I’m late with this review, but that’s because every time I’ve sat down to write it, it’s felt like a contradiction to every review I’ve done this season. But then it occurred to me that this episode itself was a contradiction to the entire season; it was beautiful and coherent, though not completely without flaws.
The bar was set pretty low from the teaser. A redundant re-enactment of the series opener just told us what we already knew. Cut to a forty year flash forward, and we learned the tales of Briarcliff’s most noteworthy residents through a present day interview with respected journalist Lana Winters. But the stories were engrossing and, for the most part, worthy resolutions to characters we cared about. The cinematography in this particular episode might just be the most beautiful camera work I have ever seen on television. Shots and color palettes were stunning (especially that of Jude under the weeping willow), and set design was thematic and opulently representative of cells and cages. The makeup effects were outstanding. The makeup for modern day Lana, even in high definition, was so understated in its accuracy it made me wonder if anything had been done digitally. The final shot, contrary to the rest of the episode, was of a spiral staircase, and while the camera moved up the viewer could only focus descent.
The season’s resolution was told mostly through flashbacks, which some would consider cheating. It’s quite obvious that I thought the creative teams had written themselves into corners, so it definitely seems a bit of cheating to me. The stories revealed in the finale negated a good deal of the point of the entire season. I would have rather seen more of Kit and Jude raising the alien-engineered children than a lesbian inmate who happens to look exactly like the angel of death. Maybe I’m missing the point of the show, which was random psychoses over character development, and if so, maybe it’s just not the show for me.
The alien plot had a finale with absolutely zero resolution. As appropriate as that finale was, it proved to have absolutely zero relevance to anything that happened to any of the characters that had been involved. Kit’s children grew into perhaps hyperintelligent but otherwise normal adults. Would angels have not served the show’s themes better than aliens? Did I in fact miss another point the creators were trying to make? Should I just accept the show as some Lynchian exercise in the stream of consciousness? Had it not been for a season of icons and Christ metaphors, I would go with just that and probably have a lot more fun with it. But right down to Monsignor Howard’s death, which forsook any sense of realism to yet again preach a metaphor, the show seemed to be slamming me over the head with some sort of reason. I’m either too dumb for the message or too smart for the joke.
Despite my giant complaints, I did enjoy this season’s finale much more than that of the freshman season. Had this finale aired two or three episodes earlier, I would have loved the entire sophomore season. This is not a run I will be purchasing for rewatch, nor would I recommend it for someone else. But if you do, can I borrow the special features disc?