[5.5/10] Well this was a disappointing end to an otherwise enjoyable season of television. To be honest, it’s hard to find things to like about this episode. It always had a pretty good balance of comedy and drama, but it goes hard on the drama here without earning most of it. It also leans hard on the twisty/soapy material that was never really my favorite thing about the series.
For one, we go from occasionally teasing who the person that dies in the first episode is, to making it the subject of headfake after headfake. It’s not that interesting of a question, and it just feels cheap to have it be the original Jammer at the end of the day. Bruce Dern isn’t at his best here, snarling and rasping his way without much substance or character. And all the times the show tries to suggest that someone we actually know and care about will be going over the edge feel cheesy when the end result is a cop out.
That it’s Jammer who bites the dust is supposed to have thematic resonance. Mo learns that the guy he idolized was playing him, and the two people that Mo himself mentored in that style have used that training to turn on him. So how he is literally and figuratively cutting ties with his old hero, throwing his gold watch and “fuck ‘em” attitude out along the way. But the show makes it so obvious and gets so heavy-handed with it that it’s hard to take too much from any of it.
At the same time, the finale gets really bogged down with exposition. I loved the McRib scene between Blair and Dawn, where we start to get some additional color as to what they’re both feeling and why they would team up. But the ensuing ten minutes of revealing every little step of their convoluted plan and laying out all the details for how they’re screwing Mo just feels like too much. They’re double-crossing him. We get it. I wish we spent more time on the emotional fall out from that and less time on the montage equivalent of a Bond villain monologue.
I also don’t like that we still ended up fixated on Mo/Dawn romantic drama here. I like the idea that there’s a decent guy underneath Mo’s “fuck ‘em all” exterior somewhere, who’s been poisoned by Jammer’s ideas. But I just don’t care about Dawn falling or feeling for him until he actually becomes that person. All the romantic teases and “I sense good in him” based on his “this isn’t the Georgina play; it’s a Steinbeck play” kind of crap just doesn't work for me. Mo’s sudden conscience and Dawn’s reticence after how much he’s unfairly denied her (as Blair rightly points out) is satisfying.
Hell, even Keith’s bit, which is one of the more affecting things in this episode, runs aground on how short a shrift the episode gives his story given the faux-epic standoff and monologue-off the show goes for in the climax. And the Lehman-related humor was a pretty big dud for me too.
All-in-all, this whole finale is a pretty big disappointment, one that changes the status quo, but feels far less definitive and interesting in where it finishes than what the pilot set up. This is a show that wants to make sure it has places to go in a season 2 rather than one ready to do something complete and fulfilling in its initial ten episode order.
Overall, I’m still high on this show for what it does on an episode-to-episode basis, bit the promise of the first season story arc comes to an satisfying thud, which spends more time swerving the audience on dull mysteries and explaining its twists than earning the character development which was always the more interesting element of the show.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2019-04-02T01:49:48Z
[5.5/10] Well this was a disappointing end to an otherwise enjoyable season of television. To be honest, it’s hard to find things to like about this episode. It always had a pretty good balance of comedy and drama, but it goes hard on the drama here without earning most of it. It also leans hard on the twisty/soapy material that was never really my favorite thing about the series.
For one, we go from occasionally teasing who the person that dies in the first episode is, to making it the subject of headfake after headfake. It’s not that interesting of a question, and it just feels cheap to have it be the original Jammer at the end of the day. Bruce Dern isn’t at his best here, snarling and rasping his way without much substance or character. And all the times the show tries to suggest that someone we actually know and care about will be going over the edge feel cheesy when the end result is a cop out.
That it’s Jammer who bites the dust is supposed to have thematic resonance. Mo learns that the guy he idolized was playing him, and the two people that Mo himself mentored in that style have used that training to turn on him. So how he is literally and figuratively cutting ties with his old hero, throwing his gold watch and “fuck ‘em” attitude out along the way. But the show makes it so obvious and gets so heavy-handed with it that it’s hard to take too much from any of it.
At the same time, the finale gets really bogged down with exposition. I loved the McRib scene between Blair and Dawn, where we start to get some additional color as to what they’re both feeling and why they would team up. But the ensuing ten minutes of revealing every little step of their convoluted plan and laying out all the details for how they’re screwing Mo just feels like too much. They’re double-crossing him. We get it. I wish we spent more time on the emotional fall out from that and less time on the montage equivalent of a Bond villain monologue.
I also don’t like that we still ended up fixated on Mo/Dawn romantic drama here. I like the idea that there’s a decent guy underneath Mo’s “fuck ‘em all” exterior somewhere, who’s been poisoned by Jammer’s ideas. But I just don’t care about Dawn falling or feeling for him until he actually becomes that person. All the romantic teases and “I sense good in him” based on his “this isn’t the Georgina play; it’s a Steinbeck play” kind of crap just doesn't work for me. Mo’s sudden conscience and Dawn’s reticence after how much he’s unfairly denied her (as Blair rightly points out) is satisfying.
Hell, even Keith’s bit, which is one of the more affecting things in this episode, runs aground on how short a shrift the episode gives his story given the faux-epic standoff and monologue-off the show goes for in the climax. And the Lehman-related humor was a pretty big dud for me too.
All-in-all, this whole finale is a pretty big disappointment, one that changes the status quo, but feels far less definitive and interesting in where it finishes than what the pilot set up. This is a show that wants to make sure it has places to go in a season 2 rather than one ready to do something complete and fulfilling in its initial ten episode order.
Overall, I’m still high on this show for what it does on an episode-to-episode basis, bit the promise of the first season story arc comes to an satisfying thud, which spends more time swerving the audience on dull mysteries and explaining its twists than earning the character development which was always the more interesting element of the show.