Station Eleven (HBOMax)

[epilogue]

Overall I really enjoyed Station Eleven. A fantastic visual and emotional journey that always kept me invested and gave me a lot to think/talk about after. Just like the book, the show will stay with me for a while. I think the book is overall more successful but they really are different animals and I don't want to spend too much time in compare/contrast mode.

The finale was strong. A little awkward. Jeevan and Kirsten's reunion hit way harder than I thought. It was so obviously coming. That was never in doubt. Just goes to show that even expected, predictable beats can land. Not everything has to be an unexpected twist to be powerful and meaningful.

I could go on and on about this story. About my relationship to Hamlet -- and theater in general for that matter -- but this post is already too long. I'll wrap by saying that as good as this show is, I disagree that it's the best thing in a long time. It certainly holds its own with the better prestige TV of the last few years. It's maybe top 6? Not that that stuff matters. There's enough room for all this good shit.

[Mickey]

Well let's ask the big question then

[epilogue]

I'm afraid to ask

[Mickey]

You seem to really love this show. Why is it not unquestionably "the best thing in a long time?" Did it fall short in some respect or is it simply the case that you like other things as much or more?

[epilogue]

You seem to really love this show. Why is it not unquestionably "the best thing in a long time?" Did it fall short in some respect or is it simply the case that you like other things as much or more?

A bit of both.

Station Eleven has some big flaws. I got a lot out of it despite those flaws. But there are other shows that have been more successful in what they wanted to do and how they went about doing it.

And then there's just taste.

[Mickey]

Joey baby. Don't be a tease. What are those flaws.

[epilogue]

The big ones are mostly narrative. I think the story's structure is unnecessarily fractured at times. I think it may have been more effective had certain pieces been moved around, appearing at earlier or later points.

Sometimes it goes out of its way to be opaque and it comes off a little pretentious. It's like the show runners were like "I DON'T LIKE TO TALK DOWN TO THE AUDIENCE" and they took that to an unnecessary extreme.

To it's credit, the show isn't a GOTCHA show. It's never cheap or shocking for the sake of shocking. It's not trying to stay a step ahead of the audience. But then there times when the pacing and structure make me wonder whether or not I'm supposed to know something.

I like the theme of connection. But unlike the book, the show goes out of its way to make everyone intimately and directly connected in ways that maybe serve the themes explored but also make certain scenes feel contrived. I wanted things to feel accidental at times but so much is highly organized. Part of the reason the attack on Frank (for example) is so effective is that it's a moment of real chaos. But I half expected the guy to be someone we saw in the before.

Those are a few of my broader issues with the show. I still think the stuff that works overcomes most of the flaws and helps deliver a very powerful and emotional experience, though.

[Mickey]

Interesting, because those are some of the things I identified as well (though I think they bothered me more than they bothered you). The pacing was probably the biggest problem, and episode seven is so emblematic in that regard: a really compelling episode of TV (or at least, the Frank-Kirsten relationship was), but in the larger arc it's a flashback maddeningly inserted between the lead character being ATTACKED BY A FOREST GANG and then somehow, off-screen, recovering. Such a weird decision--it totally zapped all the energy from the present story-line, and the poison spreading up the arm in the flashback was really corny. So I don't know what you do with the Frank stuff, and I know a ton of shows do the flashback-right-before-big-action move with moderate degrees of success, but this show did it twice in the last four episodes and it never really made sense to me as a viewer.

As to your other point, yeah, convenient would be the word I would use. All of the things that happen in the show could happen, but it's terribly convenient that they do.

One other thing that REALLY bothered me: the kids with the land mines. We're told about mid-way through that the prophet is not responsible for this, that some OTHER lady did this while the prophet was injured and so if Kirsten kills the prophet it will like, radicalize the child army. Okay. But then the kids with land mines re-appear in the finale, circling the airport on the prophet's signal. I guess you could say, well, the prophet is gone again so this is that unnamed lady, he didn't know that blowing up the museum would do this, etc. Like I said, convenient. But then how is this threat stopped? Kirsten shows one of the little comic book jihadists that Station Eleven is a book, and even leaving aside the question of "would a radicalized feral child be more or less likely to go suicide bomb the airport after being given a copy of what they think is essentially a sacred scroll?" or the sort of corny implications that radicalism and reading are counterposed, you still have the problem of the dozens of other children with land mines strapped to them who are out there. Do they disappear? Does that one girl get to them in time? Who knows! I think part of the reason that this bothered me is that it didn't need to happen. You could remove them from the finale and not really lose anything, which made it feel particularly sloppy. I have other problems with the show but this one really stuck in my craw.

[VinylGuy]

yeah, they handled that very poorly. It wasnt the focus of the episode and they present that threat and it just goes away.

Also with the prophet sending those kids to die, even if is not supposedly, responsable for it. Kirsten also kills a lot of people and it seems its just a super natural thing for her to do.

[epilogue]

My read on the landmine kids was a little simpler -- perhaps way cornier depending on your POV. But so much of the show is about the healing power of art. Showing the kids that there is no religion, there is no sacred scroll, no dogma, no doctrine or prophecy, it's all just a creation of art, a work of the imagination, that's what defuses the bomb. Metaphorically speaking.

It worked for me overall but was another example of convenience.

I try to engage with the piece as presented and not wrap it up in the book or other outside content/influence, but the Prophet is where that's most difficult for me. He's such a totally different character in the book. Perhaps one could argue that his character, motivations, and impact in the book are all very obvious and tropey. Fair enough. But it's an architype/trope for a reason. The show felt like it wanted to subvert that trope (for reasons I can't know) and decided instead to make him less a villain and more a misunderstood victim. In doing so, they changed the character but they also changed the forces around him. They didn't have elegant solutions to the problems they created and so we have to settle for convenience and thematic signaling.

I can believe that bomb-girl communicated to all the other landmine kids in time. That doesn't bother me. We see them all again in the end so they don't disappear. And you're left with "art healed them" just as it healed the Prophet and his relationship with his mother. And perhaps that's too clumsy/corny for some -- it certainly could have been done better -- but it's a message I identify with and so it works on me, even though it's maybe ham-fisted.

[Mickey]

Yeah I think that's where we diverge most strongly. I definitely think that's the intention but I find it just unbearably corny and unrealistic. Maybe art heals you and me, but the semi-feral child with a land mine strapped to her chest? I don't buy it, just as I don't buy that the prophet happens to know Hamlet by heart and can go toe-to-toe with his mother on a moment's notice and achieve some kind of psychological resolution that way.

My wife read the book so she had described to me the total transformation of the prophet, and I think you're totally right that a lot of the issues stem from not really unpacking the ramifications of that choice.

[epilogue]

Most of the time I find that these differences in interpretation/reaction come down to emotional resonance.

[epilogue]

And it's a dumb thing to debate but I didn't get the impression that we were supposed to believe the Prophet KNEW Hamlet. I think we're supposed to suspend disbelief and understand that he learned/memorized it. Doing so in a day is a stretch, I grant you. But to me it's on the same scale as a diner scene in a Scorsese movie. The show isn't "real time."

[Mickey]

How do you mean?

[epilogue]

We often see characters in a diner order food. Have less than a minute of conversation. Then the food arrives. No one wants to sit there and watch fifteen minutes of dialogue while we wait the real amount of time it would take for the order to come out.

Scorsese has talked about how this isn't meant to be "real time" but an approximation that the audience understands and agrees to. It's cinema realism, not real life.

[Mickey]

Oh sorry, I didn't see your second post--I meant how do you understand a term like "emotional resonance" and its relation to differences in interpretation.

[Mickey]

And it's a dumb thing to debate but I didn't get the impression that we were supposed to believe the Prophet KNEW Hamlet. I think we're supposed to suspend disbelief and understand that he learned/memorized it. Doing so in a day is a stretch, I grant you. But to me it's on the same scale as a diner scene in a Scorsese movie. The show isn't "real time."

Totally, I get that--but at this point he's already ad-libbed a scene with his mother when she first visits him in the holding cell, right? That's what I'm thinking of. The performance is unlikely, but this seems basically impossible, or to return to a previous word, convenient.

[epilogue]

Oh sorry, I didn't see your second post--I meant how do you understand a term like "emotional resonance" and its relation to differences in interpretation.

Oh, just what you were saying. It either works on you or it doesn't. I think I liked this show more than you did because the things that we both had issues with worked, largely, for me on an emotional level. They didn't work for you. The emotional resonance was higher for me and so I chose to invest more while you maybe pulled back (played games during, etc).

Often times I see people reject art because they don't feel anything. On the other hand, emotional resonance is kind of my baseline. It's why I like romantic comedies so much. If I feel something I tend to hold it in high esteem.

Landmine kids is a good example. I felt the emotional resonance of a theme like "art heals" so that it overcame how illogical it would be to apply that to feral kids. As you pointed out. That was a bridge too far for you. So we both take away something different because of the emotional resonance.

[epilogue]

And it's a dumb thing to debate but I didn't get the impression that we were supposed to believe the Prophet KNEW Hamlet. I think we're supposed to suspend disbelief and understand that he learned/memorized it. Doing so in a day is a stretch, I grant you. But to me it's on the same scale as a diner scene in a Scorsese movie. The show isn't "real time."

Totally, I get that--but at this point he's already ad-libbed a scene with his mother when she first visits him in the holding cell, right? That's what I'm thinking of. The performance is unlikely, but this seems basically impossible, or to return to a previous word, convenient.

The adlib was just Station Eleven. So I can totally by that one. It didn't feel unlikely at all to me. Especially with the circular room that lead to Frank's fractured attention. Plus, how good Kirsten is.

Again, I totally agree that it's convenient. Absolutely. We agree the show defaulted there too many times. So I'm with you. But I can suspend my disbelief in there because it's nothing new in film/tv. And the payoff worked on me, mostly.

[Mickey]

And it's a dumb thing to debate but I didn't get the impression that we were supposed to believe the Prophet KNEW Hamlet. I think we're supposed to suspend disbelief and understand that he learned/memorized it. Doing so in a day is a stretch, I grant you. But to me it's on the same scale as a diner scene in a Scorsese movie. The show isn't "real time."

Totally, I get that--but at this point he's already ad-libbed a scene with his mother when she first visits him in the holding cell, right? That's what I'm thinking of. The performance is unlikely, but this seems basically impossible, or to return to a previous word, convenient.

The adlib was just Station Eleven. So I can totally by that one. It didn't feel unlikely at all to me. Especially with the circular room that lead to Frank's fractured attention. Plus, how good Kirsten is.

Again, I totally agree that it's convenient. Absolutely. We agree the show defaulted there too many times. So I'm with you. But I can suspend my disbelief in there because it's nothing new in film/tv. And the payoff worked on me, mostly.

No I think we're talking about different scenes:

1) In the air traffic control tower, Prophet ad-libs a scene with Kirsten from Station Eleven
2) While he's being kept in a holding cell, Prophet ad-libs a scene with his mother
3) Prophet performs Hamlet impeccably.

Scene 1 was totally believable. Scene 3, okay, I can suspend some disbelief. Scene 2 was the bridge too far for me.