I have absolutely no idea where this show is going now
having already been rebooted once and still not really answered any questions
except piling random events on drama and then sprinkling with hallucinations. I’m
actually reaching a point where I’ve given up trying to understand this plot at
all – it feels like a
Madlib. Or
perhaps that it’s trying too hard to be deep by being random as I mentioned
in the review of the season finale.
Watching this episode one thing I am very much reminded
of is its dedication to feeling, atmosphere and theme to the detriment of
pacing. We have several moments where the characters kind of just stand there
either emoting at a screen or doing nothing while the music plays. And, yes, I
get it the music is very well chosen and does add excellently to the feel and theme
of the show
But it’s slow. And after two seasons I’m kind of frustrated
by the whole thing. I already get the themes of feeling and atmosphere: of
despair, of fear, of anxiety, of deeply damaged people trying to deal with
things, of faith and grief and pain and horror. These are established in great
detail already and since this show has already expanded a considerable amount
of my patience for it to actually get on with anything that I find the whole
thing very frustrating
I also find random opening scenes with no context
bizarre. In this case we have a 19th century woman who believes in
the rapture. She, her family and her congregation climb on the roof every
rapture day ready to be pulled to Heaven and each time they’re not and have to
climb down again. Each time less and less people join her on the roof, even her
own family. And she never gets raptured
Shall I put this down to the same random opener in season
2?
To the present and Meg and Evie are all doing their
Guilty Remnant thing when they’re all blown up by a drone. Well that ends that storyline
I guess
Fast forward three years and Miracle has changed. People
are coming back, there are lots of camps and it’s not being run like some kind
of police state. It’s 14 days until the 7th anniversary of the
Departure and because the number 7 is significant people are expecting this to
be a Big Deal
Despite that everything look relatively peaceful after
all the chaos and horror and rage and fear we saw in the last 2 seasons. There’s
no wristbands, no strict population control, no repression. Kevin is now chief
of police riding his horse and keeping the peace with relative calmness and
sensibility, dealing with the large number of completely random pilgrims with
their standard nonsenses and doing it quite well
Matt has a very popular church from which he is basically
parading Mary and his son Noah around as walking miracles to his congregation.
Tommy is a policeman under him and is similarly living a
stable life helping keeping Miracle stable. His birthday is accompanied with a
surprise party and all their extended family
There’s Michael Murphy doing computer and church things
who Tommy now views as a little brother (apparently).
John Murphy is now in a relationship with Laurie. He’s
doing the psychic handprint reading now but he’s actually doing it using Laurie’s
psychotherapy and stalking skills to try and help people who desperately need
help and counselling. They even shred the money they’re given so it does seem
like a genuine wish to help people
Nora is still with Kevin and is a big wig for the
Department of the Disappeared and actively involved round town – but baby Lily
is missing and no-one mentions her. Even Jill shows up. It all looks great
But tensions are still there: Kevin clearly has a few
flashback issues and Matt’s religious devotion is going to stir up trouble. He
has turned his wife into such a token that Mary intends to leave him.
We’re also reminded that not everyone has reacted to the
Departure in a rational manner. We have a visitor from season 1, Dean, the guy
who was shooting dogs with Kevin. Because of a peanut butter sandwich he has
now decided that senators are being replaced by dogs shifting into people…
Kevin is duly sceptical and tries to treat him as unstable in (as Laurie points
out) all the worst ways. Dean ends up ambushing Kevin and Tommy and Tommy has
to shoot Dean in the head to save Kevin
It’s messy. What’s almost terrifying is how blasé Tommy is about it. Kevin insists that Tommy get therapy – as he did when he killed someone. Only when asked about it he recounts killing Patti in his dream world, as if it were real. Kevin is definitely not as put together as he thinks – as evidenced by his morning habit of suffocating himself with a plastic bag (suicide? Self-harm? Auto-erotic asphyxiation?)
The town isn’t all quiet either –when Matt tries to
organise a baptismal, a protest group pretend to poison the water (the
poisoning is exposed as fake by Kevin deciding to just jump into it. Because he
thinks he can taste all toxins, apparently because that would most definitely
not confirm the water is safe). The protest group is drawing attention to the
murder of the Guilty Remnant by drone. The official story is that they were
killed by a gas leak. It’s the story that Kevin parroted but he and Tommy both
know is false.
And the battle between the protestors and Matt’s church
looked a lot like the violent protests against the Guilty Remnant, complete
with stoning people. The peace of Miracle is all on the surface and only on the
surface.
The big conflict brewing is Matt – he is writing a book.
The Gospel according to Kevin. He is writing a holy book about Kevin’s life –
helped by John and Michael who are all true believers
Kevin is not happy about this at all – completely enraged
in fact. But they present the evidence: John shot Kevin in the chest and he got
up and without medical attention he is fine. He jumped in a lake last season to
drown himself and an Earthquake drained the lake to save him. He took poison
and Michael buried him – and he came back after visiting (admittedly an extremely
weird) afterlife. Someone coming back from the dead so many time is compelling –
and it puts a whole new context to his self-suffocation
Matt believes that Kevin’s un-dying-ness will not last
outside of special Miracle (he feels much the same about Mary not being in a
coma) but Kevin is more concerned with burning the book
He goes outside… and we don’t see whether he does or not
Instead we get a skip to, presumably, the future and a
woman taking messages from several passenger doves – but not reading them. She then
cycles those doves back to a nun… who asks her if the name “kevin” means
anything. She says no – but the woman is a much older Nora.
So that happened.
Putting aside the randomness because who can ever say
what is happening on this show, the overall feel I get from the first episode
is one of simmering tension. Everything is much lighter and brighter than the
last 2 seasons but it’s all surface. We can feel how everything and everyone is
juuuuuuuust this side of cracking… and the splintering is probably 14 days away
