celticbride

As I was watching this series, I was amazed at how compellingly naturalistic it was. The concept is of course fantastical, but the characters are very grounded, with pretty realistic reactions to situations. There is a looming threat, a ticking clock for Khem's life, but he's also trying to live normally as much as he can with the time he has. He's trying to stay alive, but also he can't live every moment in strict survival mode. This has been his entire existence. He still has friends, does school projects, travels, has a crush, etc. But as the deadline looms and things get more dangerous, this story follows the final desperate attempt to beat the curse. So there's this lovely balance of tension rising, danger lurking, trying to find answers, while also finding community in this town, with his friends, wanting to be with the boy he likes. It all felt very real in that way. Even with spirits, shamans, past lives, etc. because those things are natural to the people here. This is the accepted reality/religion/whatever you want to call it.

And the characters were so compelling in how nuanced and naturalistic they were. Even the looming "bad guy" of the series, from the very beginning, there's a sense that there's more to her. That she's not just evil. There's a reason she is the way she is and why she's doing this. Eventually the story will give us those answers. And they are heartbreaking. I was really looking forward to seeing how they found a resolution. Especially after a certain death, things really seemed to be ramping up for a big emotional climax.

But then the show stumbled in the last 2 episodes. It didn't do anything stupid or really awful, but all of a sudden that masterful pacing was gone. After introducing new characters and elements at the last minute, there's suddenly a lot of jumping around in time and space. Things are revealed to the audience pretty out of order, leading scenes to lack proper impact. Characters suddenly do complete heel turns on decisions they were very clear on before for the sake of momentary drama. and worst of all, the big resolution to the problem is rushed, happening within a few minutes, and not tying in to our main characters' arcs at all. Again, the answer itself is not… BAD, but it wasn't properly integrated into the story. There were a lot of things in the last 2 episodes that felt like deus ex machina. For any other series it probably wouldn't be that noteworthy, but when this series was SO great at pacing and storytelling to this point, it was a definite let down.

I initially had this series as 9-9.5 stars. The ending isn't bad enough to ruin it, but enough to bring it down to just an 8 for me.