1x08 Wallfacer

Mixed feelings as a book reader.

I like how they stuck to source material for the Wallfacers bit, even quoting lines from the book verbatim. It was kind of like an apology for episodes 6 and 7 being 100% original material, not in the books, and both episodes sucked...

Spoilers from this episode below - - - - - - - -

Ok, I'm really confused what the writers were thinking. They made up the entire brain rocket plot, only to have it fail. Why make up a bunch of dumb shit up only for it to be entirely inconsequential? Were they trying to make it more emotional? The book was plenty emotional if they didn't strip away all the depth and nuance in their adaptation. Also, the author goes into detail about how nukes don't work in space, so they can't just nuke the alien fleet. Then these moron writers make an entire plot line around nukes in space. While writing adapting the very book that says that's impossible.

I'm glad they at least included the bug scene at the end as a nice way to wrap up until next season. Like, ok, maybe we are bugs, but we still have hope for survival.

I think this was a reasonably good episode overall, it somewhat brought the spark back after extinguishing it in episodes 6 and 7.

Now I'd like to see the show directors forced to write "Stick to the source material" on a chalkboard 900 times before they work on Season 2.

The staircase plan was even more stupid than I thought...
Already noted that when they sent the bombs they didn't know when they would send the module, so how could they have planned their positions ?

There's "a couple hours" before reaching the first detonation after launch. But the bombs can only have been left behind (you can't position them on Earth orbits because orbital speed is fixed, so there would be no way to line them up), and Earth moves way faster on its orbit than we can send spacecrafts. So if they sent them two days before, it would need at least 3 times that to reach the first one. Anyway the first one needs to be far enough from Earth that its EMP does not affect existing satellites, so several thousands kilometers from geostationary orbit at the very least. This alone is days.

And with all that they need the sail to pass exactly centred on the bomb. And no way to adjust (extra propulsion on the module won't have any effect if it's dragged by the sail). Which means really 0 margin for calculations errors (like a few extra grams ?).

But anyway the worst thing, since it's centred, it means the explosion occurs between the sail and the module (otherwise the module would just bump into it). Which means that not only does the module gets the full blast (so need to be armoured to take it + radiation protected so that the brain survives) it also fully pass through the explosion.

And that means the explosion simultaneously pushes forward on the sail, backwards on the module, sideways on the cables... Really a shitty design.

No wonder it breaks... But I assume Will is not lost, because this was the only point of the character, so... that'd be pretty annoying to have to endure his storyline for this.

The Wallfacer part was pretty fun. Though I still don't know why the San Ti would not be able to read our minds (they can manipulate extremely precisely what our brain sees but they wouldn't be able to read it ? When they actually communicate by telepathy between themselves ?). But this simple realization and efficiently turning it into this worldwide project shows again how amazing Wade is.

And the whole bit with Saul saying he refuses, and everyone being "yes sir, of course sir", was hilarious. I guess his brain is still on weed and can't realize yet :)

But however smart and fun that is, as a project it is probably not much better than the staircase one.
1) They can be killed easily. Do they get 24/7 protection like Saul ?

2) The attempts at his life were pretty weak. They have the means for much smarter, either precise, or with massive collateral damage, attacks. They could also chain them non stop with backup over backup plans. And just for starters, why the hell are they always on plane (taking him to UN, and Wade afterwards) ?? Just mess up the bits with the instruments and it's done. Smart saying that they want to meet Wade, that gives a plot armour that takes care of (a bit) of this plothole.

3) Even without outside plans to kill them, apparently just seeing the countdown drove some people crazy. They could do so much worse (maybe a bit like Wade's horror visions) 24/7, see how much they can think of a plan with that, and how long they survive without being able to sleep.

4) Even if they're safe, they can't keep a 400 years plan in their mind. Specially as the other two are already pretty old. They can't even transmit secret plans to their successors.

5) And even at their own time scale, they can't communicate between themselves either, so they could have similar (hence useless) plans, or even worse interfering ones.

The bug analogy was a bit on the nose and corny, but yeah, I'll buy, was a good way to end.

As someone who hasn’t read the books nor knew anything about this story, I consider this to be a solid show.
However I think it lacks depth and an emotional anchor. Who’s the main character? Eiza? Benedict? Jin? Like I get that the show revolves around a friend group but someone’s perspective has to stand out. I personally would’ve liked for Benedict to be the center of the show, but I get that would’ve made it more of a detective show, so I wanted more out of Eiza and Jin.
Also I feel like the show was missing something visually, if you were to choose 4 screenshots to represent the vibe of the show which ones would be? I think when Vera jumps inside that golden room, when her mom and tatiana are watching the sunset in china, when saul and that other guy are in the beach house and that’s it?
There was way more to exploit out of this show, more character develop needed, more world building.
Imagine if this was an HBO show! I can think of the Leftovers, that most of it was set in the suburbs, it didn’t need crazy settings or crazy effects but you could feel the show.
I’ve read some comments about how adapting the book can be challenging, but I feel like this was extremely digested for us, and everything was solved within the same episode, by episode 4-5 there wasn’t any mystery left.
All this aside, it’s an interesting and solid watch, hopefully we don’t have to wait 2+ years for a second season.

I’m at a point with these shows where I feel the writers, director and perhaps the sound man need to be brought to an international court for crimes against our attention span with a high crime of wasting everyone time.

It seemed like a demo tape for a new camera with long droning cello’s — all enclosed locations, terrible dialogue, a character not established enough for the audience to commit any empathy towards (nor any other character.) Really melodramatic for no reason. Like the shot is a girl putting that thing on and you think its going to cut to the alternative world, but the tension continues instead to a lab guy pulling a smoky probe out a hole. The music continues to build obnoxiously, like a Key & Peele level absurdity -until two characters ( I’ve clocked 6 hours watching but still unsure of who they are and why I should care) step out and watch a rocket launch. Long music cue, shots of close-ups of people i dont care about, music is blaring 15 minutes later - nothing burger.

The episode has four of these moments of blue balls inducing suspense. The first is at the UN, long monologue extremely poor writing, tension building, shmuck refuses to stand - tension drops to full orchestra. Nothing burger- literally what is the point of this shows score? To fill the void of how poorly written it is? Perhaps :thinking: or maybe its an illusion of a show; a corporate sprint that attempts to dot the tee’s and cross the eyes to just suck the soul out of your already jilted soul.