"WE WALK, WE WALK WITH DIGNITY“ PENNY DREADFUL: CITY OF ANGELS, EPISODE 10

*This review contains spoilers.

With episode ten, “Day of the Dead”“, the first and most likely only season of “City of Angels”“ comes to an end. As we enter for one last time into this world producer and showrunner John Logan has created in front of our eyes with a cast of talented players and his very competent crew, we wonder about one thing. Will he (and his team) be able to stick the landing? This is especially crucial since this isn“t simply a season finale, but the conclusion to a story that right from the start was going to be told in one season. Irrespective of any news of a renewal of the show or its cancellation, the writer surely must have known that he had to bring all the still dangling plot threads to their satisfying conclusion lest he wants to risks any backlash from those viewers who“ve been following this world and these characters faithfully in the last ten weeks, albeit far less than Logan had obviously hoped for. Not to bury the lede, the good news is, that this is what he does. However there needs to be a double asterisk when calling it a win or even one of the best episodes in the season. A double asterisk since the caveats you will have to make to get much enjoyment from these proceedings which are presented over the course of sixty-two minutes, to be fully immersed in this world and the plight of our players at best, are directly linked with each other. But before we go into further details with what is not working, or working only under this proviso, let“s look at what works excellently. “Day of the Dead”“ is well above and beyond the best-looking entry into the first season of “City of Angels”“. This is no knock on anyone on the crew who worked on the episodes that came before this one, but with this episode, everybody is on their A-game. We have returning DP John Conroy who does a wonderful job at lighting every scene and actor for maximum effect while each shot is nicely framed. John Paesano offers one of his best scores yet. He no longer channels composer Abel Korzeniowski who brought his skills to the original “Penny Dreadful”“ series. More than ever, John Paesano“s score is evocative and reminiscent of the haunting music Dominic Frontiere created for one of the best genre television shows ever made, “The Outer Limits”“. This is no dig at Paesano“s talent, but the fact that Frontiere“s compositions hold up this remarkable well after some sixty years is very telling. Paesano and Conroy and a legion of behind the camera talent are in good company. As it turns out, the MVP of this episode is not an actor like with some of the earlier entries but new helmer Richard J. Lewis, with the word “new”“ applying only to his work with Logan. Lewis can look back to a long career on TV with his first job hailing all the way from 1985 when he helmed episodes of the “Superboy”“ live action series. Since then, he has worked on shows like the original “CSI”“ or more recently “Westworld”“. Lewis has a keen eye for details, and his skills for shot selection and blocking are finely tuned. His scene staging on this entry moves everything up a notch. Strangely enough though, either for all intents and purposes or since it seemed called for, he frames every shot with a deliberate glance at the production of a stage show in theatre. This approach helps to alleviate the biggest issue with the script and turns a weakness into something magical. As we have argued right from the first episode, this is (or now was) a TV series about love, either fulfilled or a love fated to die, set in the world of Los Angeles in 1938. But like we“ve also stated, this is not a show set in the real world nor is this setting presented as alternative history. It was always a show that came with a high degree of artificiality, and it is more of this in the chapter that closes out this season. Everything feels staged, right up to the penultimate entry “Sing, Sing, Sing”“ that was well-nigh exclusively set in a Mexican dancehall, with each member of the family of our protagonist Detective Vega (Daniel Zovatto) hashing out their issues with the other family members, while around them we witnessed a crush of colorfully-dressed couples swirling across the dancefloor to the sound of Cuban Jazz and Mambo. Whereas the previous lackluster installment was a major let-down, and a waste of a fine cast and least of all the viewers“ time, the theatre-like setting worked to the show“s advantage in its sixth episode (written by Vinnie Wilhelm and helmed by Roxann Dawson), which turned the bleak interrogation room of a police station into a stage where matters of life and death are decided. There“re many instances throughout this season that feel like a call to enter the artificial setting of a stage play. The way “City of Angels”“ delivered its examination of love and the many form love takes on, always felt like the show was never conceptualized in a realistic, let alone naturalistic manner. This is most obvious in its second episode (also penned by Logan) when a large portion of the narrative was built around the movie and the novel “Beau Geste”“, with the second film adaptation, the one being discussed, not even released to cinemas in 1938. In the last episode, John Logan seems to sum up his approach to this show. What he is showing to us, is taken less from real life, not even unintentionally, but a view at the process of writing and storytelling, itself. This is nothing new. Hemingway used scenes about bullfighting to give readers an idea how a writer might approach a theme or a concept. In the scene in question, we witness the final confrontation between Tiago Vega“s romantic interest Sister Molly (Kerry BishÃ©) and her stage mother Adelaide Finnister (Amy Madigan). What Logan has Adelaide say to her daughter might be taken from a monologue of an author vis-Ã -vis one of his or her fictional creations: “You are so special to me. You know that? I wrestled four children out of my womb before you”¦ the Lord took them all. So, I could have you. I loved those babies”¦ I“ll crush their skulls under my heel right now if that was the only way I could have you”¦ my blessed child saint. So much I have sacrificed for you so you could be pure”¦ When you were threatened, I became God“s righteous minister of death. How could you know all I“ve done to take care of you?”“ Though this seems brutal, even as a metaphor and within the confines of a television drama, and it“s at this point that we almost incidentally learn that it was Adelaide who murdered James Hazlett, Molly“s erstwhile lover, and his whole family, Adelaide“s frustrations and the writer“s are pretty much the same. There will come a point in time when a creator (and in effect, Adelaide Finnister is the creator of Sister Molly if not even of Molly herself, a woman who is seeking her own identity), will have to let go of his creation, when the creation has developed a personality free of the author, or the writer will end up with what Adelaide has been doing all this time, to twist her daughter“s arm behind her back to strongarm her into actions she“s not cut out to perform. No self-respecting writer will get away with this for a long time. Readers will be able to tell the difference between the writer“s voice and that of a character. But this is what Logan does in the final episode. Like Adelaide he demands that his characters go out on stage and perform according to his needs i.e. to close out the show and not in an organic and cohesive manner i.e. the way they were set up. But in an artificial world, the world Logan had ultimately established the world of “City of Angels”“ to be, he might get away with it, at least to a certain degree, yet to viewers who have followed his creations, this still does come off as plot convenience over logic.

There are several examples in the final installment when Logan frustratingly does exactly that. Before Molly returns to her ministry after her night on the town with her Mexican beau, she and Santiago have yet another argument. The detective has lost faith in their relationship once again. To her, he assumes, he“s just another guy in a line of partners she“s had, albeit in his case one of the “exotic Latin”“ variation. It would be impossible for them to hold hands in public Vega argues. This isn“t contradictory to the truth of their world and perhaps ours, and Molly once again tries to convince him that their impossible love could be a real thing in the world after all, that she needs him. What she needs Vega for is to be a whole person which she can“t be unless with somebody around she can perform to, someone to give her very affected spiel validation, to make it appear genuine and of consequence. With Molly still searching for her identity, this makes sense and is in line with the character of Molly Logan and his writing colleagues have established. Also, that she“s getting frustrated that she has to fight so hard for what she needs. A relationship with him will always be complicated. She settles for a compromise. She proposes that they run away. She“d be losing her church and her mass audience, but there“d still be Tiago she could perform to, he who hasn“t yet understood her duplicitous nature and her lack of a soul, and who thinks this cute. Yet once she realizes what “going away”“ truly means, she grows cold. When he asks her for confirmation if this is what she wants, while he holds her in his arms as he touches her face, “So we disappear?”“, her answer is but a weak response to his call: “We disappear”“, while we can tell that she“s lying to his face. But when the phone rings and his partner Detective Michener (Nathan Lane) calls Tiago into the world, the moment passes, and Molly“s mask slips even further. When Vega is leaving and he asks her if he will see her later, she actually answers honestly. She“ll be busy. “After that?”“, he asks again. Her fake smile and her reply: “Of course,”“ ring false but are in keeping with her character. We can tell what Vega can“t: in her head she“s already envisioning her life without Tiago. She“ll be embraced by thousands of devoted followers at her ministry and soon there“d be another beau to choose. But Logan needs a one-hundred eighty degree from the character, a turn Molly hasn“t been built for. As she is confronted by her mother right before she“s supposed to go out on stage for one of her spiritual shows at the ministry, Molly tells her that she“ll be running away with Vega. Surely, it can be argued that she had nixed the idea, but with her mother once again putting demands on her, she puts the idea of running away, her naÃ¯ve notion of being herself with the man she professes to love, back on the table, but this is not how the scene plays out. But Molly is all in on the idea of making a political statement against the racism that seems to have taken hold of the city and then to run away, because staying would drive her to attempt suicide again. There“s only a small problem here. Molly had never attempted to kill herself. As she told Vega in one of the earlier episodes, when she couldn“t do anything for a dying child but offer prayers to him, “I had to do a radio show that night. And then I went home and cut my wrists.”“ All Molly intended to do was to let the physical pain override her psychological anguish. Now she threatens suicide if her mother is not letting her go. This feels like Logan is straining the character in ways that are impossible. Then we have Josefina (Jessica Garza), Tiago“s sister. They young girl had abandoned her family and her Catholic faith after she had been sexually assaulted by a police officer. Now she is back with her mother, because that other thing didn“t work out, thus Logan closes Josefina“s arc by putting her back where she started only with a different hair color. The same thing happens to her younger sibling Mateo (Johnathan Nives). As we already saw in the previous episode, the youngster, who had murdered his sister“s attacker in cold blood, was getting ready to reunite with his family as well. When the circumstances which occur earlier in this episode drive Mateo away again, and the evil entity who has been whispering to him, gang leader Rio (Natalie Dormer), one of the many disguises worn by the demon Magda, puts a knife in his hand as she has completed his transformation from a naÃ¯ve kid into a ruthless Pachuco bandit it seems, there“s nothing stopping him on this path. But there is. Without any explanation to what prompted yet another change in him, Mateo goes back to his family when they observe the Day of the Dead on their cemetery. However, there is no other character who gets twisted more out of shape than Charlton Townsend. It“s to actor Michael Gladis“ credit that he goes all in on the theatrics director Lewis demands for the scene to make this sudden change palatable to the viewers. Over the course of the previous episodes, Gladis had done an excellent job with shaping this character and to make us feel for the tragedy of his conflict with himself. Though Townsend was shown to us as a mid-level politician with some ambition yet a vast lack of courage and confidence, a man who was no racist or a bigot but only when it served his purposes, we also cared for him on emotional level. Charlton was a man who couldn“t live the life he was dreaming about, a life of a man who“s openly gay and who doesn“t need to feel ashamed about. While his assistant Alex, Magda in cosplay again, manipulated him each and every way to groom him into a candidate for the office of mayor, Charlton fell in love with Kurt (Dominic Sherwood), the driver of his Nazi benefactor Richard Goss (Thomas Kretschmann). Even though Townsend asked Kurt to murder one of his political rivals, a request Kurt denied, the writers had put the Councilman on a redemption arc, with Kurt trying to shield him from himself and his darker tendencies. What made Townsend interesting as a character was how torn he was. He was a man who was evil enough to ask his hitman boyfriend to kill for him to make his life easier, but still his feelings for Kurt were genuine and helping him to overcome his doubts and self-hatred. Consequently, since Townsend hated his successful father who had installed in him the idea that he was nothing but a huge disappointment for being of a weak mind, he hated being held on a string like a puppet by the older Goss. In addition to Townsend“s rather petty motivation for not liking the man who was furthering his political career, even with a heart as black as his, Charlton wasn“t willing to betray his country. Now given the opportunity, after another riot from the Mexican community, none of this matters to the Councilman any longer. Knowing full well that the riot will get him the majority in the city council he needs to have his plan for a new parkway finally adopted, a road that will run through the Mexican neighborhood, he becomes a mustache twirling cartoon villain, a character turn a showy, more melodramatic and much more stylized theatre production might be able to accommodate on its stage, but not an instrument as fine-tuned as a television camera with its close-ups. Albeit, a TV camera is more than a microscope, it“s an x-ray machine, and we the audience know that Charlton“s antics ring hollow and false. We know it also because we have seen “The Bells”“, the penultimate installment of the once highly praised show “Game of Thrones.”“ Yes, Charlton Townsend has heard the bells, only that in his case these are the words of the media carried to him in newsprint, and no, he does not burn a whole city to the ground. What he does is to gently touch a globe like Hitler stand-in Adenoid Hynkel in Charlie Chaplin“s “The Great Dictator”“ (1940) as he rants about suppressing the voice of the media and working with the Nazis to achieve “our own Thousand Year Reich.”“ Where it not for Lewis assured hand and his wink to the viewers to let us know that “yes, this was over-the-top and a bit silly”“, we wouldn“t be able to contain our laughter at how naÃ¯ve and ridiculous this appears, all this energy the erstwhile lethargic Townsend seems to develop on the spot notwithstanding. Once again, the way Lewis stages and frames the proceedings like a stage play, proves the scene“s saving grace. It does again when it“s time for Peter Craft“s turn to the dark side. This character turn seemed unavoidable though we“d hoped that the nice pediatrician and father of two could stay with the angels. Though all of her attempts to get the Mexican maid out of the house, Vega“s mother who seemed to possess some skills at magic herself, proved like a waste of screen time in hindsight and so did Peter“s confrontation with his wife Linda in which she did threaten to ruin him, Peter“s lover Elsa (Magda again) gets her wish. The scene in which Peter, portrayed once again excellently by Rory Kinnear, takes care of his youngest son who was injured in the riot, and especially the scene in which the good doctor faces up to the legacy of his family, are staged like a play, the difference being that since this turn is in keeping with what had been established about Peter, the script and the direction work in perfect synchrony. Richard J. Lewis chooses a much smaller stage, first Tom“s room and then Peter“s study to show us the quiet moments during which Peter inches away from the light and the new identity he“s carefully crafted for himself in America. When Peter finally raises his right arm for a “Sieg Heil”“ this is chilling not for the fact that Peter is now a Nazi, but for how human he looks doing it, and how vulnerable and distraught. When even a good man turns evil, who is left, really?

Despite its many shortcomings in the narrative and character motivations, and more on those in a while, the opening of “Dead of the Dead”“ is a thing of beauty. The first minute of the last entry sets the stage figuratively and quite literally. We are invited into the episode by the person who“s been our guide and a chorus throughout the season, but we immediately see this installment and the entire series for what they are. This is a stage show, or even more precisely, it“s a Broadway musical without any singing. After the short recap, we open with a black screen. Then, Santa Muerta (Lorenza Izzo) walks slowly towards the camera. This seems appropriate given the episode“s title and her role. The deity is the angel for the dead. With her silhouette framed by a bright light, she has arrived to show some unfortunate souls the way to the underworld, but Santa Muerta is also here to offer solace to those who“ll have to part from the living. The image of Izzo in her white dress with her body surrounded by light against the blackness is incredibly strong, especially since she banishes the darkness while she“s come to claim many lives at the same time. As she walks towards us with her head lowered, as if pulled down by the heavy crown she“s wearing, the music is but a soundscape of dissonant electronic sounds which only slowly build to a melody which becomes harmonic and sad and forlorn once we begin to hear the violins kick in. At this point, Izzo“s face and her spiky headdress take over the entire screen, with every inch of darkness forced to the sidelines. When she looks up and directly at us, as the violin play turns increasingly energetic, we see that her eyes are nearly translucent. As the violins are joined by a piano, the background suddenly changes. Santa Muerta is surrounded by colorfully dressed dancers, and even she is in color now. Santa Muerta is standing in the center of the club to which Raul Vega has brought his mother, and where now the whole family is assembled, Molly included who is Tiago“s date. We are right where we left off at the end of the previous episode, almost, since the penultimate installment closed with a handful of officers from the Los Angeles Police Department lynching the Chicano who Michener had convinced to take the fall for the slayings of the Officer Reilly and the Hazlett family. While Santa Muerta is surrounded by a sea of dancers, though to them she is invisible, the camera follows her eyes as she spies our protagonists in the club who all seem in a great mood. When we see Tiago and Molly dancing as the Day of the Dead is approaching, with the angel of the dead walking but a few feet away from them, we realize what this is. Since “City of Angels”“ is a show about love, we end the season on the show“s own version of a Greek myth, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, a story about love, death, trust and death again. The story of Orpheus who braces the terror of the underworld to reclaim his dead love Eurydice from Hades himself, serves as the basis for “Hadestown”“, a musical by AnaÃ¯s Mitchell which saw its premiere in previews on Broadway in March 2019. The show quickly became a hit with audiences and critics alike. “Hadestown”“ was nominated for fourteen Tony Awards, winning a total of eight including Best Musical as well as Best Original Score. Looking at the final episode of “City of Angels”“, the parallels to this mystical story about lovers and love lost from Ancient Greece, and the musical that uses this tale as its backbone, to “City of Angels”“ are striking. With the latter being a show about love, Logan and his writers have presented us with our own ill-fated couple the whole time while recasting Santa Muerta as Hades and her vile sister Magda as Hermes, the trickster and underhanded enabler of gods and men alike. When conceptualized or re-conceptualized through the lens of a Broadway show about love, perception, trust issues and the final arbiter of all things, Hades or Death, some of the weaknesses and theatrics of the scripts suddenly make more sense. This scene ends with Michener trying to get Vega and his family to safety, while Fly Ricco (Sebastian Chacon) learns the news of Diego Lopez“ death through the hands of a racist police. It is surprising, given most recent events which occurred after the production on the season had finished, how prophetic this show turned out to be. Unfortunately, racism is still topical. As Rio asks for revenge, Fly Ricco sues for peace. They both struggle to be the voice of the people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and an evil avatar of Malcolm X, though it“s Ricco who wins over Rio initially. By turning to violence, he argues, they will show the white people that they are exactly what they think they are, animals. Instead of resorting to crude revenge, Ricco instigates a peaceful march through the city: “We walk”¦ we walk with dignity.”“ When throngs of Mexicans in their colorful clothes for a night on the town begin to walk across a soundstage that clearly uses a ton of CGI and greenscreen to create the look of a Los Angeles of the late 1930s, none of this feel real. And the fact that all of it feels staged while we see a loud mass of people moving from one end of the stage to the other end and across a road that is busy with cars, the artificiality of the way Lewis stages this only enhances the sense that we are experience not reality but the heightened reality that only a stage production can offer. All that is missing is a song that moves from one person in the crowd to the next. This is also when two personas of Magda come face to face with each other, something we figured she had to be able to do with some of her entities appearing in different places right around the same time in the narrative. And then there is Frank, the child Elsa has created from her flesh as well. All this leads to a well-timed accident and Rio shouting: “They are running us down! They are running us down! They are killing us!”“ This is when the peaceful demonstration soon descends into a violent altercation first, and quickly into a full-fledged riot with fires getting ignited right next to the storefronts along the street. Soon, groups of Navy sailors join in and they use their fists and some of the bottles they carry from the bars they“ve just been to. Without any regard for any accuracy concerning the timeline of the historical events, John Logan uses the very real “Zoot Suit Riots”“ of 1943 as a backdrop for the story he“s telling. Still, Lewis maintains the Broadway aesthetic which of course is also owed to a limited budget for a television production. Like predicted, Logan continues to follow the three-act structure he and his team had been using throughout the season. Instead of closing the ninth episode with a rising tension and a bang, he ended on Diego Lopez“ death and the only noise we heard were the shouts from Michener who was to blame for Diego“s incarceration and the confession signed by young Chicano. Though these things stand in a direct correlation to each other, other things continue to be without consequence. While a key light guides our eyes to the left side of the stage Lewis presents to us, we find Rio and Ricco in an argument. Rio grabs Ricco“s knife and stabs him to death while Mateo stumbles upon the couple. Rio hands Mateo the bloody knife which he uses only seconds later to defend his brother Tiago from some of the sailors. After all the build-up of placing Mateo on a road from which there was no redemption, nothing really changes, not after him murdering a police officer or him using the knife viciously against the men attacking his brother for being a Mexican. Likewise, Michener seems completely unaffected by Diego“s death on a personal level. Once the riot scene is done, we are off to a mad dash to dot the i“s and cross the t“s for a narrative that feels too big and vast for all the questions to receive an answer, or to touch upon plot points that seemed important. Why was the Hazlett family dropped off at the L.A. river naked and made too look like victims of a ritualistic gang slaying? Would a robbery gone bad scenario not have served a similar purpose without drawing unneeded attention from the media? Who fired on Vega and Michener? What was Richard Goss“s masterplan, with Hitler“s main man in L.A. constantly studying some maps? Why all this business about Michener wanting the help of a local Jewish crime boss when all the man was asked to do was to babysit the engineer Goss wanted for whatever nefarious purpose? Interestingly, with very little foreshadowing other than a dependency on sleeping pills, a lack of identity and Molly cutting herself once in what seemed more like an attempt to let her emotional pain escape her body than to actually kill herself, Logan chooses Molly as the one person from his main cast to not make it out of the season alive. In a way, again when framed through the lens of Greek mythology and its modern Broadway incarnation, this makes sense. The trouble with the relationship between Molly and Tiago were caused by two things. Molly“s affected manner and her constant dishonesty and Vega“s inability to trust her. In the legend and the play, Hades allows Orpheus to take Eurydice out of underworld to bring her back to the realm of the living. Molly is a tragic heroine. Groomed by her mother to be a vessel for religious fervor since she was four years old, her clingy need for validation, for a man to tell her that there was a Molly after all, and not just an empty, shallow shell who put on masks and roles as needed to manipulate those around her, the men who heeded her call, like James Hazlett and Tiago Vega, did bring her a promise of life. And Tiago did serve as her guide. Yet exactly like Orpheus, Vega fails at the one condition Hades places on their deal. Orpheus must walk in front of Eurydice as they walk out of the place named after the king of the dead himself. Orpheus must trust that she is behind him, the entire time, that she“s willing to follow him back to life which is like a new life to her after her death. Should he choose to turn around once to make sure that she“s with him all the way, in consequence, she“s banished to hell forever. Trust is Orpheus Achilles Heel like. The same with Vega. Ultimately, Orpheus fails as he makes the last step. He can“t help himself but turns around. This is the same moment Hades reclaims Eurydice. In “Day of the Dead”“ it is Santa Muerta who is ready to embrace Sister Molly. We can only speculate what ultimately drives Molly to kill herself because the text is not clear. Is it the revelation that her mother had killed her former lover and his family? Is it her current lover“s lack of trust or her realization that both roads are closed for her now? She can“t be with Vega who doesn“t trust her because she can“t be trusted, and because he cannot trust, and the ministry is now lost to her since the illusion of doing good has died with her mother“s willingness to kill to protect the lie, that apart from the idea of the icon that was Sister Molly, there was nothing to her at all. In any case, Lewis frames both scenes beautifully, first with Molly and Santa Muerta embracing each other in the indoor swimming pool that the ministry uses for their Baptisms, then with Adelaide finding her dead daughter floating in the water with her body silhouetted by a trail blood like Santa Muerta“s frame was surrounded by the ephemeral glow the living supposedly see before they cross over into the realm that has but one king, Hades. Again, Lewis“ style proves a boon to these scenes with the haunting visuals he and Conroy create. What this proves though, Logan“s script is in parts as shallow as Molly or a deal one would be poorly advised to strike with the king of the underworld. Unfortunately, even Lewis“ direction can“t keep Logan from dropping the ball on the last step, which is ironically exactly what Orpheus does.

Symmetry is a powerful tool in writing. For a series which used its scripts to talk about the act of writing, Logan wastes the opportunity to bring the season full circle where the structure is concerned, however he introduces a symmetric element on the thematic level. He does this on the last step as well, or almost on the last step and this works surprisingly great, though unfortunately, he strains the inner logic of his story twice. After we saw how Goss“s chauffeur and killer Kurt located the secret hiding spot to which Michener had brought physicist Brian Koening (Kyle McArthur), lest the science prodigy would be able to provide Goss and ultimately Hitler with his skills in building a long-range missile, the kid got saved by Michener“s new ally, Jewish gangster Benny Berman (Brad Garrett) and his men who relocated Brian to a new safe house. What follows in this episode is Goss and Kurt brainstorming about the new location. They do figure it out eventually, though we are to believe that a man like Kurt, who was trained by the German secret police, did not take the initiative the other night to simply follow the cars that took Brian to the new hideout. Meanwhile we also learn where Brian is hidden. Berman has brought him to Maria Vega“s house which is now guarded like Fort Knox by armed Jewish gangsters despite the U.S. Military blocking off the entire neighborhood after the riot during the previous night. Whereas Michener has to show his badge to gain access to this neighborhood, neither Berman“s men nor even Kurt seem to have that issue. Anyway, Berman has hatched the plan to drive Brian to Mexico and then to have him flown to New York City where his boss will protect him. Michener and Vega are cool with this idea. Once night falls, the four of them get going. However, not one man from Berman“s entourage goes along. Thus, we have a Jewish gangster who rides in a car with two police detectives he hardly knows and a man who is hunted by Nazi agents, with Kurt following them. Well, indeed, this is laughably bad writing, especially with Berman having always been surrounded by a security detail throughout the season. Though this is most likely done to heighten the tension, with a killer on their trail and all, but surely, with a bit of effort you could come up with a compelling reason why Berman would trust his life to two cops on the employ of a corrupt police force. What Logan does well here is that he takes the theme of the show to its most logic conclusion. Love is the greatest thing on Earth, though it can leave a guy wrecked as well. But love is only one idea. What if there was another idea that was as powerful, and as destructive? On a global scale even. It“s during their drive through the night that Brian tells the men that he has long since figured out the rocket. He was thinking about a bomb now. What he describes to them is a bomb that doesn“t have a name yet, but we know what bomb he“s talking about. Thus, without knowing this, Brian Koening has become the most dangerous man on this planet. Michener and Vega exchange a glance and surely enough, the veteran detective finds a good reason to stop the vehicle and to lure the trusting Brian to a spot near the coastline. Suggesting that Brian may want to look at the beautiful stars, Michener shoots him dead. This is a moving culmination to Michener“s character arc which started to kick into gear when Kurt murdered two of his buddies at the side of another road. Nathan Lane, like most of the cast put in a stellar performance from week to week and this entry is no exaptation. It“s satisfying to see that Logan gives his character a strong send-off. The relationship between Vega and Molly doesn“t fare just as well. When Michener learns about Molly“s passing from the radio when they stop for gas on their way back, and he relates the news to his partner, there isn“t hardly enough time for a reaction shot from Vega as the camera keeps its distance. We then cut to the cemetery where his family has gathered to celebrate the Day of the Dead, as they commemorate those who embarked on their long journey into the night. To bring the musical staging full circle, Tiago“s older brother Raul is now seen carrying around a guitar, not unlike Reeve Carney as Orpheus in “Hadestown”“. Richard Lewis provides another nice goodbye, this one for the whole Vega family except for Tiago, and seeing the family, once again sans Tiago, leave the graveyard after some celebration with music and dancing, this makes for another arresting visual, like the empty cemetery with many candles still lit and the lean figure of Tiago Vega the last visitor to honor the dead. This would have been a wonderful image to end the season finale on. Logan and director Paco Cabezas started the pilot episode with bang and a whisper, and we end on bang and no whisper, just a man, this Orpheus, paying his respect to the dead. We do get a whisper, though, which brings the show full circle, but what could have ended in a perfect symmetry, albeit a frightening one, is almost entirely undone by an unnecessary coda. In the final scene, we witness that the construction of Charlton“s road resumes at the neighborhood where the Vega family lives, only this time, the heavy machines are much more intrusive. Now it seems like every house is getting demolished while the residents can only watch helplessly and in horror. This is also where the battle lines are drawn and re-drawn. We have Michener and Vega on the one side and Goss, Kurt, Adelaide, Charlton and his assistant Alex (Magda) facing them. With a tiny American flag dancing in the wind, Vega comments: “They are not building roads. They are building walls.”“ Interestingly, this is a theme in “Hadestown”“ as well, however Mitchell wrote “Why We Build the Wall”“ in 2006, which makes the latter foreboding and the former too on the nose, especially when Logan has Vega say the last words for the season, possibly for the whole show with Daniel Zovatto looking straight at the camera: “This is not the United States of America.”“ In 1976, when Richard Donner shot “The Omen”“, there were famously several endings, that was until he wisely settled on one image. While his parents receive a state funeral, young Damien (Harvey Spencer Stephens), who is possibly the Anti-Christ, turns to the camera as he flashes one creepy smile, which the director enlisted from him by telling the child actor a joke while he instructed him not to laugh. Closing the show, the way he does, Logan fails to tell us anything new about the characters, as he wastes a scene that could have made for one hell of an ending, one that would have left the viewers guessing. As he“s all alone on the cemetery, with everyone else having left, there“s Magda behind him who whispers: “Are you ready, Tiago Vega?”“

Rating for the episode: 3 out of 5.

Author Profile

Chris Buse

A comic book reader since 1972. When he is not reading or writing about the books he loves or is listening to The Twilight Sad, you can find Chris at his consulting company in Germany... drinking damn good coffee. Also a proud member of the ICC (International Comics Collective) Podcast with Al Mega and Dave Elliott.