They did again! Those sobs did it again! They actually explained what an NPC in a game is, after a guy who claimed he's played games before asked what a non player character is!
What's next, a scientist in the new Oppenheimer movie is gonna ask what a "bomb" is so the other character could explain it to the audience through him? Like after the pen and paper scene from Interstellar, the grandpa paradox scene from Tenet, or rather the whole movie, and now this exposition, the only thing I'm looking forward to in both Nolan's writing is this hilarious way they do to explain a concept to the audience through their characters, by lowering their IQ to match the IQ of a watermelon. It's become a signature of their writing.
And I know the exposition was actually important and ties with the themes of the show, but it doesn't make it any less hilarious that Nolans can't find a better way to do exposition other than making, usually, their protagonist an idiot, so he has to ask what a so and so is (while a 5-year-old knows what that is) so they could trick us into thinking they're not doing a direct exposition to the audience.
And although this one leads to an interesting dialogue, they should've just gotten rid of the "maybe I have played it before" line by the guy, that implies he knows what a video game is and he's played before. Because him asking what a non player character is, just makes it so much sillier. And she didn't even say "NPC", she said "non player character", like you can guess from the name even if you don't know what a game is, but no, apparently he doesn't even have comprehension. It would've made much more sense if she said NPC and he didn't play video games.
And you might be saying, "oh are you really that petty to nitpick just two lines in a 50-minute episode and say it's bad because of that?", which you might be right, but it shows something way bigger about what's wrong with Nolan's style of writing if this immediately reminded me of his brother's writing in his movies. Like this isn't a first offender, we already had this in Interstellar and Tenet, and now here, it just shows you that their writing is evolving backward and they're doing the same silly way of doing exposition they've been doing for years. But this is the first time I'm noticing this Nolan do it, so I guess I can give him a pass.
Mind you that I'm not saying this episode is bad because the other Nolan who has nothing to do with this show also did that silly thing, or I'm taking some numbers off of my rating of this episode, I just found it funny and silly and a semi-problem I and others are noticing in, now, both Nolan's way of implementing exposition in their writing and thought it's interesting to share here.
Anyway, the episode itself was ok in my opinion. I didn't like the last season's finale at all, and it's been so long since we've seen the last season, and the new stories seem so different from those and they don't pick up right after, that it feels like I've missed 1 or 2 seasons in between.
They set up lots of new plot lines but there's not much excitement in them. That one character comes back again (and I'm not talking about the ending) and after 4 seasons I still don't know what "their" motivation is, but it puts some of our estranged characters come together again.
The action, if you can call it that, is still as uninteresting and lackluster as before. You can't even call them action scenes because they last like 5 seconds, and they are shot in the most uninteresting way. So the cinematography and direction are not that amazing either. Most of the episode is shot in the blandest and most uninteresting way that not only I don't even remember much of the shots nor there is a particular shot I thought looked great and iconic, but it also made the show look cheap and low production.
Aaron Paul in this episode has zero chemistry with his new wife. Like I could probably watch 5 seasons of these two and still don't think that they're husband and wife. No chemistry there at all, so that's a misfire.
And the ending "reveal" was kinda obvious, and I'm not saying that as "I'm very smart" or that the writing for that part is bad or anything, I'm just pointing out that it's not that mindblowing of a reveal.
So, so far, the episode was lackluster and underwhelming, and it's been so long that I didn't even remember half of these characters' names. The cinematography was bland and made the episode uninteresting and lackluster, the acting was decent, and they set up some plots but they're not that interesting either and we'll have to see what they're gonna do with them in the next episodes, and music was great as always and probably the only thing I really liked about this episode, and I'm more excited for what new music Ramin Djawadi is gonna give to us than I am for the new stories and lackluster action scene.
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