Episode 7 Best of Show
I haven't rewatched any episode of this series, but Episode 7? Holy crap. It was like a theatrical film condensed into 45 minutes.
shareWith a dose of the late great Leonard Cohen at the end.
shareYes, and definitely an appropriate song choice (terrific song, too).
I rewatched the episode on Thanksgiving and noticed something I didn't the first time I saw it: the writers should monitor the number of long expository scenes where one character's dialogue has to move the plot along. The first was the black hospital administrator, whose lovely voice was too lovely explaining Darius' complicated background after he first ran into trouble with the law. I still don't understand her monologue. (The actress must have worked crazy hard to deflect our attention from how long the monologue was--and she throws in a W.B. Yeats' quote, too!) The second was the Internal Affairs guy. Unbelievable actor. He should get an Emmy for that restaurant scene alone. But he too was saddled with *way* too heavy an expository burden--same as the hospital administrator, recapitulating and summarizing everything that has gone on in "Chance" up until that point. The third was the owner of Darius' workshop, who, like the hospital administrator, was noticeably soft-spoken, and who seemed just a bit unreal with the intensity of his understanding and generosity. The FOURTH was Jackie in the bar, who yet again had to move the plot along via too much dialogue.
The episode is fantastic, and finally the show seems anchored in reality. The alternate-reality genre is way long in the tooth, and Hugh Laurie's acting was fantastic and not like a sleepwalker. Unless the show has an extremely limited budget, the producers should try to avoid scenes filled with such quantities of dialogue explaining VERY complicated subjects. They tried and succeeded with Chance's flashback scene about Darius. Flashback scenes might be intrusive, but this episode was packed to the gills with information, and flashbacks help us remember better than long dialogue what has happened in a story.
And what's going on with Darius' father? He knows and doesn't care about his son's troubles(the sexual abuse). Is he running for political office? A theoritical physicist!