Review: Shogun, "A Stick of Time" | Season 1, Episode 7
A family reunion has disastrous consequences
Watching “A Stick Of Time,” it occurred to me: we’re seven episodes into the series, and I still don’t quite have a handle on Toranaga. That sounds like a criticism, but in the context of this series, that uncertainty feels like an intentional choice, and a smart one. We already know, in a general sense, how this is going to end—the promotional material, even the title of the series, has made it clear enough. In order to generate tension (and this series has been very good at that), it’s necessary to make the audience focus more on the moment-to-moment action than the big picture. Part of that means establishing seemingly insurmountable odds against the heroes, which “Time” does a terrific job of; part of it is making sure we don’t know how said heroes are going to react to a given situation. The more we’re worrying about the “how,” the less time we’ll spend reassuring ourselves with the “what.” Or something like that.
But as I was saying, Toranaga is something…