Fernando

This has to be one of the best episodes in the entire series. Probably not the funniest, but in its own subtle and intelligent way one of the most heartfelt. Like some Mad Men one.

This was for nostalgia. With all of the characters. I love that the emotional landscape of many of them seemed to converge in one same sense of longing. And it even had it's fair share of suspense too, with Susi and Hedi, certainly making up for lost time by putting Susie at the crux of the string of events!

In a way, I wish the pace and tone of this episode had been more present throughout the show. Mrs. Marisel has never been as plot-driven as it would like to think it is. Not that I would change much of it, at its peak I consider this is brilliant television with a top-notch writing and the wittiest dialogues and productions. After all, it's only because we face the end that things start to get more to the point here. I wasn't exactly expecting a cliffhanger before the final episode, and will surely have a hard time restraining myself from binging it altogether.

All in all, the show is alive and kicking, and it's hard to be unfazed at how much it proves it can keep adding more and more layers to its characters without ever risking the appearance of being pretentious or even letting transpire where is it going to. I will miss this. This is just another level of TV.

The previous episodes were quite convincing, exemplary even. I found this to be unfittingly sensationalist, with a taste for dramatics. For me question is not necessarily whether to show or not show, but rather how to show it, because if you do it wrong you will suffer from that Handmaid's Tale syndrome. So the dogs scenes, I don't oppose them by nature, but it's your narrative devices that can give you away if you go for a too-on-the-nose staging. If they warn the boy about missing the mark and leaving the dogs in agony it's a bit frustrating that's exactly what happens. The puppies thing was a bit too much, in an annoying way, because of course they had to do it. Same (even worse) with that 'volunteer' and the orders not to gaze at the reactor or the perils of stumbling. It's not that is unrealistic, it could very well have happened and makes sense, but it comes across as weak writing and makes you more aware of the string of catastrophic, explicit scenes you've being showed. It's not that we need to know what happens if they stumble on the roof, we would probably have screamed the same if we weren't told, at least in such a nagging way. At least they restrained from showing the dying baby.

Enjoyable? Yes. Dispensable? Absolutely. Almost 6 hours of excellent acting that we kind of could do without. Writing missteps undermine the performances so much that these, even if technically flawless, seem to have lost that emotional punch from the first season. Not everything is bad. I especially appreciated the nuanced portrayal of grief from an abused woman in which is arguably the only storyline that did require the look at the aftermath the show touted. Renata having more presence is nice to have, and clearly the writers dully noted the sensation it sparked two years ago. But the Bonnie storyline is messy and at times wretched, the arrival of her mother and specially this being some sort of clairvoyant were pure filler scenes. Court scenes demand a leap of faith that legal dramas fans may not want to take. Somehow other characters (Ed) have more screentime and depth but end up feeling more vacuous than ever.

Overall, it's a bumpy ride that may only be worth it for the pleasure of seeing so many stars on the set, as some sort of one-in-a-lifetime supergroup concert that we're almost to lucky to witness. Too bad the script wasn't on a par with them this time.

This is the most disgusting show I've ever watched. And I don't mean it in a good way. When I finished the great, complex, enjoyable first season, which offered good, reasonable drama with, however, an upsetting ending that displeased me and discredited the overall quality, I couldn't even imagine how worse things would get on the second season. Seriously, the cringe these five episodes made me feel were so intense I had to look away from the screen more than once, and not just because it features the most despicable characters I've ever seen on TV and film, as they really turned my stomach.

Having reached the finale, it seems the plot really stopped being realistic since decades ago. Its histrionism it´s almost offensive and it shamelessly surpasses the very definition of melodrama with deceiving and ridiculous twists. At the end, yes, it does offer a thriller and keep you at the end of your seat waiting for what you think it has to be the last contrived decision from the script, but make no mistake, this is simply bad writing, sacrificing credibility and well layered characters for the sake of sensationalism (including the most dishonest use of the cliffhanger that I didn't expect to encounter in the so-called Golden Age of TV). At least I've learnt with Doctor Foster that one cannot measure the quality of a story by how thrilled or entertained you are by it, if in the end it´s simply bad.

I disliked the whole episode. My love-hate relationship to Outlander is not new, but I'm starting to feel as if it really doesn't have much to offer to me. I've been struggling lately with the fact that the show is becoming more and more melodrama, something that I feared before I even started watching it, but was delighted to see that, at least for the first season, it featured some solid period drama with human, layered characters. It's a shame that this has devaluated into the classic soap opera blend of horrifying tragedy and torrid, cloying scenes. Stick and carrot, sugar and bile. Not that I despise that genre, but it's just not for me and there was a time where Outlander really felt as if it reached beyond that. I can't say there is a turning point where this begins, but late in season 1 the "carrot" part began to feel so gratuitous and histrionic that I could only assume there was some morbid taste in making these characters suffer so much, as in a c-movie or a fanfic, rather than the really good show it once was, and I don't know how long will I be standing that.

In this episode, Fergus amputation was predictable, but also to me it felt really bad directed. It's hard to say, but I hardly felt anything (ok, incredible as it may seem, I don't have much sympathy towards this character), it just felt rushed and dull. Additionally, the plot moves in a increasingly stiff, unnatural way, and I think this also shows in this episode, when Jenny moves from vehemently refusing to turn his brother in to just doing it, and we never see her changing her mind, at all. I get it, it's all part of the suspense that the scene is intender to rouse, but still it's unnatural how she finally agrees to sentencing his brother to jail for life

In a nutshell, no one regrets more than I do being the spoilsport here, because I really got to love this show, but I'm not sure whether I will stay with it if it's just continues playing these cards :/