Another Sense8 post. This one, further down, has spoilers. Don’t say you want warned.
(edited slightly post-posting after comments on Facebook)
Over the weekend I indulged in another binge re-watch of all 12 episodes, but this time I had a notebook with me. I probably missed a lot: the layerings between episodes and the parallels between the characters’ lives are many. I’m not going to type all my notes here, but will say that there is a lot of information and a fair sprinkling of meta-humour in the early episodes that passed me by on first (and second đ ) casual viewing. For example, I didn’t notice that when we meet Lito he is in a telenovella called “Love Has No Boundaries”; I hadn’t noticed that Lito’s director tells him (episode 3) exactly what JMS and the Wachowskis are doing:
The audience doesn’t know; the audience is with you. When you know, they know.
See also the title of this post (from episode 3).
I hadn’t noticed that both Lito and Hernando, and Nomi and Amanita have their first kisses in bathrooms (respectively the Diego Rivera Museum and the Lexington.) I hadn’t noticed how Wolfgang and Felix’s negotiations with Abraham in Berlin parallel Capheus and Jela’s negotiation with Mr. Fuck Off in Nairobi. I loved Nomi and Aminita’s shared lollipop (episode 7). I hadn’t noticed that in the final episode, when Kala visits the dispensary in Iceland, she is still in tears following what she saw Wolfgang do. Props to Tina Desai.
I did notice, that Beethoven’s Piano Concerto Number 5, central to episode 10, is what the blind busker is playing in episode 3 when Riley gives him all of Nyx’s cash
Anyway: I have too long a list of notes of parallels. I also have Dory Previn’s “Mr. Whisper” as an earworm in my head, though it isn’t in the show.
So, I’ve made a note below of 26 questions/thoughts I have for forthcoming seasons based on things I noted. Some of these are almost certainly misdirection by the writers, of course, and I think some of those misdirections come via Jonas Maliki (I’m not saying he’s lying, just that some of what he says doesn’t make sense to me). No doubt I’ve missed things.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
How is a cluster birthed?
Nyx: who is he? Why was he keen to have Riley try DMT, which clearly accelerated her growth as a sensate? (also, Nyx; really? what’s in a name…?)
Who is Daniella Velasquez’s father?
Who is Mr. Moreno?
Sara Patrell. She’s dead, so why did Will keep seeing her? And while we’re on the subject…
… Will’s father and the Sara Patrell case. The missing person report for Sara is dated 21 June 1987. Sara was 10 when she disappeared so was born 1976/7. The buff folder that contains the MPR is dated 19 October 1978, ie when Sara is 1 or 2 years old: what happened then? How old was Will in June 1987? (see 21 below). Something screwy is going on (unless the production didn’t expect obsessives to freeze-frame, which is unlikely đ ). More to come on this, I think. There’s also a typo in para 3 of the missing person poster: “Amber was not seen…”
Yrsa (She-Bear? Mad/Furious woman? what’s in a name…?): who or what hurt her so deeply?
Will and Riley both had childhood sensate-like experiences. Nomi mentions “a feeling I’ve had all my life”. What about the others? And therefore…
…who was the boy with young Kala at the Ganesh Festival?
Comment, perhaps innocuous, about “DNA spanning the generations”.
Metzger was also in Istanbul and Switzerland. What’s there? And where else?
OK, we get it, Sun is bad-ass. But she also has a Masters in Economics and was a senior finance officer in the family business. So she should bring analytical skills to “following the money” in further investigations into Biologic, not just beat up the bad guys.
“To the ancestors”
Whispers and the University of Chicago “Special Research Group” (and Sara Patrell)
Grace, Amanita and psycillium.
Episode 12: Amanita is re-assured by Nomi and Will that the fact she has looked at Whispers doesn’t matter because she isn’t sensate. See point 15 above; hmmm…
Episode 3: why is the problem with the “Evil Twin” of Lito’s character mentioned so often?
Where’s Abraham gone, and why?
Whispers, Jonas, Yrsa… It seems individual sensate clusters are isolated, not collaborative. Why? It must diminish their evolutionary potential?
Whispers reminds Angelica Turing in the opening scene that she is “one of us”, and the implication is that he is not referring to sensates per se but to some sub-set of sensates.
Nomi’s Australian BOLO: Date of birth is given as 22 July 1981. Really? That is (a) not 8 August and (b) would make her (and therefore Riley) four years older than Magnus (b. 13 April 1985). Misdirection? Her date of birth on the Federal BOLO is 26 August 1983, also not 8 August, and 2 years older than Magnus.
What’s with all the haz-mat suits and respirators?
Why is Lito in Mexico, not Spain? (ie was it only for career reasons he left Spain or some other reason; we know remarkably little about him).
We’ve seen Riley be born 3 times (her physical birth, her re-birth as a sensate, the “birth” of the Riley that chooses life in episode 12 and leaves her dead husband and child behind). We know of 3 for Nomi as well (born as Michael, reborn as Nomi, reborn as a Sense8). Who’s next?
Structurally Riley’s actions in the final scene of episode 12 parallel/mirror those of Angelica in the first scene of episode 1–lovely structure (JMS, I suspect) but 2. significance?
Linkages: pharma; counterfeits; DMT; diamonds; “evil drug money”.
Itâs unusual for me to become invested in a TV seriesâI donât watch much TV at the best of times, and more often than not Iâm playing catch up on the internet. Recent exceptions have been Game of Thrones and Penny Dreadful, as well as old favourites like Dr. Who.
Three series are on my watch list at the moment; two of them are very good but follow a traditional episodic patternâAgent Carter and The Expanse, both of which I enjoy very much. However, in both cases itâs because I like them as stories that Iâm caught up in them, together with the excellent casting and acting.
The third is somewhat different. I realised that I had been seeing Tuppence Middleton a lot recently, beginning with Jupiter Ascending, which I originally disliked but enjoyed more on a second viewing. I read a profile of her in the Guardian that mentioned that she was starring in a Netflix show co-written and produced by J Michael Straczynski and the Wachowskis called Sense8. Curious, I went and had a look.
sense8
Sense8 is the first show in a very long time with which my engagement is not just intellectual but emotional: I really want to know what is going to happen with these characters. It is also one of the few examples of true science fiction, rather than space-opera, I can remember for a long time: the scientific McGuffin of it forms part of the core metaphor underpinning the whole narrative.
I wonât post major spoilers here in case some of you want to go and watch the programme (which I basically did as a binge-watch and then rewatched obsessively), but there are some spoilery bits below, so consider yourself warned if that’s your thing.
Sense8 is conceived, like JMSâs Babylon 5, as a story told long-form. Given that Babylon 5 is one of my favourite programmes ever, partly because of the way the trivial stuff in Season 1 suddenly exploded in Seasons 3 and 4, I took that as a good sign. Apparently Netflix only sent the first 3 episodes out to reviewers and this caused some early poor reviews: there were complaints that people couldnât work out what was going on (nonsense by the way, but there we are). The thing is, with the long-form approach used, the viewer was working out what was happening at the same pace as the characters who were equally confused. Also, although it is somewhat episodic for presentational reasons, it is also novelistic in that it is conceived as a whole.
Ironically enough, it is in Episode 4, titled Whatâs Going On? that it all comes together for the psychically-linked lead characters (in San Francisco, Chicago, London, Berlin, Mumbai, Nairobi, Seoul and Mexico) in a magnificent and surprising way, around a 4 Non-Blondes song (the perfect soundtrack for a lobotomy, as Amanita comments) in a sequence that begins at around 43 minutes in. From that moment on, the show does not look back (the clip below is only part of the sequence, which runs for 8 minutes or so).
However, the scene/sequence that, for me, defines what the show is about is in Episode 9, Death Doesnât Let You Say Goodbye, introduced by a melancholy piano-reading of Mad World by Marius Furche.
Lito and Nomi
The scene opens, around the 21 minute mark, with Lito (Miguel Angel Silvestre) in the Diego Rivera Museum in Mexico, mourning the breakup with his partner Hernando. Lito recalls their first meeting there, and Hernandoâs monologue on Love and Art, both of which, he says, are uncontrolled and must be free. He joins with Nomi (Jamie Clayton). The scene shifts to Korea, where Sun (Doona Bae) is visited by her father who talks to her about Love and Truth, finding love and finding identity, and doing the right thing for love, the dilemma that confronts Lito.
The scene shifts back to Mexico, where the discussion turns to art that is not free, but is âpimped outâ by banks and censored by authority. But, says Hernando, âfuck with art and youâll get fucked by artâ: and so, by metaphorical extension, fuck with Love and youâll get fucked by Love–which is Lito’s story. This all leads up to a reflection by Nomi, who talks about bullying earlier in her life:
The real violence, the violence I realised was unforgivable, is the violence that we do to ourselves when weâre too afraid to be who we really are.
Love; Truth; Identity: A beautifully conceived and constructed sequence. It reads as rather precious on the page, but given what we have invested in the characters in the previous episodes, and the unflinching excellence of Silvestre and Claytonâs portrayals, the effect is to define one of the underlying premises of the show. For Lito, whose story has hitherto been characterised by the slightly comedic aspects of his position as a closeted telenovela actor in macho roles, his humanity and self-realisation come to the fore and his story turns completely on its head to become one of the strongest and most fully realised love-stories in the show (and the show is not without its love stories: Nomi and Amanita, Riley and Will, Kala and Wolfgang).
I have only begun to touch on what I like about this show. For example I like the way each individualâs story is told in its own styleâtelenovela, Euro-tech thriller, a splash of Bollywoodâbut never loses its overall thematic unity; I loved the horse in the school (really, I grinned from ear to ear); I love how it is performing a “show don’t tell” on what I believe is one of Lana Wachowski’s personal tenets of faith: we should be responsible to and for each other. The acting is unswervingly excellent by the whole cast, including Tuppence Middleton who is both luminous and tragic as Riley.
Riley Blue (Tuppence Middleton)
And there is an extraordinary scene featuring all the principle players remembering their own births while Rileyâs father performs Beethovenâs Piano Concerto No 5 on stage in Reykjavik. The cinematography and music selection is fabulous throughout, and, although I may have given the impression of seriousness above, there is a playfulness about the whole enterprise which charms. And was that a cheerful shout out to Team America: World Police in Episode 10?
Have I gushed?
The show attracted âmixedâ critical reaction, but it has a second season in production and I am one of many who simply canât wait.
An edited version of the Lito/Nomi scene is embedded below (the full scene runs for nearly 13 minutes):
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