S02.E11: Chapter 19

[Bruinsfan]

In this case mind mojo = hitting on a cracked-out junkie.

[Enigma X]

I binge watched both seasons this weekend. I ate the first season up only to finish with the second season saying I am done.

 

I really am annoyed with the direction they are taking David's character. (I also don't believe he is or want him to be a villain.) I will end this for myself, because I see this show becoming something I would be hate watching. Who has time for that? I don't.

[AudienceofOne]

So many thoughts about this season and about this episode and in the total sum of things, I can't say I enjoyed it. In fact I felt like, beneath the crazed surrealism, the story was actually kind of pedestrian. Give a child power and he will abuse it. Our greatest enemy is ourselves. Fear turns us into monsters. Through all the philosophising and social commentary, at its core it wasn't that interesting. 

From the beginning, everyone has been scared of David. Ignoring David's flaws - and there are many - his so-called 'friends' have always wanted to use and control him. They need his power but they fear his power and have never really treated him as a person. Basically, they've mostly been waiting to turn on him because his existence makes them uncomfortable. 

On 14/06/2018 at 4:34 AM, justmehere said:

David is a child both emotionally and socially. He's been manipulated since birth; locked away and drugged; had little experience at "normal" life; and then was basically given keys to a Ferrari with minimal knowledge of how to drive. The one person guiding him, Melanie, then checked out with her own issues, leaving him to flounder and find his own way. He was going to crash a few times. He also went off his meds, not knowing that there was genuine mental illness going on. Melanie didn't know either, but if she'd continued mentoring him, she might have noticed and kept him in line.

He learned about his powers pretty quickly, but then like a teenager, he thought he knew everything. And he was in love, so he listened to his girlfriend, who appeared from the future, trusting her without question. (Yeah, that causality loop is a big deal.) He also lost his sister, which did very bad things to his head. He's trying to fulfill what he thinks is his mission, driving at 120mph, and he finally begins winning the battle with Farouk.

Suddenly his girlfriend pulls a gun on him for no reason he can understand. In his confusion (and immaturity) -- and with incredible power at his disposal -- he does a bad thing and wipes her mind. Such a minor act, to him, to make her forget a few upsetting things because she must be confused. Torturing Oliver was certainly bad -- I wonder if it was one of those other Davids in his head pushing him; he seemed kind of outside or beyond himself -- but he thought his mission justified doing so. With Syd, it was an emotionally young David wanting love and taking a shortcut. He lacked any real insight. Doesn't make what he did OK, but he was going to make mistakes. (How many teenage boys try to emotionally manipulate their girlfriends? It's not OK; it's also not uncommon.)

When Fukyama shows up with the cavalry, he feels vindicated and is sure he's done right. Farouk is the dangerous one, and now he's been captured. Energetically visiting Syd and sleeping with her... bad because it builds on the earlier transgression but he still doesn't understand. He even shows up to the trial all in white: innocence. Now the people he began to think of as family have betrayed him. Reverting to the mantra about being good and deserving love, I think, shows the child who is lost, who has never understood himself or what was happening to him. He's alone again.

I agree with this completely. I've always found his repetition of 'We're in LOVE' to be extremely childlike. He really needed somebody to take care of him but, as I said above, they've always treated him as a weapon - something to be used, controlled and possibly destroyed if necessary. Even Syd needed very little prompting to get her to respond to him in fear, which suggests she was already scared of him. 

On 14/06/2018 at 4:17 PM, scrb said:

I'm not sure what this mishmash of styles is suppose to be about.  Certainly does nothing for plot momentum because when it abruptly switches context, the change calls attention to itself and diverts from what was happening previously.

There's a callback to one of the digressions, with the egg when David is talking to his other selves in his room.  Does that mean these previous digressions were all in David's head?

After last week's episode, I was left with the impression that this entire season was in David's head and Farouk doesn't really exist but is simply an idea planted in David's head.

On 14/06/2018 at 7:17 PM, ItCouldBeWorse said:

David didn't have his powers when Syd aimed the gun at him.  Neither of them did because Lenny had set off the "The Choke," (giant tuning fork).  Farouk was powerless, too, which was why David was able to nearly beat him to death.  This was Syd's one chance to take David out.

And Farouk - I mean, let's assume she was right to take out David, why not take out Farouk as well? Shoot them both.

On 15/06/2018 at 8:36 PM, superloislane said:

Farouk has tortured David his whole life and murdered his sister like a week ago and yet David's 'friends' let Farouk go and teamed up with him against David who they imprisoned and implied that they were willing to kill him if he didn't do what they said. I'd call that a major betrayal and definitely turning on him.

Completely agree. 110%. I thought though that the AI's programming had been compromised by the Ptonomy upload and so their logic wasn't working properly. Their analysis of the risk probably was a big part in everyone's response. Still, it's annoying. 

On 16/06/2018 at 8:38 AM, showme said:

Second, there is NO date rape. Sydney was not unconscious when they "made love", she made the choice to do it. Was she lacking some information that might have changed her mind? Sure.

That's what make it rape. I'm not going to belabour this point too much because I find these arguments go nowhere. So I will simply state my position on this - this show is almost entirely metaphorical and from a metaphorical standpoint, he physically dominated her to create a situation where had sex with him when she would have otherwise refused. The framing of that act, even from the Director of this episode, made it very clear the show wanted the viewers to understand this as a violation. David is out of control, that's not in question. The issue is their disproportionate response based on their fear. It was a betrayal. But that doesn't mean he didn't violate Sydney. He did.

On 16/06/2018 at 11:27 AM, kieyra said:

Yikes. You’re talking about a show where much of what the characters experience doesn’t happen in the “real” world—including David and Syd’s past intimate relationship. You’re talking about a show where Lenny mentioned behind repeatedly raped by the Shadow King when she was just a disembodied prisoner in his disembodied reality. You really can’t play this strange “only physical bodies can be raped” card in the context of this particular show.

This.

[MisterGlass]

Watched the second season on Hulu this week.  It did not go in a direction I expected.  Not sure that I like David as a villain, but I can see it.

At least the philosophical interludes tied back into the main story at the end.  Narcissism is the Shadow King, who believes what he does to other people doesn't matter, and who tried (perhaps succeeded) to persuade David of the same thing.  Moral panic is the people at Division Three, who took the facts they had and drew the conclusion that the Shadow King wanted them to draw.  Delusion was David, in so many ways.  Not least because he thought he could win by engaging with his own abuser, and instead got more turned around than ever.

And I guess David was the contagious one, and the people at Division 3 were catching madness from him.

Navid Negahban was the standout this season.  Creepy, scary character.

[Miles]

On 6/13/2018 at 7:35 AM, Bruinsfan said:

And they're acting like Farouk is some innocent that David is maligning, rather than a common enemy who's gleefully killed (at least) dozens of people and treated them all like toys to be played with.

That one really got me. Even if you 100% believe that David will bring about the apocalypse, why would you let Faruk just walk around without a dampener on? He is still extremely dangerous and could kill all of you with a thought. Keep him in a basement, in case you need him, sure but not this.

Also David hasn't shown any sign of mental illness after Farouk was removed from his mind. So I don't buy this sudden bout of shizophrenia. You can't just delude yourself into being sane (I think that's what they tried to sell us).

This is some major bullshit.

On 6/13/2018 at 2:24 PM, ItCouldBeWorse said:

Many internet recappers consider David to be a rapist for what he did with Syd after removing her memories. They do indeed consider him a villain-controlling and abusive, with a belief that he "deserve(s) to be loved.

Yes that was certainly very icky. But the writers made him batshit crazy all of a sudden, so I don't think he thought he was raping her and it would probably be diminished capacity in a court of law.

On the other hand, Syd tried to straight up murder him in cold blood, while seemingly completely sane. So who's the villian here?

On 6/13/2018 at 7:05 PM, mammaM said:

This. I couldn't wait to see each new episode first season. This season, I realize there's a new episode and I haven't seen the previous one yet. It's not bad but it's not "must-see-TV" anymore, and that's a shame.

I stoped watching somewhere in the middle of the season and only now caught up and I was the same as you with season one...