Finished off season 4 tonight. Worth watching, though I felt they certainly missed some opportunities for improvement. Solid B, if I was grading.
@Papageno, We see Harewood in ep 2 in the flashback, and then ep 5 during that unfortunate meeting with the admiral when he eats a bullet.
I could have done with less Childan, but that’s been true in every episode that he’s been in since season 1. I’d have much rather they put Ed in season 4 than Robert.
As for the ending, I largely agree with @Timex. The ending of episode 9 was awesome and just what you wanted to see. Then all went off the rails in the second half of the last episode.
Har, off the rails, see what I did there? :)
First, they certainly laid the groundwork for Smith’s second-in-command to decide he didn’t want to be a Nazi any more, but calling everything off last-minute was still stupid. And no one else stood up to him, all those people who were supposedly gung-ho Nazis making plans for camps and all? I suppose the implication was that there would be a bunch of infighting in the American Reich after all that, and possibly conflict with the European Reich, but it all still felt pretty weak.
Second, there’s the whole random-people-portal-walking thing. I’m pretty sure they were supposed to represent a correction of the “balance across worlds” since they made a point of saying earlier (S3 I think) that the whole crossing-worlds thing was only possible because the atrocities in Naziland were somehow unbalancing the multi-verse. Makes no sense, but then neither does the whole portaling thing in the first place, so whatever. I would have rather seen some kind of big portal-closing scene at the end, personally.
It was a great ride until the last half of the last episode. Nowhere near as bad as GoT though.
I was really hoping for an advance unit of Marines (comprised of Jews and African-Americans, since they were all exterminated in the Reich, oh and Thomas of course) to come through the portal. Surely if you knew the Nazis had invasion plans, you would at least tip off the other world?
Yup, spent all Sunday watching this. The close encounter ending was, whatever!, still a hopeful ending for so many depressing things touched on. Worth the 4 seasons. Great acting as well from the Japanese side, has alot more sympathetic characters than the evil Germans (both were pretty shitty). Loved the Himmler put down near end. So fitting.
There are definitely scenes like that (the stuff that happens at the end of episode 4, for instance) OTOH I have a last of its kind plasma TV which means the blacks are really black, plus my viewing condition is not ideal (reflections on the dark screen).
Cripes, could they not have dubbed “Eichmann’s” presentation in Berlin with a real German speaker’s voice in Episode 9? This guy’s obviously terrible accent is excruciating.
My verdict on Season 4 is that the outline for the end of the series was very solid, but the execution was lacking, especially in comparison to the better parts of seasons 1 and 2.
My likes:
Helen Smith’s arc, which made her one of the most compelling characters on the show.
The parallels between the Japanese occupation of the West coast and the US in Vietnam, as well as those between the BCR and the Civil Rights Movement. (Though the fact that the fast pace of the season -see below - meant they had to jam those parallels in our faces rather then letting us discover them gradually was less ideal.)
Some of the fun little details, like the Nazi Twilight Zone and the rocket train.
John Smith’s daughters, who were both unbearable (in totally different ways) and completely realistic.
Sewell’s John Smith and Joel de la Fuente’s Kida, which share the title of MVP for the series overall.
Dislikes:
Suddenly pulling stuff out of nowhere, like the CBR’s master plan to strike against the Empire or their interference with the Reich (the latter had me yelling, “That’s not how broadcast television works!” at my TV.) Or coincidences, like Juliana just happening on that bakery. (Or was that set up in a previous season but I forgot?)
The fact that the CBR is shown on screen as consisting of about ten people, until the plot deems it necessary for them to be a ginormous organization with iron control over groups in many, many cities.
The various plot threads that were underdeveloped or half baked, like Tagomi’s fate, Kido’s son (who managed to occupy a fair amount of screen time without coming across as anything more than his pathologies) or anything to do with Abensen. Or, for that matter, the whole “the Reich is going to invade Earth-1” thing, which the end of Season 3 assured us was important but turned out to be a red herring.
No Tagomi.
The final scene, as everyone has already mentioned. Didn’t really add anything, and confused everyone.
My main complaint: all the events felt very, very rushed, like they packed two seasons worth of story into ten episodes (e.g. John Smith’s superbusy weekend trip, which really should have extended over several visits to properly sell the outcome, or the Japanese Empire making vast decisions about its future in a couple of days.) This affected all the episodes to some degree or another.
Still, there was some great stuff in there, as there was in the other seasons. And even though it’s very different than the book, it still manages to be the second-most faithful Dick adaptation out there, after A Scanner Darkly.
The symbol that was painted above the arch in the very last scene, near the portal… Was that the symbol from the Jewish artist/Forger guy?
If so, how would it have even gotten there? No one on the east coast would have seen that. As far as i remember, it was just some thing that was starting to spread around on the west coast.
We just finished it last night. Some parts were really good (Helen’s character arc), but wow those multiple completely unnecessary endings were mostly hot garbage. It’s like they couldn’t decide how to finish and just figured they’d tack together a few unearned and non-sensical codas. The actions by John’s second in command and the implied sudden & complete change are thoroughly unearned. The portal stuff is just plain idiotic and non-sensical.
Eh, I thought it was somewhat earned. We saw quite a few times he wasn’t happy with things and willing to change. It was somewhat dramatic, but in character with him suddenly being put in charge of things.
The portal really is the worst of it because… it was just nonsense with no set up. It didn’t leave me with a good feeling (which I think was the intention), it left me asking: “What? What is the point of this?” It’s easy to ignore though since it’s basically nonsense.
Yeah, I felt mostly the same as @ShivaX. When John got medieval on Himmler with the breathing machine, I thought what, they left the prisoner and Himmler alone and no one was watching? But then after the next scene, when I thought back to earlier hints - particularly when they had that drink back in New York - it all made sense.
Completely unearned. I thought I must have somehow skipped an entire episode where they set that up, but…no, I guess you have a quick bourbon with someone and that’s how it goes.
