Sense8 (Netflix)

[zwixxx]

What was there to wow me?.

If you have to ask methinks this show is not for you.

[kalorama]

If you have to ask methinks this show is not for you.

As someone who found the show generally entertaining, I have to agree that there wasn't a particularly high "wow" factor to be found.

[Forseti]

Well, I went ahead and watched another episode (#4), because I actually want to like a show with a premise like this. I couldn't finish it. I just had to turn it off when they started that "What's going on" song. It turned from just not all that interesting into really awful right there.

[Iron Fist]

True, the money he made from the bus could afford (barely) the 'watered-down' version of the medicine (which was giving her pain), but not the actual medicine the Boss Dude had. Notice after receiving that medicine, his mom was up and around and not lying in bed.

He could barely afford it back when the bus was doing badly, but after his fight it was booming. So I think he could have afforded it easily.

[Sutekh]

It felt like a 12 hour trailer for a movie that hasn't aired yet, in some respects. Each of the eight is left with unresolved issues.

Wolfgang's annoying buddy is still in the hospital, and we have no idea what sort of fallout awaits from his gun-and-rocket-launcher rampage. Does Germany have any sort of police?

Kala's still engaged to a guy she still hasn't told she's not that into. Oh, and the church of Ganesha (who are cool with 'Et Tu Brute'-ing people they don't like) and her might be on the outs...

Sun's still in jail, and looks particularly likely to stay there.

'Van Damme' has the surviving two-thirds of a ruthless gang (that knows where he lives) hunting him down, which could suck for mom, if he doesn't move her into the big bosses stately manor to babysit Spawn-of-Warlord.

Nomi's still a federal fugitive, whose mom is all on the 'please lobotomize my child, because he's all sexually confused!' train.

Leto's career is about to implode, unless he gets out in front of the blackmail photos, either by lying (the abusive ex-boyfriend of my hot actress girlfriend photoshopped pictures of me schtupping my bodyguard and is thinking to blackmail, ha ha, at least he's got good taste, because the pictures are muy caliente!) or telling some version of the truth (same as above, but I've got a girlfriend *and* a boyfriend, because I'm super-macho and require more sex than any one lover can survive, and I've tried two girlfriends and it always ends in catfight drama, amirite dudes?).

While *everyone* else seems to have stuff to contribute to the cluster, even if it's how-to-make-a-bomb-from-household-chemicals from Kala or how-to-hotwire-an-ambulance from Calpheus (or whatever Van Damme's name is), Riley Blue remains kind of the hostage of the week for this season. She still doesn't have any resolution to her hunted status, I don't feel like we have any idea why she passed out, and there's a lingering question of what the heck actually happened to her baby. Did it die of exposure? Would she know if it didn't, since she was unconscious when she was found? Won't that be an annoying 'find the baby!' plot, if it was taken away to be 'sperimented on?

Gorski's still suspended, probably, and if he ever opens his eyes, he's gonna doom pretty much everyone. Is he going to wear a blindfold for half of next season, and the others lie to him about where they are, so that he can't give away any useful information? Will they explore this 'connection goes both ways' concept and use Will to jaunt into the other guys mind and sing Henry the Eight to him in four-part harmony in rotating shifts for a week and a half straight until he puts a bullet in his head to end the horror of it all?

Many of the characters stories have gone either nowhere, or actually backwards. Wolfgang's probably the one who has progressed furthest in his individual arc.

[Iron Fist]

It felt like a 12 hour trailer for a movie that hasn't aired yet, in some respects. Each of the eight is left with unresolved issues.

Wolfgang's annoying buddy is still in the hospital, and we have no idea what sort of fallout awaits from his gun-and-rocket-launcher rampage. Does Germany have any sort of police?

Kala's still engaged to a guy she still hasn't told she's not that into. Oh, and the church of Ganesha (who are cool with 'Et Tu Brute'-ing people they don't like) and her might be on the outs...

Sun's still in jail, and looks particularly likely to stay there.

'Van Damme' has the surviving two-thirds of a ruthless gang (that knows where he lives) hunting him down, which could suck for mom, if he doesn't move her into the big bosses stately manor to babysit Spawn-of-Warlord.

Nomi's still a federal fugitive, whose mom is all on the 'please lobotomize my child, because he's all sexually confused!' train.

Leto's career is about to implode, unless he gets out in front of the blackmail photos, either by lying (the abusive ex-boyfriend of my hot actress girlfriend photoshopped pictures of me schtupping my bodyguard and is thinking to blackmail, ha ha, at least he's got good taste, because the pictures are muy caliente!) or telling some version of the truth (same as above, but I've got a girlfriend *and* a boyfriend, because I'm super-macho and require more sex than any one lover can survive, and I've tried two girlfriends and it always ends in catfight drama, amirite dudes?).

While *everyone* else seems to have stuff to contribute to the cluster, even if it's how-to-make-a-bomb-from-household-chemicals from Kala or how-to-hotwire-an-ambulance from Calpheus (or whatever Van Damme's name is), Riley Blue remains kind of the hostage of the week for this season. She still doesn't have any resolution to her hunted status, I don't feel like we have any idea why she passed out, and there's a lingering question of what the heck actually happened to her baby. Did it die of exposure? Would she know if it didn't, since she was unconscious when she was found? Won't that be an annoying 'find the baby!' plot, if it was taken away to be 'sperimented on?

Gorski's still suspended, probably, and if he ever opens his eyes, he's gonna doom pretty much everyone. Is he going to wear a blindfold for half of next season, and the others lie to him about where they are, so that he can't give away any useful information? Will they explore this 'connection goes both ways' concept and use Will to jaunt into the other guys mind and sing Henry the Eight to him in four-part harmony in rotating shifts for a week and a half straight until he puts a bullet in his head to end the horror of it all?

Many of the characters stories have gone either nowhere, or actually backwards. Wolfgang's probably the one who has progressed furthest in his individual arc.

I kind of like that their powers didn't completely solve all their problems. Usually with these kinds of shows, they get powers and all their mundane life problems are fixed and then they are presented with a new power related problem. In this show only Nomi, Will and Riley are negatively affected by their powers. The rest their powers don't change their lives at all (Sun, Wolfgang, Kala, Leto), the only one to actually benefit from having powers is Capheus.

This season felt very much like the first half of a season but that just made me excited for season 2.

[Vapor]

So far, the whole thing seems like a thinly plotted excuse to just stack scene upon scene of clever and "cool" character juxtapositions without any substance.

What's your definition of "substance" in this context? According to my definition, it sounds like what you were asking for was less substance, not more.

I think some people went into this not understanding that it was meant as a character show first and a sci-fi actioner second. The fantastical element is an important tool, but not so much to set the characters off on a cliche superhero adventure that we've all seen before. It's a device for characters from drastically different life experiences to share their lives with each other, see the world through different eyes, and become part of something they never thought possible.

It's not about who can blow up the most cars (though we get a couple of those) or how they unravel some sci-fi mystery (though there are a few). It's about people. Life. Love. Sex. Family. Friendship. Society. The stuff that pushes us apart, and brings us together, both literally and figuratively. The action part is just icing.

Loved the show. Bring on season two.

[MythicalChicken]

I re-watched a few more episodes and it's starting to make more sense. The more I watch it, the more it seems like the sci-fi answer to "Planetary." I think they could tighten up the pacing some, but I look forward to season 2 more now that so much setup is out of the way and the characters are established and have room to grow in their stories.

I thought they had too many characters also, but each of them beyond the plot also touches on a entertainment trope visually, but they don't embrace it from a storytelling standpoint. The camera's POV is very neutral; it doesn't embrace the individual attitudes of telenovellas, European crime, bollywood, etc. or glorify one story/genre over the other. I think that's why it's so odd; personally I expect genre storytelling to have conviction to its genre. Here they mish-mash them without the usual "Oh, look how ironic/clever I'm being" irony.

[Forseti]

By substance I mean mostly plot in this context. Something interesting happening once in a while, something more than the dull and banal soap opera plots that the vast majority of the 8 are trapped in. The scenes with them 'connecting' don't do anything to make the story more interesting, they just make it more annoying with the incredibly rapid camera cuts, a device I detest to begin with.

I enjoy character driven drama and generally avoid action-oriented stuff unless it has something else going for it. I loved the Leftovers for example and am looking forward to season 2. This show? All fluff disguised as high-concept.

[kalorama]

The Wachowski's stuff has always been marked by an abundance of style laid over half-buried hints of substance that they never fully dig into.

[Vapor]

Forseti, it really sounds like you're describing the opposite of what the show is to me.

There's a distinct difference between plot and story, in my view. The plot of "The Terminator" is that a robot comes through time to kill someone and change history. The story is that an ordinary young woman is forced to become a survivor when her world is turned upside down and she quickly falls in love with the father of her unborn child. The plot's not irrelevant, but it contains no emotion, no reason for any of this to happen except that it's got guns and bombs and robots. Nothing wrong with any of those things (I picked this example because I love T1 and T2), but if that's all the Terminator films were, or even the majority of what they were, then they would not have been so special.

No, "Sense8" is not "The Terminator." It's even less about plot and more about story. But when I see someone say that the story isn't improved by the sensate connection, I feel like that's a misunderstanding of concept. The story isn't about the old guy chasing mutants with cliche conspiracy bad guys. That's the plot, which we've all seen dozens of times, in just about every entertainment medium.

What we haven't seen is an impoverished Kenyan who suddenly finds himself flying in a plane for the first time, watching fireworks in Chicago, and becoming a hero to his community with the help of his Korean friend, who herself is inspired by an Icelandic DJ with family issues, who plays music for an Indian girl trapped in an impending loveless arranged marriage to a family hated by dangerous religious zealots, while falling for another dangerous person in Germany, and how they all must work together to save a trans woman and her girlfriend from people that want to cut up her brain. And on and on and on. These are the things that matter, for this show.

I don't regard this as fluff. It's literally the reason the show exists. Fluff, to me, would be some of that other stuff that is in the background. The stuff you can get with a million other, perhaps more comfortable shows than this one, which neatly present every plot detail in the first five minutes, or plan to have some "shocking" revelation every other week.

But I most definitely would not recommend this to everyone. It wouldn't work on network TV because much of network TV is strongly influenced by its desire to maintain a commercial audience and this show doesn't seem interested in that. It's having far too much fun doing what it set out to do rather than what someone else decided it was supposed to do ahead of time.

[Forseti]

Well, what can I say. The story of a young woman in India facing an arranged marriage is so clichéd, it's embarrasing. Wolfgang has daddy issues, steals some diamonds and spends the rest of the 4 episodes I saw indulging himself. His encounters with Kala are no more interesting because of the sensate gimmick than they would be if they met in the flesh. It's the stuff of the yearly dozen of romantic movies that stay in theaters for only 2 weeks. Boring and generic stuff trying to elevate itself by adding a hocus-pocus gimmick.

That's 2 out of 8 character that are a total waste of time.

The actor, I can't even remember his name. His scenes are either toe-curlingly cringeworthy, or boring as hell. Sun and whatsherface the Icelandic girl bonding over mothers dying when they were young? Paint-by-numbers stuff.

And to top the pile of tired clichés, one of them is a chicago cop who's better than all other cops, and has a father who was/is a legend. Yawn.

Again, the sensate stuff doesn't elevate it, it camouflages.

[Vapor]

That whole rundown is super ironic, given what has already been discussed and how the season progresses, but I suspect there are those that wouldn't be open to seeing that anyway, even if the reasons for it were thoroughly laid out.

C'est la vie.

[Forseti]

I wouldn't know how the season progresses because I stopped watching when they all broke out in song. When I'm a few minutes short of one third of a season and at that point everything just gets worse by several orders of magnitude, I pull the plug.

[Vapor]

I wouldn't know how the season progresses

Yes, that's why I said that. I hope you find something more to your liking in the future, since this is clearly not for you.