Monday, March 12, 2018

Final Space: Chapter Four Review

"Commencing rescue. Commencing destiny."

First of all, I'd just like to offer a highly profound thank you to Olan Rogers, who was such a gentleman that he actually gave me access to all of the episodes through to Chapter Six for reviewing purposes! That's such an utterly humbling thing for him to do, and in a strange way, it makes me feel more committed to my self-imposed job than ever. It almost makes it feel like what I do is... credible. Which is an odd sensation that I really dig.

Of course, with that, there's also the consequence of simply becoming a parrot who talks about how amazing Final Space is for the sake of stroking Olan's ego, but that ruins the point of why I'm here in the first place, and that's not what he wants to see. With that being said, though, the argument is a little difficult to defend considering how genuinely solid this episode was regardless.

That's not to say that it didn't yield a few issues, however. Chief among them is that, since this marks the reunion of Gary and Quinn, we get to see more of the side of Gary from the first chapter that didn't work so well, finding him as a klutzy and haphazard womanizer without a lick of poise. Sure, watching Gary's melodramatic notions is fun, especially as he Footloose-dances his way across the ship filled to the brim with woeful angst, but the struggle persists between how much it does for the narrative and how much it detracts from it.


Thankfully, though, in this case, it's actually somewhat justifiable. You have to understand that Gary has obsessed over this person for 5 years (okay, 4 years, 11 months, and 30 days), and when they finally reunite, she has no idea who he is, nor does she even remember his name after a minute. This is a break from Gary's isolation, and it's the event he's been using as the sole thing that keeps him waking up in the morning, and the reality of the situation shatters before him: of course Quinn doesn't remember who he is. And even if she did, why would she care?

And this becomes the launchpad off which "Chapter Four" is successful: it takes the opportunity to see what else is eating up at Gary from the inside. This is explored most fascinatingly when Gary, trying to prove his worth to Quinn after the ship gets immobilized by the Infinity Guard, makes his way to a dying star to harness its solar rays as fuel. With HUE losing connection, Mooncake adrift, and radiation eating away at his spacesuit, he starts to hallucinate, and through this we get a tragic portrait of Gary's childhood.

Now, as someone who admittedly reads reviews as some sort of incredibly lame pastime, I'd like to point out the AV Club's take on it and how they claim that the show's slow introduction of such scenes like this, "moments of slowed-down emotional button-pushing," feel out-of-place in the grand scheme of the show. I bring it up so I can fully disagree; even if Gary, more often than not, is a walking and talking piece of slapstick, the show has clearly primed him as having some level of depth. We have to consider the fact that Gary was at one point quite possibly the loneliest person in the universe, so of course he's going to act up; to some extent, he's profoundly hysterical.

Seeing scenes like these, where we learn about what happened to his father, John Goodspeed–long story short, he sets off to examine a gravitational constant and leaves Gary behind with a caterpillar named Mooncake, only to bear witness to his father's departure to an uncertain fate... or so I'm led to believe–help fight off those preconceptions about who Gary is. They don't create an imbalance; they help contextualize why he is how he is by presenting us with a psychological portrait. And watching present-time Gary's interactions with these flashback vignettes, witnessing his pleas to not have to bear witness to his father's leave again but while being firmly immobilized, creates a powerful convergence through which we see the trauma unfold.

While the flashback's meaning in the grand scheme of the narrative, as of right now, is murky, that's sort of the point. Gary's been through a lot, and it makes sense that his mind would work in such a way that he'd associate the distress of his rejection from Quinn with the departure of his father, two events that leave him feeling fundamentally incomplete. We do, however, learn that Goodspeed may have something to do with the gravitational disturbance.

It's in this revelation that Quinn finally realizes who Gary actually is, recalling the incident that led to his imprisonment, and it's an undeniably triumphant moment for Gary, but at the same time, it comes at the cost of making the ending feel at least partially disingenuous. Quinn is obviously being groomed as Gary's romantic lead, but even with her finally connecting the dots, how does this make Gary suddenly enticing to her? Final Space has always depicted their relationship as one-sided, so to see her suddenly being playful (albeit markedly badass) with him feels a bit... unusual. I guess you could say the moment where Quinn recognizes that Gary is important after her proposal of ditching him to save her and Avocato from the Infinity Guard could count as a change of heart, but the progression from that isn't quite gradual enough to feel organic.

What I'm trying to say is that "Chapter Four," more than less, presents the triumphs of Final Space, but also its more subtle issues, and while they don't take away from what the show is too much, their existence is noticeable. In the end, though, there's always enough to off-set the hiccups.

Notes and Quotes:
-Lil Cato has some more foreshadowing throughout the episode, piecing the electronic device slid to him together and sending the coordinates of where he's being held captive to Avocato. We still haven't seen much from him, but he's always fun in his little acts of rebellion against Lord Commander.
-KVN finally has a real standout moment here, saving the Galaxy 1 from an uncertain fate with the key given to him by Nightfall. I love the notion that he's a legitimate hero, and Gary just has to repeatedly keep sucking it up, or otherwise just fails to acknowledge his importance.
-It seems that the show is leaning towards an angle on Mooncake rooted in the conflict between what he objectively is and who he truly is, putting the poor guy through the inner turmoil of whether or not he has meaning or if he's just E35-1, a commodity. I'm interested to see just how much depth he can bear.
-HUE has told Gary that he is not the captain, but a prisoner, aboard his ship a total of 9045 times.
-"As soon as crap hit the interstellar fan, I became the captain! For real!" "Calculating: no." It's all about the line delivery.
-"I know this doesn't make any sense, but I really needed to talk to somebody right now, and you're the only person I can open my heart wallet to and spend my hurt coins with."
-As far as Gary hitting on Quinn goes, the gradual descent of his compliment game to "danger panda" was hilarious.
-Nice nod to Olan's oeuvre with the remains of the Scarlet Lance.

FINAL GRADE: A-. "Chapter Four" has a few issues that prevent it from working to full effect, but for the most part, it's a phenomenal ride, and as the series progresses, we're starting to see the characters in more and more depth. Final Space is a show that really understands how serialization works and how to tell a compelling narrative through that, and it deserves a lot of credit for just how much ease it pulls everything off. Further, while previous episodes felt, at least partially by design, disconnected, "Chapter Four" is where we get to see everything get woven together, and it's exciting to see the show finally equating to the sum of its parts.

For the last Final Space review of Chapter Three, CLICK HERE.

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