Glitch (Netflix, Series 1)
Nov. 15th, 2016 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroIn the small town of Yoorana, six people claw their way out of their graves, suddenly alive and apparently in perfect health. They don’t know how they got there—they didn’t even know they’d been dead—but now the local sheriff and urgent care doctor have to figure out what to do with them.
The emphasis on character is big here. Much of the six-hour / six-episode time is dedicated to the characters emotionally coping with each other; relatively little of it to the overarching mystery. The fact that everyone wakes up with amnesia and their memories recover gradually serves to stretch out the events and allows for more secrets, lies and mysteries over the course of the season.
SPOILERS:
Kate gets super-upset when she realizes that not only has her husband moved on since she died of breast cancer, but he married and knocked up her best friend. I’ll admit to some surprise that he never pointed out the whole, “til death do us part” thing. Which is not to say feelings can’t be complicated, but this isn’t exactly routine infidelity or really any kind of betrayal. While I realize that emotions are emotions, Kate seriously seems to lose sight of the fact that she was DEAD when dealing with Sarah and Sarah's relationship with James. James puts it best when, out of frustration, he yells, "I've done nothing wrong! None of us has!" Because Kate rising was entirely unprecedented and he did exactly what anyone else would have done and would have been expected to do. He mourned, he moved on. Kate explodes when she learned they slept together less than a year after her death, and I'm just thinking, "Get the hell over yourself! Should he have been mourning for a decade just in case you were the first person ever to mysteriously resurrect after dying of breast cancer?"
It sucks to be Vic—no one tells him anything, then he dies and gets possessed by something nasty. (It clearly goes from “he hit his head and is acting weird” to “something freaky going on here” in episode 4, when he stands stock-still outside a store overnight.)
So, what do we know? Despite the insinuations that there's a scientific component to all of this (centering around Noregard Pharma, who from their clear presence in the series was always destined to play a role), the phenomenon is clearly supernatural. There is nothing that could be scientifically done to cause a 150-year-old corpse to dig itself out of the grave in perfect health and remember who it previously was. Or, for that matter, to cause it to decompose in seconds if it leaves a certain physical radius. That said...what sort of supernatural? My read of the situation is "intelligent higher powers" rather than "random reality short-circuit", and most of that comes from Vic--or whatever is walking around in a Vic-suit after the accident. Both Dr. McKellar and Vic know more than they're telling; from what McKellar says and the reveal that she's supposedly dead, I'm guessing that she either discovered the phenomenon or took a false identity to trigger it, and then she's trying to scientifically quantify it despite it being of magical origin. Her "side" of the Powers That Be wants reveal this knowledge to humans. Vic's wants to maintain the status quo and get all the corpses back into the ground.
My other theory: Each risen is linked to a living human, and killing one kills the other. There's a mention that Marco's only living relative died the night Marco went over the bridge. Similarly, while we aren't explicitly told, the dry cleaner Vic visits after killing Maria is closed for a funeral--her husband's, perhaps? (I wonder if the fact that Marco died by leaving town was related to John rising the next day. Can there be only six “active” at any point? Maria didn’t decompose, so no one “replaced” her?)
I fully expect Sarah to be the season 2 version of Vic, having been possessed when she briefly died following giving birth.
Overall: I thought this was well-done, though I’ll admit that I was hoping for a full story and I got “chapter one” of something clearly intended to be much longer. I suppose we’ll see how the second season goes.
The emphasis on character is big here. Much of the six-hour / six-episode time is dedicated to the characters emotionally coping with each other; relatively little of it to the overarching mystery. The fact that everyone wakes up with amnesia and their memories recover gradually serves to stretch out the events and allows for more secrets, lies and mysteries over the course of the season.
SPOILERS:
Kate gets super-upset when she realizes that not only has her husband moved on since she died of breast cancer, but he married and knocked up her best friend. I’ll admit to some surprise that he never pointed out the whole, “til death do us part” thing. Which is not to say feelings can’t be complicated, but this isn’t exactly routine infidelity or really any kind of betrayal. While I realize that emotions are emotions, Kate seriously seems to lose sight of the fact that she was DEAD when dealing with Sarah and Sarah's relationship with James. James puts it best when, out of frustration, he yells, "I've done nothing wrong! None of us has!" Because Kate rising was entirely unprecedented and he did exactly what anyone else would have done and would have been expected to do. He mourned, he moved on. Kate explodes when she learned they slept together less than a year after her death, and I'm just thinking, "Get the hell over yourself! Should he have been mourning for a decade just in case you were the first person ever to mysteriously resurrect after dying of breast cancer?"
It sucks to be Vic—no one tells him anything, then he dies and gets possessed by something nasty. (It clearly goes from “he hit his head and is acting weird” to “something freaky going on here” in episode 4, when he stands stock-still outside a store overnight.)
So, what do we know? Despite the insinuations that there's a scientific component to all of this (centering around Noregard Pharma, who from their clear presence in the series was always destined to play a role), the phenomenon is clearly supernatural. There is nothing that could be scientifically done to cause a 150-year-old corpse to dig itself out of the grave in perfect health and remember who it previously was. Or, for that matter, to cause it to decompose in seconds if it leaves a certain physical radius. That said...what sort of supernatural? My read of the situation is "intelligent higher powers" rather than "random reality short-circuit", and most of that comes from Vic--or whatever is walking around in a Vic-suit after the accident. Both Dr. McKellar and Vic know more than they're telling; from what McKellar says and the reveal that she's supposedly dead, I'm guessing that she either discovered the phenomenon or took a false identity to trigger it, and then she's trying to scientifically quantify it despite it being of magical origin. Her "side" of the Powers That Be wants reveal this knowledge to humans. Vic's wants to maintain the status quo and get all the corpses back into the ground.
My other theory: Each risen is linked to a living human, and killing one kills the other. There's a mention that Marco's only living relative died the night Marco went over the bridge. Similarly, while we aren't explicitly told, the dry cleaner Vic visits after killing Maria is closed for a funeral--her husband's, perhaps? (I wonder if the fact that Marco died by leaving town was related to John rising the next day. Can there be only six “active” at any point? Maria didn’t decompose, so no one “replaced” her?)
I fully expect Sarah to be the season 2 version of Vic, having been possessed when she briefly died following giving birth.
Overall: I thought this was well-done, though I’ll admit that I was hoping for a full story and I got “chapter one” of something clearly intended to be much longer. I suppose we’ll see how the second season goes.
