My reaction to episode 54, the first episode of season 2: Are they paid in fan tears? I should have expected Alex not to let them celebrate their win with a nice fluffy rest day before the taste of victory turned to ashes. Using the purse snatcher and the people of Eiffel’s folly to make the consequences of their actions real in a way that talking about banks relying on the Ordinators didn’t.
Bryn and Ben working together to bring out the bitterness in the ashes was not expected but was masterfully done. Zolf was almost as broken by seeing they really “won” as Hamid was at the end of last season when he saw they could never know if they won. I am a sucker for a leader taking on the pain and guilt for what their team has done at the best of times and Ben played Zolf’s taking on all the guilt over everything that happened since the Ordinators went down with a deft hand. This was quite painful enough without twisting the knife by showing how it was also covering for the more personal pain of not being able to help directly like Sasha & Bertie. Bryn used Hamid’s dialogue well to draw out Zolf so that we can see the inner workings of a character who doesn’t like talking about his feelings, while keeping both of them in character.
Zolf wheeling himself to his room alone after declaring himself helpless was hard enough on my heart without Bryn gleefully leaving us with the image of Hamid ugly crying locked outside Zolf’s door. The argument over whether they did the right thing still echoing as I remember that Hamid almost unilaterally made the decision to start the attack on Mr. Ceiling, and how that might affect his need to believe that it was The Right Thing. Poor kid sees things as very black and white at the best of times, and even if Zolf legitimately sees it as something the team did, he did basically say Hamid killing Mr. Ceiling killed thousands of people.
PS. Screw Bertie for teasing Zolf for crying, especially with hindsight showing us that Zolf saw the kid as his victim. Bless Sasha for trying to make them understand that the poor were already suffering and the Ordinators kept it out of sight rather then the system going down caused all the pain.
PPS: Yes I know I hop scotch around the 4th wall, talking here about Bryn’s art and there about Hamid’s feelings but this isn’t Sherlock Holmes, we aren’t playing the Great Game, and this is already a very meta format. So while I debated editing this to pick a perspective; it is much more in keeping with how I heard it to be flitting between admiration at Ben’s performance and pain at seeing how hard Zolf was taking it.
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Cross posted from tumblr: I warned you this show was giving me feels
Date: 2019-08-03 01:59 pm (UTC)From:Bryn and Ben working together to bring out the bitterness in the ashes was not expected but was masterfully done. Zolf was almost as broken by seeing they really “won” as Hamid was at the end of last season when he saw they could never know if they won. I am a sucker for a leader taking on the pain and guilt for what their team has done at the best of times and Ben played Zolf’s taking on all the guilt over everything that happened since the Ordinators went down with a deft hand. This was quite painful enough without twisting the knife by showing how it was also covering for the more personal pain of not being able to help directly like Sasha & Bertie. Bryn used Hamid’s dialogue well to draw out Zolf so that we can see the inner workings of a character who doesn’t like talking about his feelings, while keeping both of them in character.
Zolf wheeling himself to his room alone after declaring himself helpless was hard enough on my heart without Bryn gleefully leaving us with the image of Hamid ugly crying locked outside Zolf’s door. The argument over whether they did the right thing still echoing as I remember that Hamid almost unilaterally made the decision to start the attack on Mr. Ceiling, and how that might affect his need to believe that it was The Right Thing. Poor kid sees things as very black and white at the best of times, and even if Zolf legitimately sees it as something the team did, he did basically say Hamid killing Mr. Ceiling killed thousands of people.
PS. Screw Bertie for teasing Zolf for crying, especially with hindsight showing us that Zolf saw the kid as his victim. Bless Sasha for trying to make them understand that the poor were already suffering and the Ordinators kept it out of sight rather then the system going down caused all the pain.
PPS: Yes I know I hop scotch around the 4th wall, talking here about Bryn’s art and there about Hamid’s feelings but this isn’t Sherlock Holmes, we aren’t playing the Great Game, and this is already a very meta format. So while I debated editing this to pick a perspective; it is much more in keeping with how I heard it to be flitting between admiration at Ben’s performance and pain at seeing how hard Zolf was taking it.