Sense8, arguably (imo) one of the most wonderful and inclusive shows to exist, has season 2 go live tomorrow, so I wanted to start a thread for thoughts to come back to when I get to watch it Saturday/Sunday! Please be kind and hide S2 spoilers for those working at a slower pace however
I love this show so so SO much (especially Riley my lil sweetheart ), nothing has caught me in years the way this show did. I watched the entire first season through 3 times since it premiered! Chat to me, pals
So that trailer they released a few hours ago showed somethinh interesting that i hope they don’t screw up that the #squad will meet another cluster and even fight them maybe?
Yes I’m super interested to see how that pans out! I was really hoping other groups of sensates was something they’d introduce cause I feel they have enough people to focus on that they could’ve left it out perhaps, but I’m really intrigued to see the motivations behind what looks like the other group they find collaborating with Whispers?
It’s really good. Certainly one of those shows where Netflix is aiming straight at HBO (so expect sex scenes/18 rated themes). JMS is still slightly preachy/wooden with some of the dialogue in places so, as I suspect you’re going to already be onboard with the general inclusive messages, that stuff can get a bit overplayed/didactic - it certainly makes the first couple of episodes drag out but the payoff when the series gets going is so worth it. The basic format is a 3 hour establishing/framing movie, 6 hours of meat, and a 3 hour action movie to conclude the first season. Then back for a Christmas special.
I wrote to a friend (when just done watching it): You are going to have to watch 90 minutes of establishing scenes with a lot of misogynistic or transphobic assholes whose only purpose is to establish that the main characters are the good gals/guys who shut down the bigots, and then most of them completely vanish as their job is done. At one point (mild spoiler for early in S1) a San Franciscan trans woman says she will always love someone because they were the first person who stood up to a transphobic bully who was harassing them. [Sound of everyone watching making various comments about how messed up that kind of foundation for love is, when treating someone as an actual human is the bar.] So… heart in the right place stuff but sometimes the actual message isn’t super-great even if it’s very relatable.
You should absolutely watch it, some of the best queer TV that’s been made.
I loved the hell out of the first season but i’m really excited for season 2 now that we know the setup/mechanics of how the show works. New Capheus is rad as all hell, too.
I really enjoyed that show, largely because rather than focusing on the action and/or just piling action scene on action scene, it gives us action then works us through a lot of the characters’ emotional processing of what they’ve gone through. Much like the movie Moon, I find, it’s more an exploration of how we can constructively deal with trauma than just a vehicle to show how edgily it can stack traumas on the characters we care about.
The sweetness and gentleness of Lito and Hernando’s relationship really took me off guard, honestly, and helped me come to terms with better recognizing my own internalized homophobia. I’m also glad to have a big-budget and relatively mainstream show created by a pair of trans women–the Watchowski Sisters are better situated from their past careers than anyone else I’m aware of to be handling this show.
I suppose I’ll have to finish my rewatch through which I’m introducing my girlfriend to the show, if S2 is coming out!
Oops I accidentally binged the whole thing and cried and laughed a whole lot.
[spoiler]There was some stuff this season that felt a little too cheesy (Bug, Lito and Hernando on the beach), but then I noticed that I was smiling the whole time so I guess it doesn’t matter. Riley still seems like kind of a pointless character, and I find it hard to care about her and Will. Still, they are definitely more interesting than they were the first season.
Overall, this season was filled with some very warm moments and I hope we won’t have to wait for too long for season 3.
Also, what is up with Sun’s inability to wear anything but underwear?[/spoiler]
So. Hrm. I’m gonna give it a second whirl sometime but this season as a whole felt really underwhelming for me? Maybe it’s to do with binge-ing it and my own personal headspace (I suffer from dissociation frequently and it’s often hard to tell when I’m having one of those periods whilst in it) but I just don’t feel like a lot happened for almost 10 hours of TV.
Although I have re-evaluated and Kala is now my favourite, my sweet science angel.
(Just gonna block out from here on cause spoilers)
[spoiler]Jonas died, except then he wasn’t dead. I kinda get why, but a totally under-utilised character this season.
They met a couple of other sensates/groups, but aside from the woman in Berlin who wanted to fuck with Wolfgang, and a couple who aided Riley/Will, I don’t remember a lot else happening with them? There was so much room for cool stuff!
We were lacking moments when the cluster shared knowledge - languages, fighting skills, etc. Bar some more fights, the only stand out moment I remember in this respect was Lito bartending for Sun at her brother’s event. These were some of the coolest moments for me in the first season. And whilst I appreciate that having 8 central and several important secondary characters is a lot for one show, particularly when you take into account all the possible different pairings of the 8 in the cluster, it felt like no one pairings relationship developed particularly, not even those that are focused on more than others, such as Will/Riley and Kala/Wolfie. Kala and Wolfie particularly annoyed me, there’s a lot of ~ooh there’s something here, it’s forbidden~ filler between them but aside from them having sex and then not talking about it, there’s no real progression in their relationship/arc.
Oh and this one’s totally on me, but the pride scene was way overhyped for me (thanks, tumblr) when actually it amounted to not that long at all in screen time. Considering all the cluster actors were there to film, and there was great BTS footage of them all dancing and stuff, there was little of that int the episode that I remember, which would’ve been ‘filler’ I’d welcome.[/spoiler]
Sun (“Detective loves getting punched by his beautiful suspect too much to actually arrest her” is a good hook, and the big finale was a delight)
Riley (I’ve been anxious for scenes where the sensates meet each other’s friends/family directly; seeing Riley bubble over with happiness when she sees Diego and facetimes with Amanita was great)
Will (Dunking on Whispers might never get old)
Nomi (the wedding scene was pretty corny, but it’s so rare for TV & movies to straight up let trans characters have nice things that I’ll allow it)
Lito (getting impostor syndrome because Sun’s acting won him a role is a real interesting point of tension)
Slops to the storylines for:
Wolfgang (the turf war plot introduced in the Christmas Special is utterly dropped, and Fuchs is a confusing non-character)
Capheus (do they even say what office he is running for?)
Kala (there’s a guy named Ajay, he seems to be Rajan’s friend but maybe is actually an enemy? Whoops season over)
Overall the show is still a sumptuous pleasure, but the bungled plots for Wolfgang and Capheus are really disappointing after they had such clear and cathartic arcs in season 1. The finale was also REALLY oddly paced, starting out with an extremely granular 25-minute continuous setpiece, and ending by cramming about 2 episodes worth of plot into 15 minutes.
Yes, this felt very strange. Although a lot of the season felt like filler (which was fine, I like the characters enough to enjoy them sans BPO-plot), I felt like the show was shuffling the characters to where they needed to be for the next season. But then it decides that none of that mattered and all of the sudden every character is in London (and how did Will manage to get inside BPO HQ anyway?)
Yes, yes, totally this. It felt like a lot of set up and that would be fine it it were like the first half of a season and the mid-season finale, but it’s not. I don’t think the end even felt particularly like a cliffhanger because we have no idea what they’re going to do with Whispers now they have him? Was this thought out at all? Did I miss it entirely?
Also appreciate @ItsSupercar setting stuff out like that, I would agree on all your props/slops on consideration. Capheus is running for president? Maybe? I remember not having a clue and then someone saying in conversation with him “if you become president” or something to that effect. Which seems like…a lot.
), nothing has caught me in years the way this show did. I watched the entire first season through 3 times since it premiered! Chat to me, pals
