well-meaning show with weird pacing and execution
I understood very well what this show was trying to tell us: not everything is what it seems, and sometimes the magic lies in simply waiting for everything to slowly unfold. That is probably what makes this show so unique in its own way.
The pacing of the first six episodes was especially good since it constantly made me want to immediately move on to the next episode just to see what was really going on.
I really enjoyed the feeling of having my assumptions gradually challenged. The show would give you just enough information to form an impression of a character or situation, only to later reveal another side of it. That constant uncertainty worked incredibly well in the beginning because I was actively trying to put the pieces together along with the characters.
However, the later episodes started to lose me a little. My biggest problem wasn’t necessarily that the story kept revealing new information, but that the emotional and psychological conclusions I had reached about the characters would sometimes be undone almost immediately by another revelation. I would spend an episode building a certain understanding of a character, letting that shape how I felt about them, and then a new piece of information would come along in the next episode and completely reframe it. Eventually, I stopped mentally checking in with their stories as much because I felt less certain that the emotional investment I was making would actually have somewhere to land.
This became especially noticeable with the dialogue. There were moments when I could feel the writing trying very hard to communicate the intended meaning or push the characters toward a particular revelation, rather than allowing their conversations to naturally unfold from who they were. Sometimes it felt like they were saying something because the script needed them to say it, rather than because I could genuinely believe that this was how these characters would speak to each other in that moment.
And ironically, I think that’s where the show’s central strength eventually became a weakness for me. The constant idea of “things aren’t what they seem” is fascinating when it makes you reconsider what you thought you knew. But when almost every emotional conclusion is repeatedly destabilized, it can become difficult to form a lasting connection with the characters themselves. At some point, I wasn’t as interested in discovering what was actually true anymore because I was no longer emotionally anchored enough to the characters to care about which version of them was revealed next.
Still, I think the first half deserves a lot of credit. The atmosphere, pacing, mystery, and gradual unfolding of information created a very particular kind of tension that I rarely get from dramas.
The pacing of the first six episodes was especially good since it constantly made me want to immediately move on to the next episode just to see what was really going on.
I really enjoyed the feeling of having my assumptions gradually challenged. The show would give you just enough information to form an impression of a character or situation, only to later reveal another side of it. That constant uncertainty worked incredibly well in the beginning because I was actively trying to put the pieces together along with the characters.
However, the later episodes started to lose me a little. My biggest problem wasn’t necessarily that the story kept revealing new information, but that the emotional and psychological conclusions I had reached about the characters would sometimes be undone almost immediately by another revelation. I would spend an episode building a certain understanding of a character, letting that shape how I felt about them, and then a new piece of information would come along in the next episode and completely reframe it. Eventually, I stopped mentally checking in with their stories as much because I felt less certain that the emotional investment I was making would actually have somewhere to land.
This became especially noticeable with the dialogue. There were moments when I could feel the writing trying very hard to communicate the intended meaning or push the characters toward a particular revelation, rather than allowing their conversations to naturally unfold from who they were. Sometimes it felt like they were saying something because the script needed them to say it, rather than because I could genuinely believe that this was how these characters would speak to each other in that moment.
And ironically, I think that’s where the show’s central strength eventually became a weakness for me. The constant idea of “things aren’t what they seem” is fascinating when it makes you reconsider what you thought you knew. But when almost every emotional conclusion is repeatedly destabilized, it can become difficult to form a lasting connection with the characters themselves. At some point, I wasn’t as interested in discovering what was actually true anymore because I was no longer emotionally anchored enough to the characters to care about which version of them was revealed next.
Still, I think the first half deserves a lot of credit. The atmosphere, pacing, mystery, and gradual unfolding of information created a very particular kind of tension that I rarely get from dramas.
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