Damn. Where to start?
Well, it feels very faithful to the spirit of Dispatches From Elsewhere to approach the finale with a personal story, so here goes: Back in January 2020, all those years ago, I got to sit down privately with Jason Segel at the Television Critics Association press tour, because I was writing an article for the L.A. Times about the show’s initial inspiration—an alternate reality game called the Jejune Institute, which was run on the streets of San Francisco for several years.
A fun fact about journalists is that we have a habit of spreading the word if someone is a tricky interview subject, and thus I’d heard tell that Segel could be hard to talk to. But in reality, the truth is that when a person is genuinely excited about the project they’ve made, they are a joy to interview, and in that hotel conference room, he was just that—open, honest and making it clear with every word he said how deeply personal this show was for him.
An actual quote from that interview: “I’ve promoted some things that are really easy to understand, that I didn’t like. And so I took no joy in it, and communicating the premise didn’t really help those projects. What I know about this is that I care about it so much. And it’s so personal and I love it so much and genuinely think that I’ve accomplished what any person making a piece of art could hope to accomplish—that I look at it and I think ‘that’s me.’”
At that point, I’d only seen the first four episodes, so I had no idea how far things would go, how true that statement would be. This last episode of the season (perhaps the series as a whole)… Choices! Are! Made!
For one thing, goodbye Peter, that soft sweet goofball, and hello Jason—yes, actual Jason Segel, literally playing himself, and not shying away from some real life details, including his addiction issues and poor career choices. They all add up to how he feels like he’s floundering through the world, until he meets a woman named Simone at AA, and she gives him a postcard that sends him on a quest that echoes what happened to Segel in real life.
Floundering Jason isn’t the initial focus, though—instead, that would be the titular “Boy,” spotted in previous episodes, who we come to learn is the younger form of Jason. Rather than dramatize his early life of starring on Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, we have the metaphor of The Boy, determined to become an actor after watching The Muppet Show and It’s a Wonderful Life, doing stage shows mimicking Donald O’Conner’s classic routine from Singing In the Rain devoted to making people laugh.
Unfortunately, no matter much money you earn while people wait to learn How I Met Your Mother, it doesn’t bring happiness, and Jason feels hollow inside. But thanks to Simone, he discovers new purpose, literally crawling at some points to play a new alternate reality game he’s been exposed to. His quest makes up a large part of the episode, and it inspires him to write the script for a TV show called Dispatches From Elsewhere.
Thanks to his friendship with Simone (only Jason Segel is present here as himself—the other series regulars only appear as their named characters from the show, which is, again, A! Choice!), Jason realizes he needs to build out the community aspect, which is when things hit a whole new level of meta.
“Let’s get you some help,” Fredwynn (presumably) tells Jason, and we see Jason’s vision for the series unfold. And that’s eventually when we find that the fans of the series, we find, have been given the opportunity to send in their own videos (which would probably have felt different to watch if not preceded by over a month of TV shows like The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live filming remotely). It’s a sequence that is only just one of the show’s breaks from reality, as Jason Segel not only addresses obvious criticisms of the show directly to the audience, but invites the crew of the series to hang out on screen.
Yes, this was a bit self-indulgent, but yes, it also did bring with it much beauty. This is a show, ultimately, about how a story can be the thing that changes your life, can heal you in some small way. It’s a show that wants to make you feel happy, to feel whole, even though that may not be possible. And it ends in such an undefinable way—not really a drama, not really a romance, not really a mystery, just… a show about people, doing the best they can.
Would it make such an impact, if it was coming out at a different time? Maybe not. But these are the times we live in, and I for one am glad that it came about now. It’s so rare to have a finale of a show reveal so much and make such wild choices in such a short period of time. This was so clearly Jason Segel’s show. But it was also mine. And it was also yours.
Snap your fingers. Return to reality. But never forget, that magic can happen, inside and outside of a TV screen. Because we are we.
Stray observations
- All the mentions of the Muppets are an impressive reminder that while some poor choices were made when it came to the conception, Segel’s The Muppets is a weird, flawed, but overall fun film.
- It’s a bit of a shame that the finale didn’t include more romance. The Peter/Simone relationship was groundbreaking and beautiful.
- Also, please, god, let Eve Lindley get more work after this—she’s amazing.
- Thank you so much to everyone who has read these recaps! This has been such a pleasant, sweet show to write about the last eight weeks, and it has been a pleasure to be on this ride with y’all.
79 Comments
This is a really unique show, I’m not sure if I love it or not, but it was always interesting and the four main actors killed it!
Extra points for mentioning the Dracula Puppet Musical from Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Also the metal mixing bowl as cereal bowl. I half expected a Gandalf impression after that!
I’m glad you brought up that connection because in FSM, Jason also played a character named Peter who was feeling trapped in his unfulfilling and repetitive job as a composer of “Ominous Chords” for Sarah’s show.
“Sad Sack” as a character type only stretches so far, tho.
I am grateful we were spared another full frontal nude scene in this show, FWIW.
Somebody did yell out and ask for it though. Thought it was a nice little touch…
Just that little note of realism. Because you know that in real life, Segel can’t go anywhere without people shouting at him about his dong.
Harold And Maude is also an excellent film and a very good compliment to what Jason Seygal is doing with Dispatches. I’m glad he referenced it.
I was so excited to see Maude! There is clearly an influence there.
I think that the Dracula musical was really written before FSM, and just happened to make it into that, due to it’s ridiculous nature.
That kinda bummed me out. His FSM character was going through much the same funk that “Jason Segel” was going through here, and here he all but screams that it was working on HIMYM that basically broke him, but that was a show he kept doing for seven years after FSM. Seven years!
He actually wrote a Dracula puppet musical in real life, then used it in FSM.
hey it’s Mark, showrunner for season 1 of DFE and I just wanted to thank you all for watching and Ms. Miller for these thoughtful recaps. When we were making the show last year in Philly, Jason and I talked a lot about putting something positive into the world, of course having no idea what the world would actually look like when it aired. So I think we are both happy it has given people at least one thing to look forward to (and occasionally rail against) for a few weeks. I know Jason is really proud of it.Thanks again and I am happy to answer any questions (if that’s allowed) as long as they aren’t about Lodge 49 🙂
Thanks for the show. Really enjoyed it. Final episode was quite a shift. I liked/was so invested in the characters of the first 9 episodes that I kinda missed them being in their narratives in the last one, but I suppose those had come to a natural ending point. Finale was clearly such a personal story for Jason that I also liked the episode. Quite the (unfortunate in most ways) serendipity that the various people talking into webcams/phones is how most of us are currently experiencing life.
Yeah even though the show is 10 episodes, and there are obvious connections, in some ways it is really 9+1. This did make it harder in laying it all out and managing viewer expectations, since you generally don’t watch the ninth episode thinking it’s the last one when they are airing ten of them. For me the hardest part of 110 was that I had to write the little thing that goes on your Directv guide or whatever saying what the episode was about.
This reminds me of the frustrating Soprano’s “cut to black”, minus the cutting to black part.At its end, this series was a slow and painful “fade to black” offering closure merely through the untimely exhaustion of its arc but not through any reward earned by loyal viewership. If I need platitudes, I’ll ask for a couple of fortune cookies with my takeout.Next time a series like this is produced I would like to see a new rating introduced, perhaps “XP”, representing “experimental” television or something, so any concomitant implosion can be seen as coming with the territory.
All totally fair and not really here to defend or dismiss Jason’s creative choices, I just thought someone might want to know who did the music or something. It was clear going in that some would respond favorably to the finale and others would not. Some might have felt there was too much whimsy early on in the show and then admired how it eventually got real, and others would enjoy the ride and then get pissed later when the rug was pulled. There was some feeling that doing something divisive and thought-provoking, even if some people fucking hated it, was worth the effort.
It def is. I completely admire the choice to do something so weird, probably self-indulgent, def not normal.It’s no The Prisoner, but it makes more sense and it’s something so affirming coming at a time when it’s needed so badly (even without plagues and pestilence, still needed so badly).
I think it’s interesting that we all naturally suspend our disbelief and feel a connection to TV characters we logically know are actors bringing a script to life. But when it happens within the show itself, suddenly it seems less real? I’ll admit to feeling the rug pulled out from me a bit in the final episode. But I still loved all of those characters and they felt real to me while watching the show. Watching a dramatization of the truth I already know shouldn’t change that! I guess my only disappointment is that I would just like to see more of Peter, Simone, Fredwynn and Janice. And that is a testament to this charming and evocative world that Jason, the actors and crew all created (and we enjoyed)!
I am over 2 years late to this show so I doubt you are still hanging around to answer questions! But I have one that I can’t seem to find an answer to anywhere. My husband and I noticed that every time the clown-faced boy turned to his adult to say “I can do that!” regarding something on screen, the tv screen briefly flickered to show two girls staring from the screen. Super creepy vibes…wondering what the significance of that was?
Woah! That’s a pretty dickish comment to a showrunner that’s taken the time to engage with viewers like this. You are, of course, entitled to not like it (and to say so) but there’s a way of doing these things. Also, your “XP” idea would be damaging to both show makers who want to try something a bit different, and viewers who have got stuck in the routine of watching generic TV.
And thanks for freaking me out when I started watching the final episode immediately after watching The Muppets take Manhattan with a huge bowl of popcorn.
let me just say: thank you and everyone involved with the show. it was truly one of a kind. it was not merely a series: it was art in its best form. playful, honest, heartfelt, and never for one minute pretentious. it was the real thing.and honestly, i get the naysayers. i think of them as fredwynn. so i believe that in time, if they live and not just exist, will understand what the finale was about, and what the show, as a whole, was really about.i get it and it’s beautiful and thank you.
that’s nice to say, thank you. I watched the finale again last night in my house, which is always weird when you’ve worked on something because the experience of watching it is so folded into the process of making it, and you’ve already seen it in various forms 20 times not in your house. Also I’d had a lot of wine.From my couch I get the naysayers too. It’s not for everyone but there’s a difference between hating something and saying it’s bad. And Jason and I are very different people and came at it from different directions but it was always about making the show he wanted to make and I know he feels he did.Ah Fredwynn. The easiest character for me to write…
Thanks for checking in! Do you know anything about Eve Lindley’s casting – at what point in the show was her character written and/or cast as trans? I’d be really curious to hear anything about the development or evolution of that with the show, thanks!
Hello – when I came on board in Sept 2018 there had been one writers room already and there were drafts of the first four episodes and Jason had written the finale. We made some changes to episodes 2-4 and there were eventually some changes made to the finale, mostly for what was feasible in production.When I read the pilot, Simone was introduced in the script like this: “Simone is transgender, which will not be mentioned except for this stage direction.” I’ve seen a few things that say the character was changed but it was always written that way (and then it wasn’t.)There was a trans writer in that initial writers room, but I didn’t have any interaction with that group of writers. We had a second smaller/shorter writers room in fall 2018 to get to the finish line. But as we started shooting and were all in Philadelphia last year, it really became a collaboration with the actor… and Jason and I listening to Eve about how she saw it and wanted it (in some ways) to reflect her experiences.On the casting front – we had narrowed it down to a few finalists and then in Feb of last year we flew to NY and Jason did chemistry reads with each of them. Eve was great that day, she is always great and a super special person who has taught me a lot and is way cooler than I am! Jason and I both want nothing more than for her to have a huge career after this, and for us to be able to say “I knew her when.”
Neat, thanks for the response! There were many great parts, but Eve was my favorite part of the show.
We’ve just now finished up the series – and I can honestly say…I was not expecting the finale to be…that.
And I do not mean that in any kind of bad way at all – quite the opposite. The only issue I have? No likelihood for a season two. This show has been such an absolute joy to watch – I can’t think of a show recently that I’ve been so excited to watch each and every episode, but this one…I absolutely was.I’m not sure how a season two could even be possible…but boy would that be something special if we could relive a similarly enjoyable experience all over again. My wife and I are still trying to process the finale, and may be for some time, but the journey has been outstandingly wonderful!
It seemed like this show had to lead to some sort of twist ending, but I certainly never expected anything this meta. Watching the ending critique itself in real time made me smile.Octavio’s final ending about how we’re better together is very much on point with his message in the first episode. It’s also more or less the message in the finale of the original game — though it feels much more important in 2020 than it did back in 2011. Potential nod to the sequel of the original game: If you watched the Colbert interview, Segel explained how he came to meet the game’s creator after going through a bunch of crazy experiences. What’s depicted here are the events of Book 1 of The Latitude, the “sequel” of The Jejune Institute. You’d enter a door with a special key card, go down a slide, surrender your belongings, crawl through a bunch of dark tunnels, watch an animated story, get directed to a bar where you got a special coin, and then get directions to a secret arcade where the game glitched out after a while and gave you a password. I realize what I just wrote sounds completely bonkers but that’s what happened. (Google it if you don’t believe me.)The problem with The Latitude is people didn’t seem to get the message, which as Janice summed it up was “pay it forward.” Not just as in buy key cards for your friends; also to go out and create your own art. I think it’s fair to say based on Dispatches From Elsewhere that Segel is one of the people who got the message.
I don’t know if that was self-indulgent wank or a really beautiful, heartfelt ending to a really beautiful, heartfelt series. honestly, probably a bit of both. I also still don’t understand the Lee/Clara reveal at all, to be honest, but that might have been me misreading the previous episode?
Clara is Lee’s lost sense of creativity and joy. Same person.
right, that much I get. what I’m confused about is the whole flashback episode showing Clara’s beginnings – did all that actually happen with Lee in place of Clara, or was that all an elaborate metaphor for losing your creativity? if it really happened, who abducted Clara (because we saw Lee doing it in the episode itself) and who offered her the resources of the company (which we saw Octavio Coleman doing, but he was later revealed to be an actor? or was Lee just incredibly lucky in casting an actor in her game that looked exactly like the real person?)
It was a lie/metaphor that Clara/Lee included about her selling out to Bender Ellsworth. She is the real Clara Torres who didn’t resemble the actress.
I imagine some aspects of it were real (i.e. her art and attitude as the younger version of herself), but it was a highly stylized telling of self-mythos. She “sold out” to a company and regretted it.
Lee actually created the mural. And a few other things. But several things were created for the game. As you already know, Clara was her creativity, so no the kidnapping didn’t happen unless you choose to see it as Lee’s drive/ambition forcing her creative side to compromise until all that was left was her ambition and her now-compromised creation, devoid of the meaning it originally had when it was just an idea.The flashback of her in the boardroom was another metaphor. The money people don’t matter at all, so ignore that the CEO is played by the Jejune Institute guy, he’s a visual placeholder.Just as Clara was a visual metaphor. Which is what Lee explicitly becomes at the end when she introduces another visual metaphor, The Boy, who takes us to a meta level of the show.
I believe all of the Clara/Lee related flashbacks actually happened, but are viewed from the p.o.v. of the game players. The only visual reference the players (and we, the audience) have for Clara is the self-portrait window-t0-the-outside mural. So, as they read her story, they cast that image as Clara. And when Clara is approached by corporate entities, they cast the game’s image of corporate villainy (Octavio of Jejune) into the flashbacks. What was most confusing for me, was how the inner struggle of Clara/Lee was represented by two people (there’s even a mention of Fight Club in the finale) with different names. According to the final board room scene, Lee’s name was actually Clara. And her accent seemed to change for her final line in that scene. Did Clara hate herself so much for selling out that she legally changed her name? I guess artists have done that before to “kill” their previous selves.
I think the Clara = Lee interpretation is a little too stiff. There was strong evidence in the murals and microfilm that Clara Torres was a real person… somehow.
I think its supposed to be ambiguous that either:
A: Clara was just lee’s creative side, that dissipated the moment she “sold out”B: Clara was a real person that “ascended” to elsewhere once lee “sold out” her ideas in anger.it dosen’t REALLY matter, both represent jason segel Creator/Business side, and the fact of his fallout for his “love” for Hollywood (much more spelled out with the clown boy before outright telling you).looking back, its clear he wanted the characters in the narrative in episodes 1-9 to represent parts of his personality + people he knows in real life.Peter represents his fatigue of being a actor and wish to feel alive again.Simone represents: either A: Alexis Mixter, his current girlfriend, and/or B, his anxiety issues on whether to jump into events.Janice clearly represented his mother (who he wanted to write into the show, you can clearly see them in this final episode as a mother/son conversation) and his reluctance to move on from the past.Fredwynn Im not too keen about (its probably a AMC network executive he likes or andre benjamin himself, its not really clear.) his entire arc about wanting to find the truth, only to discover it by going insane and realizing he’s a fictional character, taking control of the narrative for a brief time only to be talked down by the others is… a interesting one. it only REALLY makes sense once you watch this episode, and it makes me think it was supposed to be foreshadowing/ a bridge to this. it also question’s what exactly is supposed to happen with these characters (is the whole fredwynn bit in episode 9 supposed to be non canonical? the last few seconds of 9 with the clown boy?) I do think there needs to be a better bridge between episode 9, because right now i can see WHY people don’t like this ending for being pretty much “all a dream”.its a interesting show, ill give it that, some parts work, some don’t. the ending is eerily reminiscent of danganronpa V3. (albeit, MUCH MUCH more uplifting and WAY more respectful to the audience than that game.) Still, both endings criticize corporations monetizing art for the sake of cash.
I don’t know. I think it’s only too stiff if we take it too literally. The boy isn’t literally Jason Segal. He’s a metaphor for Jason’s childhood. Clara is a metaphor for Lee’s childhood and how she viewed selling out to a giant corporation. No one abducted Clara. No one forced the boy to drink chocolate milk and keep doing the same routine over and over and over.
Well the whole thing was shown to be a written story by Segal to deal with his addiction/loss of purpose, so looking for “reality” is kinda beside the point.
Yah this is whole problem. That meta reveal made a story that desperately needed a stuck landing kinda a senseless waste of time.
I don’t know if that was self-indulgent wank or a really beautiful, heartfelt ending to a really beautiful, heartfelt series.Porque no dos?It definitely feels more like an epilogue than a finale, and even the episode calls itself self-indulgent… but I can’t help but admire the willingness to bare the soul like that.
Wow. Glad he swung for the fences with it. Strange, interesting show and I enjoyed the finale. A great capper. Great casting too, I enjoyed the core cast and others as well.
Um…. That wasn’t the most meta way possible, and it definitely, most definitely, wasn’t the wildest. It was merely a throwing away of the story, characters, and potential to actually be about anything genuinely strange or powerful, in favour of straightforward self awareness and a message of community. Like, super straightforward. Yeah, it was sweet and probably helpful in unpleasant times and I expect it’s very meaningful for Segel, but talk about running away from writing an end to your story. I’m slightly reminded (though I’m not directly comparing the two, as I felt much worse about this other show) of the end of The Good Place which ended on such a hollow, narrow-minded, weak platitude, yet AV Club were absolutely blown away. It’s been a very helpful benchmark to keep in mind when an AV writer tries to look down at anything, such as Doctor Who or other shows which several dimensions to them. I do appreciate the positive message, though, I guess. And Dispatches was never claiming to be super important, which is more then you can say for a lot of TV.
such as Doctor Who or other shows which several dimensions to them
I guess it has… relative dimensions. In space.
Is this review missing a paragraph or sentence? I see the following passage ending abruptly:“They all add up to how he feels like he’s floundering through the world, until he meets a woman named Simone at AA, and she gives him a postcard that sends”
I feel that Jason was lucky to get AMC to fund his therapy.
Janice was right (‘cuz Janice is ALWAYS right) It was a but of indulgent self wankery that he got to be “himself” but robbed the other fine actors of the chance of appearing of themselves just to play out his “man behind the curtain”
I don’t have a lot to say other than this was a beautiful bit of TV.
I hated this finale so goddamn much. Like, no snark, I’m genuinely happy that Segel had a great, personally fulfilling experience making this show. But that realization didn’t have to come at the expense of the show itself. I was invested in these characters, especially the (almost never seen on TV) romance story given to a trans character. Janice’s husband died! Fredwynn had a breakdown! Simone was queer bashed! But instead of telling us more about these characters’ lives (in which we had invested nine hours), Segel yanks us out of the story to try to make us feel sorry that he made millions of dollars being unfulfilled as a walking joke delivery machine on HIMYM. I get it, that show sucked. But I don’t appreciate being held hostage to act as a rich guy’s unpaid therapist. I loved the show for most of its run and am really disappointed that it ended in an unearned “we all made this together!” montage that felt like a coronavirus era bank ad or something. The whole thing felt like a passing idea you might come up with while trying to figure out how to end your show, but one that would normally get quickly chucked in the bin along with “what if this all was just purgatory?” and “what if everyone dies in an asteroid collision?” I feel like a sucker for having cared about anything to do with this quirky, funny, moving show, since Segel took such great pains to pull me out of it at the last moment.
I agree, I really enjoyed this show right up to the final episode. I even thought it was brave in ways I just don’t see often. But then we are ripped out of this wonderful journey and it turns into some sort of self indulgent therapy session. Even the recordings of fans at the end was in my mind a way to make it into a inner circle special people that knew to send a clip thing. It did not make me feel connected. It did exactly the opposite. We spend half an hour with a creepy clown face kid ripping off a dance routine from singing in the rain that ends in child abuse for some dollars. Instead of some time spent on closing the stories of the wonderful characters we grew to feel connected to we learn and actor/writer had it rough and we have to pretend to care about someone that claims to not even know what they like beyond “spooky” and “surprise”. Nope, a terrible ending letting down some amazing performances in an engaging story for someone’s therapy exercise. Oh well. I personally hope there is no second season, I don’t even know what a second season could be now that we all know this is just about someone working through the fact life can be challenging. Would the Wizard of Oz have worked if they were “off to see the guy behind the curtain”?
I agree. If a show is moving, thought-provoking, maybe even makes you more compassionate at least for a little while, then you’ve done your job. You accomplished what you wanted. There’s no need to hit us over the head with “ hey, look what at what I did. Awesome, right?” and totally rob us of our experience. Making characters who feel like they’re real IS the achievement, not pointing out that the characters Are. All. Actually. Jason. Segal. Noshit, every character a writer creates is actually him or her. Art is like sausage, if you see it being made you can’t stand it anymore.
Bravo – on point.
I had to lol at “coronavirus era bank ad” haha. If I have to hear the song “And I rise up” one more time, I’m taking a pencil to my ear drum. I run to mute it anytime that damn commercial comes on.
Yep…and he can ‘joke’ about that it may have been self indulgent towards the end, but just stating it as he did was just trying to let the air out of the balloon to escape some criticism. And the assertion that ‘we all contributed!’ and ‘proving’ it with the videos at the end is also contrived. It did not prove anything….other than contributing to the worst series finale I have ever seen.
I didn’t know it ever said hello.
I thoroughly enjoyed the series and the finale. The part where they bring out the cast and crew reminded me of one of the best episodes of Sports Night.
This was an extremely disappointing finale. This is a show that made me cry from some of the simple, beautiful moments. I was so emotionally invested in this show, in unraveling the mystery. I gave in to the immersive experience here. I felt somewhat betrayed by the meta ending. I didn’t feel this grand, sweeping “oneness”, i didn’t feel as “inspired by the medium of story”; that’s what was happening the previous nine episodes! The finale took me all the entire way out of that locked-in, immersive experience and made me feel like an idiot for having cried, laughed and experienced the subtle, beautifully nuanced moments the show offered both its characters and its audience. I didn’t need to see the camera man and the gaffer and the intern; the artistry of those people works because they *aren’t* seen. This felt fake and overtly preachy and ultimately kind of dour and not very fun.
Honestly, I heard what the finale was saying on an intellectual level but I didn’t FEEL it. Not like how I got choked-up, teary-eyed and blissfully happy during so many other beautiful moments during this show. I think I would have liked to have seen the meta nature more hinted at than shown, and for the series to have maintained the illusion of these characters we loved up through the final moments, giving them a heartfelt send-off. The finale as is doesn’t detract from those characters, but it does force me to compartmentalize them away from the final hour. The experiences Peter, Simone, Fredwynn and Janice went through felt more real to me than the “REALITY” of the final episode.
So, no season 2 I guess.I’m a lot more ok after watching the finale than I was before. That worked really well as a series finale and making more would be awkward.
Does Segal really not like his work on How I Met Your Mother? That’s disappointing, everyone I know, including myself love that show.
Dispatches From Elsewhere’s
The penultimate episode ends on a trippy cliffhanger where a clown child
spirits Peter away… that is not resolved at all! Rather than giving
closure to the characters we’ve been following for weeks, the last
episode is all about Jason Segel himself not the more sympathetic Peter.
After ten episodes we still don’t have a clear notion of what the game
was about. How was it effective promotion for Bender-Ellmore’s ad-laden
augmented reality headsets? If Clara/Lee privately financed it herself
with sellout money, why would she portray corporations as equally valid
as artists at the game’s conclusion? Did Fredwynn literally ascend to a higher plane or did he just drive
himself catatonic? If the latter, will he get the treatment he needs to
recover? These vexing loose ends could’ve been easily wrapped up if the
ninth episode was bit longer. Then the last episode as an explanatory
epilogue would’ve been acceptable. Segel didn’t even have the decency to
write a bad ending, making the whole show feel like a waste of time.
Jason Segel’s mid-life crisis is not interesting! Even when he admits his faults it seems self-congratulatory. When he’s
called out for making it all about himself, he claims the finale is
actually about everybody who made & watched it. His preachy moral is
that we’re all part of something special because we each have unique
problems. Not everything needs a profound thesis to be worthwhile, but I had been
led to believe there’d be a meatier return on my investment. I was going to say this series was ambitious but only intermittently
successful, but now this would be the season’s most disappointing
prestige TV if it wasn’t for The Sinner’s third outing.
Bring back Lodge 49!
I could agree more…and yes, bring back Lodge 49!
So the show essentially ‘ends’ with Lee’s revelation. The appearance of the boy shifts the narrative to the more real life aspect of jasons motivations behind the project. I interpret the other actors still appearing as characters being segals imaginative world and bringing the script to life.
I kind of feel like saying, “Way to go, Jason! That was really out there. Now, don’t ever do it again.”
having exposed his peter in another work jason must this once play himself as a norm(alm)an
I had NO idea Jason Segel was in recovery. I never see him at meetings, which tells me he must live … in a different city. I loved the finale and my wife says it ruined the whole show for her. So, there you go. “Meta” is definitely the word for it. This show was a real gift, and one that I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY hope Emmy land and the Golden Globes doesn’t forget in the Limited Series category. Also, yes, you wrote a Dracula musical made my night.
The ending didn’t ruin it for me (quite possibly because I saw it coming), but I do find myself wanting to compartmentalize the first 8 and 5/6ths episodes, from the last 1 and 1/6th (I can pretend clown-face boy is just another Elegant Squatch-type character).Remember that (I think it was American Express) ad from 15-20 years ago, where Martin Scorsese says “stories ARE real life”? That’s how I feel about Team Blue. The story was real, the meta was pretend…
Yeah, I kind of wish the characters got a more upbeat ending scene (rather than being concerned when the boy showed up.) Then the finale could still have proceeded in its meta way and that would have been fine.
I had a feeling the ending would be really meta—-not only from the ending of the previous ep (speaking of which: I never really got why that one was called “The Creator” . . . but did it tie into this one being “The Boy”? The Creator is The Boy grown up, which is to say Segal?). But also because Segal, in interviews and promos (available on the AMC site/YT channel) kept analogizing DfromE to “The Wizard of Oz”: a story (movie, for most of us) that’s a film within a film, right? And the within part is (clinically-speaking) a head-trauma dream (or is it?).
[NB: the other comparison I quickly came to, is one of my favorite films of the past 20 years, David Lynch’s insane poison-pen loveletter to H’wood, “Mulholland Drive”. That one, too, has the major upfront portion being a fever dream. Whereas MD is 2/3rd’s dream, DfromE is 9/10ths. The bizarre thing? I had NEVER before seen the similarity between MD and Wizard! (I’m sure due to emotional difference of their endings: “there’s no place like home” vs “Silencio.”)]Admittedly, DfromE isn’t a dream, exactly, but more like Fredwynn’s fugue state? Segal writing of/from a fugue state, where he’s Peter connecting w/ his Wizard traveling companions (all intriguing/engaging/likeable, and one whom he falls for? FTR, I have zero knowledge, nor interest, in JS’s actual love life). While I appreciate that Segal was writing himself into the meta, at the same time I wondered if this was “Stephen Colbert playing ‘Stephen Colbert’ on The Colbert Rapport”? A characterization of himself which might be wildly different than his actual self-image. Maybe, maybe not.Bottomline, though, while I appreciated “The Boy” more on 2nd viewing (1st viewing reaction: “that was a thing”), that was largely because I wasn’t watching it w/ the sense “OK, OK, meta . . . but can we have *Peter*, Simone (Peter’s Simone), Janice, and Fredwynn—-the whole Team Blue!—-back now???” [I mean, Buffy Summers MIGHT just be a girl in an insane asylum, but at the end of the day—-sorry, crying Joyce—-we want her back slaying vampires in Sunnydale!]
Fiction over Meta. I’m here for the game. Reality sucks enough as it is.Now, I’m hoping someone (w/ resources and skillz) will make some great Simeter music videos. They’re really REAL to me… [Yes, producers, hire Eve Lindley!]
I found the finale interesting, but unnecessary. Its themes had already been covered effectively by the game player narratives and the eventual reveal of Clara/Lee’s full story.
The finale was unnecessary for you, apparently, but very necessary for me. I’m hesitant to admit it, but I was having a very hard time trying to figure out what the point of this series was. I felt like I had lost the plot and didn’t understand what was going on about halfway through the series. In fact, up until about 3/4 of the way through the finale, I still didn’t understand the message.I had, coincidentally, seen Jason’s interview on Colbert just last night on YouTube (I hadn’t watched the finale until today). I don’t know that I would have been able to follow what was happening on the show if I hadn’t seen that interview first. It was clear from listening to his conversation with Colbert that this was a project that he was excited about and that was very personal to him—to a degree that almost made me uncomfortable. He also relayed the story of how he came to play the game, which was almost exactly as it was portrayed in the finale. That gave me a clue as to what he was up to while I was watching this episode.What I understood the message to be at the end has really got me shaken, if I’m completely honest. It’s probably too personal to get into here, but suffice it to say that the message that I don’t have to fix what’s wrong on my own, and that real help is available if I just ask for it and stop trying to maintain the character that I’ve been presenting to everyone I know has been received. If I’m smart, I’ll ask for help. I don’t know yet whether or not I’m brave enough to reach out, but at least I understand that that help is possible and that I’m not as alone as I’ve believed myself to be for the past 20 or so years.So, yeah…good finale.
Sounds like this project arrived at just the right moment for you. Seeking and allowing outside help isn’t always easy, but I’ve seen the rewards. My own issues require medication, a fact I rebelled against for almost a decade before accepting. Whatever form of help you’re alluding to, I hope it leads to peace of mind (divine nonchalance?).
I’m the same boat, if it weren’t for the final episode and the write-ups here, I’d have lost the plot long ago.I did not like this series, and by the time I realized that, I was too far in to stop watching. But, I’m glad that Jason Segel got to make it, and I appreciate AMC for taking the chance on something so out of the ordinary. For a basic cable limited series, it was well-acted, looked beautiful and had some great special effects. The final episode was definitely a mixed bag for me. I didn’t mind the curtain being pulled back and the rug being pulled out, but the part with all the viewers left me very cold. “You people are not me, none of you are anything like me or anyone I know,” I said out lout to no one. I didn’t see myself in anyone at the end, or in any of the characters of the show, so it was difficult to relate to anything that happened.Maybe it would have all made more sense if I’d known about the Jejune game beforehand, or had played it. Prior to this show, I didn’t know Segel from Adam’s housecat, and had never seen any of his prior work. Maybe that would have helped?
Like I said, I happened to see a youtube video of his appearance on Colbert’s talk show and he spoke in detail about the game and his experience, so when the show switched to Jason instead of his character, and he started to act out exactly what he had spoken about in the video that I had just seen the night before, it made a tremendous difference in my ability to keep up with what was going on.I think you might have taken the “I am you” stuff a bit too literally. My impression was that they were saying that you are not alone in feeling that you’re on your own and that no one else can understand what you’ve been through, what you are going through and why it’s so difficult for you. While the specifics may be different for each of us, there’s a commonality at our core, which means that you are not on your own—there are people who can and will help you or will just listen while you talk it out if you are able to simply reach out to them and risk making yourself vulnerable. And, conversely, you have the capacity to be that person for someone else…it just takes empathy—being able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and see things from their perspective and not judge that person’s experience as unrelatable. That’s how I understood the “I am you” statement.
Your interpretation of the finale actually helped solidify if for me in a more meaningful, personal way. Thank you. I hope you find or have found whatever help you might need.
I second the high hopes for Eve Lindley. The way she made her character in this episode seem clearly different from her character in the previous episodes, yet also conveyed that the other character is a part of her, was incredible.
I hated it.I don’t care how Jason Segel got the idea for the show. I especially don’t care about a weird semi-fictional version of how he got the idea for the show. Stories where writers write about writing are boring, as are TV shows about making TV shows.In 9 episodes the show created these interesting characters and sent them on a journey of self-discovery. I loved watching Peter become a person who’s capable of feeling emotions again, watching Janice discover herself as a separate person from her husband, etc. Then the 10th episode ditches all those characters, because they only matter for what they can tell us about Jason Segel.And I like Jason Segel! I always have! I watched this partially because he created it, and I’ve enjoyed all of his movies and TV shows going back to Freaks and Geeks. (I guess that makes me one of those horrible people in The Boy’s audience?) But I wanted a show about other people, not a show that’s entirely about him.The ending just made me cringe. Bringing out the cast and crew was defensible, if sort of a waste of time. But the home videos of people saying “I’m you” over and over were just awful. This was a limited-run cable series. I liked it, but it didn’t change the world or have any real cultural impact. It didn’t warrant anywhere near that level of self-congratulation.How I Met Your Mother was a pretty good show for several years, until a bad final season and terrible final episode ruined its legacy. It’s too bad Jason Segel hated working on the show so much, because he didn’t learn anything from its failure.
Preach! This perfectly states how I felt about this. I was robbed of an ending to the story about these amazing, intriguing characters, in favor of a self-indulgent wank. And I feel bad about feeling that way, given how personal this obviously was to Mr. Segel.
I know I am late but I just watched the finale. I did not want it to end… It’s a problem I have, I know. Anyway this show and it’s its last episode was maybe the best live TV I have ever seen. Don’t get me wrong I have many favorites Buffy twin peeks and many others but this was the best thing I have ever watched live and as it played out. As a small aside I still have ghest watching this a second time, like twin peeks for instance a viewing often offers a deeper second layer because of what you learn the first time through.
I am he as you are he as you are me
And we are all together – The BeatlesLoved this show. Thank you to all involved