It gets real crazy soon, don’t worry.
Episode 6 and I am fully roped back in. Not the same sense of dread as season 1, but a solid mystery so far.
Unfortunately I can’t say the same. Just finished Ep 7 and am feeling pretty disinterested in the story. Perhaps its because there is no sympathetic character anymore? Will finish it and perhaps the ending will somehow turn me around on this, but I reckon I won’t be back for season 3…
Wow. That was a whole lot of fuss for not much payoff. Hopefully this is the end of the line for this series.
I have no idea what you people are talking about. There was no second season of Fortitude.
-Tom
Excellent. Must just be the reindeer juice talkin’.
I mean, it’s not as good as season 1 (that would have been a really tall order), but I thought it was acceptably creepy and weird and I still cared about most of the characters quite a bit. I don’t know what Cormac is talking about when he says there are no sympathetic characters. Most of the people in town are sympathetic! I mean, there’s a few villains and I guess I can understand not feeling sympathy for our shaman friend or Dan Anderssen (although they’re both clearly struggling with the things they feel they must/are compelled to do). But there’s plenty of people just trying to live their lives and generally do the right thing. I will grant that they ditched some of the most compelling characters, though.
One of my problems with a hypothetical second season of Fortitude is that it violates willy-nilly all the character development in the first season. It’s a classic example of TV that exists only to drive a dopey plot, and the purpose of the characters is only to further that plot. I mean, it would be if anyone ever made it, which fortunately they haven’t so far.
Consider the first season. Yeah, yeah, parasitic prehistoric wasps are cool and creepy and all, but the real reveal was the relationship among three characters, and specifically what Dan knows or doesn’t know, and what Dan does to those relationships. The plot of the first season of Fortitude served the characters, not the other way around. Lucky for us, there’s no second season that comes along to reboot everything out of whole cloth, using Sheriff Dan as the vessel for some weird superhuman regenerative tissue nonsense out of left field that goes literally nowhere.
That said, if there ever is a second season of Fortitude, I sure would enjoy just listening to Alexandra Moen’s adorable Icelandic accent. I would watch eight hour-long episodes of Petra reading names out of the phone book.
-Tom
Amen, brother!
It really is crazy how poorly that the creators of season two understood the appeal of season one. Season one was a slow burn of dread punctuated by shocking violence. For some odd reason, they decided that shocking violence was the sole reason for enjoying season one, so why not go whole hog. They needed the clean up crew to show up way earlier than they did, grab Dan, and be done with it. So much made so little sense and the end was just this side of meaningless.
Very disappointed.
.
.
Indeed. I regret having watched this season.
I’m so bummed. Finding that season one because of this thread filled me with so much immense joy. See, I don’t watch TV per se. I only watch it when I can watch an entire season on Netflix. Commercials and all that and I hate wasting time on crap. But this wasn’t crap!
I was so looking forward to this season finishing & in fact my wife the other day said “Hey you know that weird iceland series we watched? They have another season”. I had to break it to her that it’s just not worth it.
So, QT3, thank you for letting me know about season 1 and thank you again for letting me know about Season 2! But I’m bummed because it was truly a location / weirdness that I could get into. It reminded me of a dark Northern Exposure.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. There is no season 2 of Fortitude.
-Tom
This made me laugh. This sums it up, though. Season 1 actually had characters so that comparison makes an odd kind of sense. Season 2 has caricatures (at best) and bodies.
I really don’t agree with that assessment. I am not going to argue that the main plot of the second season made a whole heck of a lot of sense, but I felt that the show kept most of its biggest strengths in terms of characterization/acting and cinematography. I mean, yeah, okay, Dennis Quaid had some trouble, but we’re talking about someone who stars in cinematic masterpieces like Legion (the movie, not the show), so that’s not totally unexpected.
The skyrocketing level of crazy kept my attention for the first few episodes of season 2 but i was pretty zoned out watching the show by the end. I absolutely get all the disappointment.
This thread is really confusing. You’re telling me there’s a second season of Fortitude?
It doesn’t look like anything to me.
-Tom
Well, we just wrapped up Season 2 last night, and we loved it.
I see that @tomchick refuses to acknowledge that a Season 2 even exists. I am kind of torn on this viewpoint. Part of me thinks Season 2 should have been an entirely different series, because it had a completely different feel. It moved fast. It felt more like an excellent thriller. And that’s what I loved about it. It was very fun to watch, and kept our attention all the way through. It was exciting and fascinating.
But it was so different from the first season. And yet it could not possibly have worked as a separate show because it carried enough of the first season with it that it had to be an extension of it. So in some ways I was watching it as a separate show, while in other ways it was very much Fortitude.
Do I wish it had been done differently? Not really, because I cannot envision anything else. Perhaps I’m not imaginative enough to come up with anything different for a season 2.
Had I never seen Season 1, I would have thought this was a great show. So I have to say that it stands by itself as a great season, Fortitude or not. That was confusing to write. I hope I made sense.
Yeah, this is really the best way to think of it. If it ever gets made. But we’ll never know because right now we only have the one season of Fortitude.
-Tom
Just finished episodes 11-20 (just for Tom, I won’t call it season two) and you guys pretty much nailed exactly how I felt about it. Yeah, it wasn’t as sky-high impressive as the first ten, but I still thought it worked just fine and I don’t regret spending time on it.
I will say, though, that I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to see them continue the series. (No decision yet as far as I know.) I’d definitely go in with lower expectations next time. Which, come to think of it, might be better anyway.