minor spoilers

Flynne, Burton and Conner meet with Lowbeer and are put to the test.

In what was a slightly frustrating penultimate episode we finally see some of the antagonists in Flynne’s world get their comeuppance while others’ plots are uncovered. While this is deeply satisfying it’s also not quite as cogent as perhaps you’d anticipate. I think the reason for this is the characters acting have motivations that aren’t quite clear and definitely not as fleshed out as they needed to be for their choices to carry the weight they’re obviously meant to.

Which is to say this episode feels like the small fry have been cleared out of the way to allow for the grand reveal of the finale.

Beyond this the frustration is something that in the earliest episodes was a great strength – that we only know what the characters know about the world. In the sense that early in the story this means we’re not having things artificially withheld from us, this late in the season it feels like a hindrance to understanding what’s happening.

The show has diverged in some important ways from the book but even so I feel like I understand what’s going on largely because I’m familiar with the novel. This is a problem because I can see that those who haven’t read the book would be watching this and growing impatient with not knowing what’s going on.

I also have a horrible feeling we might not get the closure the book offers at the end of the next (and final) episode. One of the joys of the novel was it felt complete in itself – regardless of the fact it was the first part of a trilogy.

What I personally want from the finale is for it to give us a sense of the story being complete – that we know what Aelita wanted, what her grand plan was. Right now I can’t say the show has given us any insight into what she’s trying to accomplish nor why her actions are considered so worrisome.

I also felt slightly sorry for Lowbeer, whose character was portrayed as exceptionally smart only to be tilted off her stride by the simplest of comments from someone she was interviewing. This is plot at the expense of character and it’s clunky.

All of which is to say that there were moments this episode where I began to worry the showrunners don’t know how to land this vehicle. They’re not big worries but they are now there where before they weren’t.

The episode does deliver moments of grand theatre, humour and violence with its trademark shocking sparsity of presentation.

However, with my story teller’s hat on I think that with only eight episodes to play with the adaptation needed to lose perhaps two side characters: Connor and Ossian. Despite my love for them both (especially Connor), they could easily disappear and the plot would have more space to work with those who remained.

I can feel the desire to do the source material justice and that source includes both Connor and Ossian. The problem is that Ash, Lowbeer and others have even more space to spread their wings in the novel and the show’s limits mean much of that has necessarily been lost.

On its own terms the show still exhibits these strains of adaptation – I normally don’t compare to source material like this but I think it is warranted because of the way the two are related.

Gibson’s density doesn’t easily translate to the screen.

Having said that, the episode, like the rest of the show so far, was excellent fun with the tension between the characters never less than gripping.

What I really wished for was more of a lead into the finale, a sense that the stakes are high, that the outcomes matter.

At the end of episode 7 I felt the stakes weren’t any different to where we were in episode 1 and while there’s been a gripping story all the way through I wanted to be on the edge of my seat desperate for what comes next.

Instead I felt like we might end up in the dining room of a country mansion with the detective explaining who done it.

Rating? 7 doodads out of 10.

Stewart Hotston