster) except the actual episodes themselves. Those are played far too straight to take with humor. So when the FBI gets a case that involves oval office members and they tell the Secret Service to put it aside? I can take that in a movie where some dude gets strapped to a car and driven off a bridge. But when you hold a gun to a Sotheby's agent and threaten to kill them except "nah it's ok". That's a little harder to take. It's a good episode. Top 3 of the series even, but almost all of the good is due to finale shenanigans. Not literally all but almost all.
I'm perfectly willing to watch a second season. I naively believe now that we have a lot of the awkwardness out of the way there's no way the second season is going to have the same problems that plagued the first. We'll have a more focused story because there's not a lot of story floating. We have direct questions that need to be answered now. I actually need to rewatch the whole thing because I think there's a lot of ending interstitial I might have missed. The one in episode 7 foreshadows some of the discussion about Hihi in episode 8.