Great show with wonderful ideas that just ran itself out of places to go very fast sealing its short run and linear ending. This is a show that has a secret. It plays on the notion of small town secrets but takes it way out there by expanding on that concept to make it a world with a secret.
They drop hints about random odd things throughout the episodes and that does keep tension up on the long term plot, while the near events are focused around some paramilitary dystopian oppression.
The show reveals just about everything at the end.. wake up neo, you are in a simulation but that simulation is all you have left. Once you realize what is going on, it becomes absolutely stupid primarily for one reason.
I do not understand why nor can i find a logical reason, the workings behind the "persistent secret keepers". The show tries in a terrible way to show children are the way forward by making them the bridge between the old and the new and they are all in on it. And every single one of them kids, from whatever ages they have on the show, is fine with it. Great secret keepers because that is exactly how children behave. Little nancy here is only 7 but she has 68 years experience as a CIA operative and can handle the truth just fine swindling all the adults around her, while being just a normal kid never breaking character. Ugh it hurts. The stupid just hurts.
The kids know what is going on and they are hiding it from the adults. So you would think the kids run the show then like a shadowy clan.. no. Maybe the kids are some secret genetic project to give them the psyche of the best psyop agents ever.. no. They are just kids, who know, and who just go along with it in that whole mess of a world.
See the adults, still run the town, even tho they are clueless, but the adults are still in charge while the kids hide the truth from the adults and just go along with it. They are also waiting for the adults to die using them as caretakers until the kids take over to create that new world (reseeding if you will). Try to wrap your head around that. Not just certain kids, ALL the kids. They are all in on it. And they never mess up playing their roles in the community. You cannot recover from that much stupid and the show burns itself out and just goes into destruction mode for cheap trills.
Since the show becomes a meme and not serious anymore, we get some action taking down the evil regime before he can reset it again, which as a concept i found to be great. Of course, that is the absolute worse outcome here, to destroy the simulation or cancel the reset, but remember clueless adults are in charge and thats what they want to do. And the all knowing kids are just like ok!
How the show works, and it tells us that has occurred a few times before is if the town doesn't go the right way, the main creator just resets it. Just kill all (except few key carry over figures) the adults, wake up new ones and start over till you get the society you want. Problem is, those kids. See apparently there is an issue with making babies so you cannot purge the kids.. And they remain and linger and it's flabergasting levels of stupid to feed that to the viewer and pretend it can somehow ever work. It wouldn't be an issue if the show didn't take itself seriously and claim it's all part of some larger plan. Once you realize it is just a manure field they are dragging the script through, we are done. Shut it down roll credits and file it under cancelled.
Ultimately people lose and the mutations produce cute monster babies solving the breeding issue (we find out human monster hybrids are possible). Life goes on, just not like we knew it. Or the savior of the people envisioned since we ruined his attempt anyway. We are left with the knowledge that hybrid creatures will be the new thing, but not with enough information to really know how that new population will go from there. It hints it will be fine, fine as in monsters being the new humans, but we are not given enough information of these creatures leaving that empty feeling at the end. Is it possible to eventually breed out the monsters after generations, are the hybrids the it thing, how will that whole world work.. Show us the contrast between the vision of the world between that of the creator and the natural reality since that was such a huge thing throughout. The big ideological shift if you will is just left hanging. He wanted the perfect human world from the ruins, instead we get monster babies he built this whole thing to protect the survivors from. End on an open irony.
A show that should have been stretched out for another season but self imploded by taking the stupid train on 2-3 critical elements. The failure of this show can be placed solely with one person. Because in a Shyamalan production, he always has to have kids be the key to something but never has the ability to make them relevant. He always pits the new (kids) vs the old morals (adults) but never makes it work. At some point all his scripts just hit that wall and eject. This show is no different. Perhaps he should stop using a plot element he cannot utilize properly. He cannot close it, he always opens it, draws you in and then doesn't know what to do with it. Goes way too deep to grab you in and cannot dig out it. His movies, his shows... all victim to that same pattern. Because you see, he is a very shallow writer and a weak director. He never has the strength to make unpopular decisions in his works. He uses kids to draw viewer sympathy, makes them into adults (and often unpleasant ones) then spins the script around to make the actual adults go full stupid to protect the kids while the kids are suddenly turned into helpless kids minimized and written out. If you are going to assign kids adult functions, you have to give them adult treatment. That's right, you have to go full lord of the flies. But he never does because he does shallow writing using kids for viewer appeal and sympathies. And that's why nothing he ever makes works, and it never will because it is just copy paste writing with a different theme. His core script development is always the same.
7\10 sorry mom you are being purged tomorrow so your replacement can be unfrozen by lunch.
They drop hints about random odd things throughout the episodes and that does keep tension up on the long term plot, while the near events are focused around some paramilitary dystopian oppression.
The show reveals just about everything at the end.. wake up neo, you are in a simulation but that simulation is all you have left. Once you realize what is going on, it becomes absolutely stupid primarily for one reason.
I do not understand why nor can i find a logical reason, the workings behind the "persistent secret keepers". The show tries in a terrible way to show children are the way forward by making them the bridge between the old and the new and they are all in on it. And every single one of them kids, from whatever ages they have on the show, is fine with it. Great secret keepers because that is exactly how children behave. Little nancy here is only 7 but she has 68 years experience as a CIA operative and can handle the truth just fine swindling all the adults around her, while being just a normal kid never breaking character. Ugh it hurts. The stupid just hurts.
The kids know what is going on and they are hiding it from the adults. So you would think the kids run the show then like a shadowy clan.. no. Maybe the kids are some secret genetic project to give them the psyche of the best psyop agents ever.. no. They are just kids, who know, and who just go along with it in that whole mess of a world.
See the adults, still run the town, even tho they are clueless, but the adults are still in charge while the kids hide the truth from the adults and just go along with it. They are also waiting for the adults to die using them as caretakers until the kids take over to create that new world (reseeding if you will). Try to wrap your head around that. Not just certain kids, ALL the kids. They are all in on it. And they never mess up playing their roles in the community. You cannot recover from that much stupid and the show burns itself out and just goes into destruction mode for cheap trills.
Since the show becomes a meme and not serious anymore, we get some action taking down the evil regime before he can reset it again, which as a concept i found to be great. Of course, that is the absolute worse outcome here, to destroy the simulation or cancel the reset, but remember clueless adults are in charge and thats what they want to do. And the all knowing kids are just like ok!
How the show works, and it tells us that has occurred a few times before is if the town doesn't go the right way, the main creator just resets it. Just kill all (except few key carry over figures) the adults, wake up new ones and start over till you get the society you want. Problem is, those kids. See apparently there is an issue with making babies so you cannot purge the kids.. And they remain and linger and it's flabergasting levels of stupid to feed that to the viewer and pretend it can somehow ever work. It wouldn't be an issue if the show didn't take itself seriously and claim it's all part of some larger plan. Once you realize it is just a manure field they are dragging the script through, we are done. Shut it down roll credits and file it under cancelled.
Ultimately people lose and the mutations produce cute monster babies solving the breeding issue (we find out human monster hybrids are possible). Life goes on, just not like we knew it. Or the savior of the people envisioned since we ruined his attempt anyway. We are left with the knowledge that hybrid creatures will be the new thing, but not with enough information to really know how that new population will go from there. It hints it will be fine, fine as in monsters being the new humans, but we are not given enough information of these creatures leaving that empty feeling at the end. Is it possible to eventually breed out the monsters after generations, are the hybrids the it thing, how will that whole world work.. Show us the contrast between the vision of the world between that of the creator and the natural reality since that was such a huge thing throughout. The big ideological shift if you will is just left hanging. He wanted the perfect human world from the ruins, instead we get monster babies he built this whole thing to protect the survivors from. End on an open irony.
A show that should have been stretched out for another season but self imploded by taking the stupid train on 2-3 critical elements. The failure of this show can be placed solely with one person. Because in a Shyamalan production, he always has to have kids be the key to something but never has the ability to make them relevant. He always pits the new (kids) vs the old morals (adults) but never makes it work. At some point all his scripts just hit that wall and eject. This show is no different. Perhaps he should stop using a plot element he cannot utilize properly. He cannot close it, he always opens it, draws you in and then doesn't know what to do with it. Goes way too deep to grab you in and cannot dig out it. His movies, his shows... all victim to that same pattern. Because you see, he is a very shallow writer and a weak director. He never has the strength to make unpopular decisions in his works. He uses kids to draw viewer sympathy, makes them into adults (and often unpleasant ones) then spins the script around to make the actual adults go full stupid to protect the kids while the kids are suddenly turned into helpless kids minimized and written out. If you are going to assign kids adult functions, you have to give them adult treatment. That's right, you have to go full lord of the flies. But he never does because he does shallow writing using kids for viewer appeal and sympathies. And that's why nothing he ever makes works, and it never will because it is just copy paste writing with a different theme. His core script development is always the same.
7\10 sorry mom you are being purged tomorrow so your replacement can be unfrozen by lunch.