Well I finally finished S4. I’d heard it was a real step down but I have to say I enjoyed it for the most part and, while it makes some missteps and isn’t up there with the others, the quality is still very high. They haven’t dropped the ball yet…
The main problem is that there is an over abundance of characters and nobody to really root for. In S1, Lester was always engaging and you felt for him, even as he turned increasingly villainous. There isn’t anyone who provides that kind of character-narrative focus here which is a major flaw.
People were saying Chris Rock was miscast. I actually didn’t think so. It was a bit weird seeing him as a serious gangster patriarch but he’s so damn likeable that I enjoyed it whenever he was on screen and I empathised with his character. He’s not remotely intimidating but the role didn’t really require him to be. He played the role he was given well.
Jessie Buckley played the big bad in this season - a psychotic nurse who poisons patients and pilfers their jewellery. She was the best character and was quite chilling early on, but she turns out to be kind of an idiot who bungles things and gets caught, so that took the sting out of her.
Generally there was a stylised, almost cartoonish quality to the characters which made it harder to really get behind any of them.
Is it woke? Yes, but not oppressively so. The characters with any dignity are nearly all black, including the gangsters. The only white character with some dignity is played by gay Ben Wishaw. Timothy Olyphant has a little but he’s kind of a freak. All the other whites are evil/crazy/weak/stupid. And of course the ‘hero’ is a goody two-shoes young black girl who naturally outsmarts everyone 🙄 and there’s a young black boy who is portrayed as a complete innocent in a world of scumbags. So yeah, the wokeness is there on a simmering level but it never boils over into smashing you over the head like so many other TV series and movies.
I’d give this season a 6.7
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