The first episodes of season 2, then, are like a course correction, one that sees Will and his cluster go on the offensive, upending Whispers’ attempts to locate him, while at the same time deducing a way to exploit the two-way street that is the villain’s invasive psychic connection to undermine his position at BPO. Whispers into an omnipresent boogieman, thereby overriding the importance of each character’s individual storyline – many of which wound up feeling like they had completely stalled out or were so propulsive they overshadowed the stalemate between Will and Whispers. It was a tricky conflict that established a compelling threat, but effectively took Will off the board and turned Mr. Whispers from locating and presumably eradicating his cluster of Sensates is a welcome introduction to the new batch of episodes, one that effectively gets the series out of the corner it painted itself into back in 2015.īack then Will was in a drug-induced haze conducted under the watchful eye of Riley. In the first episode back (and well into the second), Sense8 spends the majority of its time addressing the cliffhanger that brought the first season to a close. Whispers) and, surprisingly, a hint of humanity that affords an otherwise black-and-white situation the chance to investigate more enticingly gray areas than it did before. Much of that has to do with fleshing out the conspiratorial end of the equation, giving it a face (aside from Terrence Mann’s Mr. Thankfully, the start of season 2 demonstrates the ways in which Lana Wachowski and Straczynski have managed to add more action, narrow the series’ focus, while still managing to keep the expansive character dramas running full steam ahead. Smith), Nomi (Jamie Clayton), Sun (Doona Bae), Wolfgang (Max Riemelt), Lito (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), Capheus (Toby Onwumere), Riley (Tuppence Middleton), and Kala (Tina Desai) – not to mention Naveen Andrews’ Jonas and Daryl Hannah’s Angelica – was so big, and the writers’ desire to turn each episode into a platform to tackle topics both political and personal, all while underlining the common Wachowski theme of a unifying human experience, that it was difficult to discern what, exactly, the main story was. While the profusion of narrative options at its disposal make Sense8 into a fascinating model of the binge-watch era, that wealth of material also worked to its detriment in its first season. If you’re not too keen on watching a hacker disrupt the workings of a shadowy multi-national conglomerate, just wait there’s a Korean prison break/revenge drama and a German crime saga happening at the exact same time. The sheer abundance of narrative options effectively renders Netflix’s vast, earnest, and often visually sumptuous series into a storytelling buffet. That’s understandable, as the series is a creative big swing that wants to mix a massive, eight-character narrative with a sprawling exploration of the human experience that also offers political thriller, science fiction, romance, and crime-thriller subplots for the discerning viewer. Michael Straczynski’s Sense8 took a compelling idea and made it diffuse by too often concerning itself with an evaluation of… well, pretty much every idea. I think it should be shown in schools and jails and houses of parliament everywhere.Season 1 of the Wachowskis and J. I know this will sound hyperbolic, but I am convinced that Sense8 is not only one of the best TV shows ever made, but also one of the most fully realized and revolutionary artistic statements of this young millennium. One could argue it's also an allegory about the internet, and I think that is probably true, but only to a point, since it is ultimately a fabulously non-zombiefied take on post-human being. Plus it roars with graphic polysexuality, which is in itself quite a challenge to most viewers to extend their own empathetic abilities beyond TVs traditional comfort zones. It's a sort of tantric meditation on human frailty and embodied cosmic unity squirted through a stylish super-charged ultra-hip action filter. It looks great, feels better and sounds very cool too. Sense8 was a remarkable exploration of the limits and potential of human empathy, expressed in an astonishing number of emotionally charged permutations and manifestations, from polymorphic sexuality to global interculturality to the telempathic fusions between complete strangers that are at the heart of the very cool plot. It was sheer genius and their snobbery led to it being cancelled. Damn the lazy uptight critics again for dumping on Sense8.
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