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Station Eleven, tv show
Feb. 5th, 2023 01:33 amI watched "Station Eleven" recently, which is an HBO show, based on a novel. It's about a flu that wipes out most of humanity, and it focuses on a few inter-connected characters. There are 2 time lines, the first is when the flu strikes, and the 2nd is 20 years later.
I didn't really know how I feel about the show. It had some really great things and then some really bad things. It was interesting but ultimately not good, an Interesting Failure.
Things I liked:
1. the diverse cast, which includes Lori Petty (you man know her as Tank Girl); Mackenzie Davis; Himesh Patel; a great child actor called Matilda Lawler; and disabled actor Prince Amponsah.
2. The Traveling Symphony, a troupe of actors and musicians that travels around Lake Michigan and performs Shakespeare at various settlements. Just a cool idea. The people in this group are wonderful and kind, and are creating art because "survival is insufficient." People leave and join the group, they are a working family.
3. Some great tropes here-- the one where a random person has to suddenly parent a child is gold, and it makes the first episode work well. Jeevan (Himesh Patel) is the kind of guy who runs towards people to help them, but then is frozen by anxiety. Now he's on a steep learning curve, parenting a kid during the end of the world.
4. Themes of survival, grief, working through trauma, learning to forgive your parents/elders/past self- these were all really interesting, even if they didn't quite work. I liked the episode where Kirsten has a dream and visits her younger self. She can now see a traumatic event through adult eyes, and she can comfort her child self.
5. Some very nice visuals; I loved the shots of the prairie.
Failures:
1. The worst is that there is a villain introduced, The Prophet, who lures children away from their homes and then brain washes them. So it's like OK we are gonna kill this guy yes? Kirsten is going to face off with him? But then they try to explain away his crimes and excuse him and like... what? what is going on here?
2. The score was bad, it kept trying to tell me to be scared because awful things are going to happen, and it did this all the time, even when nice things or neutral things were happening. So when I saw reviewers call this show "uplifting" I'm like... no. It's unsettling.
3. The non-linear story telling was confusing. It seemed like it was being mysterious in this heavy-handed way. I kept wondering what that was about, like is there going to be a big reveal? There were some reveals that connected the two timelines and the various characters. But some mysteries were never explained (such as Kirsten's tattoos). There were a lot of characters and if you weren't paying attention, it'd be easy to miss who some of them are.
4. There was literally no reason to kill off one of the characters in the last episode, big pet peeve of mine. The story would have been better if Frank had lived longer too.
5. Arthur Leander, his two wives, and his best friend Clark, were all deeply unpleasant people, and the story devotes a lot of time to them. Clark in particular baffled me; his character was all over the place. he's a middle-aged gay man but I never found him relatable at all. His eventual partner, a Black gay man called Miles (also middle-aged), is the most cop-like character in the show. Clark and Miles are like gay anti-queers. Their response to the deadly flu is to isolate and protect their borders, which seems very out of tune for gay men of their generation...
6. There were some moments that would have been so much better with different pacing. Feels like missed opportunity.
So all in all, a mixed bag. There are things to like, and things to dislike, and how that weighs out for different viewers is just going to depend. I'm a little baffled by the many positive critic reviews, but in the same vein, I don't agree with reviews that are fully negative. I wouldn't recommend this to most people, but I have a lot of time on my hands and I like survival stories, so I am glad to have watched it. It was thought-provoking.
I didn't really know how I feel about the show. It had some really great things and then some really bad things. It was interesting but ultimately not good, an Interesting Failure.
Things I liked:
1. the diverse cast, which includes Lori Petty (you man know her as Tank Girl); Mackenzie Davis; Himesh Patel; a great child actor called Matilda Lawler; and disabled actor Prince Amponsah.
2. The Traveling Symphony, a troupe of actors and musicians that travels around Lake Michigan and performs Shakespeare at various settlements. Just a cool idea. The people in this group are wonderful and kind, and are creating art because "survival is insufficient." People leave and join the group, they are a working family.
3. Some great tropes here-- the one where a random person has to suddenly parent a child is gold, and it makes the first episode work well. Jeevan (Himesh Patel) is the kind of guy who runs towards people to help them, but then is frozen by anxiety. Now he's on a steep learning curve, parenting a kid during the end of the world.
4. Themes of survival, grief, working through trauma, learning to forgive your parents/elders/past self- these were all really interesting, even if they didn't quite work. I liked the episode where Kirsten has a dream and visits her younger self. She can now see a traumatic event through adult eyes, and she can comfort her child self.
5. Some very nice visuals; I loved the shots of the prairie.
Failures:
1. The worst is that there is a villain introduced, The Prophet, who lures children away from their homes and then brain washes them. So it's like OK we are gonna kill this guy yes? Kirsten is going to face off with him? But then they try to explain away his crimes and excuse him and like... what? what is going on here?
2. The score was bad, it kept trying to tell me to be scared because awful things are going to happen, and it did this all the time, even when nice things or neutral things were happening. So when I saw reviewers call this show "uplifting" I'm like... no. It's unsettling.
3. The non-linear story telling was confusing. It seemed like it was being mysterious in this heavy-handed way. I kept wondering what that was about, like is there going to be a big reveal? There were some reveals that connected the two timelines and the various characters. But some mysteries were never explained (such as Kirsten's tattoos). There were a lot of characters and if you weren't paying attention, it'd be easy to miss who some of them are.
4. There was literally no reason to kill off one of the characters in the last episode, big pet peeve of mine. The story would have been better if Frank had lived longer too.
5. Arthur Leander, his two wives, and his best friend Clark, were all deeply unpleasant people, and the story devotes a lot of time to them. Clark in particular baffled me; his character was all over the place. he's a middle-aged gay man but I never found him relatable at all. His eventual partner, a Black gay man called Miles (also middle-aged), is the most cop-like character in the show. Clark and Miles are like gay anti-queers. Their response to the deadly flu is to isolate and protect their borders, which seems very out of tune for gay men of their generation...
6. There were some moments that would have been so much better with different pacing. Feels like missed opportunity.
So all in all, a mixed bag. There are things to like, and things to dislike, and how that weighs out for different viewers is just going to depend. I'm a little baffled by the many positive critic reviews, but in the same vein, I don't agree with reviews that are fully negative. I wouldn't recommend this to most people, but I have a lot of time on my hands and I like survival stories, so I am glad to have watched it. It was thought-provoking.
