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KENT!'s avatar

I had assumed it was a 10 episode season, so I said to my wife late in the episode "wow, this feels like a season finale, where are they going next episode", and I was genuinely excited to see what twists could happen immediately after all this. But she told me it was the finale and I felt let down. This season felt like it abandoned character arcs for plot, and I was hoping a 10th episode would show the personal fallout of all of this whilst setting up the next big thing. In my mind, all of the modern day events just spiral out of control even further, with Walter's machinations not being as clever and pat as he seems to think they are (the evidence, should anyone bother to look at it, is going to tell a much different story then what everyone is trying to sell)

I keep wondering...Isn't Tai state senator now? Doesn't she have stuff to do? Wouldn't all the drama she's been partaking in be under much more public scrutiny? There's been no mention of her responsibilities. Isn't her wife in a coma? Who's looking after the kid? Everyone else is untethered enough to go hang out at a commune for days but, Tai can't just disappear without it being a bigger public issue, and now tied to a cult where a police corruption scandal, murder and overdose collide? Not a good look for a politician.

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Shawn's avatar

I liked and enjoyed the Coach Ben stuff. He knows that the girls essentially murdered a child to cannibalize him (Nat admits that to him). He has also been witness to bizarre and monstrous behavior by them and has good reason to believe this is only going to get worse.

For me, him trying to kill them all was twofold 1) He thinks killing them before they do worse things is doing everyone a kindness. 2) Self-preservation... he knows that he is very likely next on the menu and can't defend himself.

Overall I still continue to like the 1996 stuff but am completely over the 2021 timeline. The resolution to the Adam storyline was groan-worthy (why even have that as a storyline this season if you just wanna shove it aside at the end, literally no one at the end of season 1 was asking for it). In general the 2021 stuff doesn't really have verisimilitude for me, it all feels so convenient and make-believe that I don't really have much immersion in it.

I agree that the season was a disappointment and my expectations for this show going forward are now much more muted compared to what they were at the beginning of the season.

My one wish for the next season is that they split entire episodes by timeline so that there is not all this intercutting between the tense, serious and dramatic 1996 timeline and the completely goofy and trying to be funny 2021 timeline. All those cuts took so much out of the tension of the 1996 timeline for me (this episode for example they cut from Travis being pressured into eating his own brother by Van in 1996 to the goofy scene between Elijah Wood and Kevyn). I am not saying they can't have humor but humor has to fit in with the tone of the 1996 stuff (and there were some very good darkly funny moments in 1996 like "Tai, you ate her face"), intersplicing the harrowing stuff in 1996 with attempts at broad humor like what happens in 2021 is not it and doesn't do the 1996 timeline justice.

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