In “Fire Walk With Z,” Gossip Girl’s sisterly civil war finally comes to a head
And another teen drama bites the student-teacher affair dust
TV Reviews Gossip
At first glance, it’s a peculiar decision to follow up an episode where Zoya became unrecognizable to Obie with an episode in which… Zoya becomes unrecognizable to Obie. However, while the former did so with a nice little failed attempt at a Pygmalion—an always enjoyable staple of the genre—the latter version of this particular story beat actually does work better. At least, it works better on rewatch, as that’s the only way to actually grasp Zoya’s behavior in full context from moment one of this episode.
Because even with the early knowledge that Zoya’s birthday is unfortunately also her and Julien’s mother’s unhappy death day, Zoya’s bad attitude in “Fire Walk With Z” doesn’t 100% track at first. She complains to her father about how “bad stuff” always happens on her birthday because the episode immediately wants us to know that her vibes are fucked. (What did Minka Kelly—co-star of the Leighton Meester classic, The Roommate—ever do to Zoya to get the “who?” treatment from her?) It also comes across as a real pity party at first. And that pity party then leads to an intense, tunnel vision version of Zoya. But it all falls into place once you have the full Buffalo story and Julien’s anti-bullying speech, as a supplement.
Courtney Perdue and Baindu Saidu’s script for “Fire Walk With Z” makes a deliberate choice to have this be the episode where sweet, innocent Zoya is dropping f-bombs left and right, initially giving the audience a reason to question the idea of just how “sweet” and “innocent” she really is. Ultimately, it turns out her behavior is the result of trying to not let history repeat itself, determined to fight the titular fire with fire against a bully in the form of Julien. This isn’t some Queen B power struggle, this is self-preservation. This is Zoya attempting to nip things in the bud before they get as bad as they did a year ago, with her starting a fire in a classroom as a result of a bullying-induced panic attack. This is an episode that begs to be rewatched because it is very easy to get frustrated over Zoya’s actions, without having the full context. That she enlists the help of Georgina Sparks’ son, Milo (Azhy Robertson)—a 10-year-old eighth-grader, evil genius, and exactly what you’d expect Georgina Sparks’ son to be up like—to do these things also plays into the idea that she’s not that innocent.
But when Zoya tells Obie she’s not acting, she’s reacting, it really is coming from that place, even though the full picture isn’t all that clear at the moment.
I know I’m a broken record, but the logical leaps one has to take to figure out why Zoya and Julien buy into attempts to have them feud are still quite tall. At least here, Zoya’s behavior makes sense—both with full context and even without it, to an extent. (Julien’s sudden desire to run Zoya out of town? Not so much. But she is, admittedly, a bully.) Initially, one wonders why Zoya would believe Luna’s tale about telling Julien her housing secret, instead of just coming to the conclusion Luna leaked it. But once you realize Zoya is coming from a place of having confided in someone who actually was her friend and used it to bully her, it makes a lot more sense why she would think this is history repeating.
While we can latch onto the fact that Zoya keeps giving up information that can be used against her, she’s not the only one—nor is it just the kids on this show doing it. In this very episode, Rafa gives Max the perfect ammunition and opening when he briefly opens up about his own comparative daddy issues. Yes, Max is going through some things right now, but it’s hard not to jump to the conclusion that he clearly lied to Rafa about Roy blaming him for ruining the family. First of all, we don’t see the confrontation, despite knowing how good a scene like that would be coming from John Benjamin Hickey. Second of all, Max doesn’t allow Rafa the time to fully process the information, to possibly contact Roy (or Gideon) and ask about it. And third of all, Max has yet to reach rock bottom and has no qualms about ruining Rafa’s career. But then again, Rafa apparently doesn’t either.
Though I accept them as another staple of the genre, I can count on one hand the number of student-teacher affair storylines I have ever genuinely enjoyed, even when I was a teen. The first one was Ben and Miss Young (Jon Foster and Marguerite Moreau) in ABC’s Life As We Know It. I definitely shipped them, because even looking back now, their chemistry was electric. The show struggled with that fact, as while it tried to show the intense arrested development Miss Young had to have to engage in a relationship like that, it still gave them a very romantic send-off scene. The second came from The CW’s 90210, with the second/third season arc between Naomi and Mr. Cannon (AnnaLynne McCord and Hal Ozsan). That story, in particular, was not one of an actual affair but of a sexual assault, with Cannon weaponizing his position as the “cool teacher.” It’s also one of the reasons why I still praise 90210’s third season as the series’ best. At this point, a subversion of these stories is far more interesting than actually going through with them again. As the examples of the ones I liked have even shown, the male student-female teacher dynamic has predominantly been written as “fantasy” fodder (from something as ridiculous as Step By Step to the more serious Dawson’s Creek), while the female student-male teacher dynamic is typically that of victimization (like the Leighton Meester/Adam Scott episode of Veronica Mars, “Mars Vs. Mars.” FX’s A Teacher was a recent exception—and the third version of this story I’ve enjoyed—showing the male student as a victim to the female teacher’s predator, but that was also the entire point of the story.
Sure, making this story one of two gay men allows typically marginalized characters to also now be part of the trope—on the “fantasy” side of things—but the way that Gossip Girl attempts to make this story sexy when the entire concept is anything but is something I brought up early in these reviews. It’s the Teen Wolf approach, wanting to have its cake and eat it too, as it portrays these grown-up actors as kids… but highly sexualized and fuckable kids. Not just to other teens but to the teachers too. As this episode confirms Rafa 100% knows that Keller and company are Gossip Girl, I am curious to see how the inevitable confrontation between the two parties goes. But that’s also another issue with this story: It’s more interesting to think about the fallout than the actual “relationship.” Unless we have another Pretty Little Liars on our hands and Max and Rafa are actually soulmates who will end up together, that is.
But let’s not lose sight of the true antagonists of this week’s story. No, not Gossip Girl—in fact, for the second episode in a row, they’re very supplemental to the main conflict—but Monet and Luna. These past two episodes have really helped to make Luna more than the tall mean one, and this episode better explains why they’re so hellbent on getting rid of Zoya. It’s not so much that they think Zoya is coming for Julien’s crown—though they keep telling Julien that and Gossip Girl keeps pushing that narrative—as it’s that they’ve put in so much work into getting Julien to where she is as an influencer that they can’t have any distractions. Julien’s on a pedestal, and as her team, so are they. Obie wasn’t a distraction, because he allowed himself to be an accessory. But Zoya is a distraction because Julien wants to have a real relationship with her sister. (In the pilot, Julien attempted to bring Zoya into her manufactured world, but that clearly didn’t work and created the initial fracture.) Julien now wants to be real, in general. And being real is the antithesis of the influencer lifestyle.
And that is another issue with the Zoya/Julien rivalry: The stakes that Monet and Luna are dealing with are not high school-level or even actually high school-related, but the rivalry they continue to fuel is. You know how teen dramas tend to have their characters do college for about a year before pivoting to them having adult lives and careers at very young ages? Monet and Luna are the only teen characters on this show that are already in the mindset of where these characters would typically be in that pivot. They’re cutthroat businesswomen who are dealing with Julien and Zoya’s unfortunate teenage emotions. That’s part of what’s made them compelling antagonists so far and also part of what has made it clear that Julien and Zoya should be “versus” them—instead of each other—since the pilot. “Fire Walk With Z” makes for the perfect point to draw the battle lines in that way, but arguably, so have the rest of the episodes so far.
Then you have the Gossip Girl crew, who are at their best when they are fully unrepentant in their chaotic decision-making—not so much when the audience is apparently supposed to care about Kate Keller’s aspirations as a writer. While Dan Humprhey’s sociopathic actions as Gossip Girl drew a straight line to those same tendencies as a published author, he had the “defense” of starting this all as a teenager. That same defense can’t be made for a failed, grown-up writer whose driving force in becoming Gossip Girl was that the original eventually became a successful writer. (Again, he was a teenager who then became a successful writer. Not an adult bullying teenagers. Until later seasons.) Yet “Fire Walk With Z” decides that the audience is now supposed to feel for Keller, to care about her future in terms other than wanting everything to blow up in her and her team’s faces.
I’ve praised Gossip Girl for allowing these teachers to go full-tilt in their decision to do something so inappropriate—to be such obvious villains with no real self-awareness. From making a kid who’s done nothing wrong their biggest target—despite what their mission statement for creating Gossip Girl supposedly was—to even getting one of their own fired to save themselves, Keller and company regularly reveal themselves as worse than the rich kids who they’re supposedly attempting to scare straight. So I have no idea why this episode attempts to make the audience care that Jordan and Wendy have temporarily blocked Keller from the Gossip Girl account so she can work on a short story submission. I understand using the plot as a way to show that Keller is addicted to being Gossip Girl and that Wendy (clearly a wildcard) and Jordan could eventually be the ones that end up really blowing things up… but not the part where anyone is supposed to care about Keller’s writing career. Because she is still very much a villain. As is Jordan. As is Wendy. So when Zoya confides in Keller in this episode, even though Keller is out of the loop this week, that doesn’t make her a more sympathetic character; it’s just another reminder of how untrustworthy Zoya’s favorite teacher is.
This is a packed episode—but not quite overstuffed, which was “She’s Having A Maybe’s” problem—which also deals with Audrey and Aki trying to figure out Aki’s sexuality. This plot is perhaps the most original Gossip Girl (and 2007) of the bunch—even focusing more on Audrey’s feelings about Aki’s sexuality than it does his—right down to the farce of having Audrey accidentally bring an obviously gay guy as her date to the event-of-the-week (to make Aki jealous, of course). But the point of the story is that Audrey ultimately realizes she’s been thinking solely of herself when this is something that’s not about her at all. While Evan Mock’s screentime in this episode is comparatively minimal to what he’s had in previous episodes, his scenes with Emily Alyn Lind are also the most comfortable he’s seemed onscreen so far—which is right on time for a story like this.
Like last week’s episode, the thing that truly keeps this all afloat is the sense of forward momentum that Jennifer Lynch’s directing style brings. It’s especially apparent in the main school hallway scene, as it moves from plot beat to plot beat, but it’s also necessary and present in a setting like the girls’ joint party. The only time this episode really finds itself lacking in that department is during both the Gossip Girl scenes—which lack their typical chaotic feel, considering the plot—and Julien’s bullying speech at the anti-joint birthday party/death day party/fundraiser/concert. But the latter is much more intentional, as it’s the moment where everything becomes still and real.
However, that moment also feels more like the resolution to a teen movie (Mean Girls) than it does the natural progression of things in this episode. Particularly as it happens so immediately after everyone sees the Buffalo video, the episode provides no time for things to breathe in between those two moments. There’s no buffer. The choice itself technically makes sense, but the execution just feels off, especially as it’s an eloquent speech after Julien had been anything but eloquent leading up to it. (As Zoya’s plan led to Julien being drugged.) One could argue that it’s a matter of the events of the full video sobering Julien up, but the performance is perhaps too polished, considering how the character’s behavior was just moments before. However, considering Zoya’s point in this episode—as rage-filled as it was—about people somehow not getting (or staying) mad at Julien when she does something bad, this falls right into place in that regard.
As is the way of a Marcia to a Jan—or even a Serena to a Blair.
Stray observations
- And so ends weekly Gossip Girl coverage. Unfortunately, people aren’t even hate-clicking on these reviews to run to the comments and call me names for writing so much about it. Their loss. I may do pop-ins and write-ups about big moments, but…
- The Nate Archibald of the Week: Luna, for the moment during Julien’s anti-bullying speech where she so very clearly believes Julien is giving a pro-bullying speech.
- I don’t know if the episode aired this way, but in the screener, as Obie was scheduling food trucks, the number he texted was (212) 562-4141. That’s the real number for New York’s Bellevue Hospital, the inspiration for NBC’s New Amsterdam.
- Kate Keller is the type of teacher who allows her students to call her by her first name. That makes me angrier than the whole Gossip Girl thing.
- The fact that no one challenges Keller when she brings it up makes me need to know: Is Hannah Horvath a real person in the world of this show? Is Girls part of the Gossip Girl Cinematic Universe?
- But why does Georgina Sparks have a screenshot of Blair Waldorf in her home?
- “Fire Walk With Z” is the first episode that doesn’t really interrogate Obie’s entire deal, which means I could be projecting on this one: His frustration with Zoya here comes across like he’s one second away from telling her she needs to stop acting the way she is because she’s “not like most girls.”
- While he certainly comes across as human in his scenes with Davis in this episode, Nick still remains a parental robot. He tries to get Zoya to celebrate her birthday on the day, despite knowing the reason she doesn’t—that he probably should’ve sent her to therapy for—and it also being the one-year anniversary of the Buffalo incident. And knowing the full context, now he just seems cruel for the way he’s treated his daughter for being bullied then and now.
- Julien’s initial fame as a kid came from her YouTube channel where she interviewed musicians. Obviously, musicians she only had access to because of her father… but also musicians who were on the original Gossip Girl. Mark Ronson, Lady Gaga, and Robyn are the ones we see in this episode.
- Audrey (re: Julien’s cancelation): “It gets worse: Jameela Jamil just defended you.”
- Even though this episode focuses on Zoya’s 15th birthday, that doesn’t mean the Sixteen Candles table moment between her and Julien at the end of the episode isn’t still cute.
16 Comments
I think one of the big reasons why student teacher relationship/grooming storylines rarely work in teen shows is because the vast majority of the time, the kids are being played by 20 somethings, and as a result the power imbalance ends up not being effectively communicated. Like with Riverdale, the show’s writing was pretty clear that Archie was a victim in his relationship with Grundy, and she wasn’t portrayed sympathetically at all from what I remember. But KJ Apa, while 19 in the first season of the show so technically still a teenager, still looked too old to play a high school sophomore, and was heavily sexualized by the show from the first episode. So it was difficult to view Archie as a victimized kid in that one storyline when what the audience was seeing onscreen was a hot young adult. Even with A Teacher, which examined how grooming works and the psychological impacts it has on its victims better than pretty much any other TV show I’ve seen, I think the creators made a mistake in casting 20-something Nick Robinson to play the student. He and Kate Mara didn’t look like they were that far apart in age, and I think casting an actual 17 or 18 year old, even if it would have made the show tougher to watch, would have communicated how awful the situation was much better.In the case of this show specifically, I honestly can’t tell how sympathetic we’re meant to view Rafa: is his concern for Max genuine or is it a form of grooming? Are his very meager attempts at resistance meant to real or just his way of justifying his actions to himself when he finally “gives in” to Max’s advances? Is this entire relationship meant to be taboo but not necessarily morally reprehensible, or are we meant to find it disturbing? But even if the show (hopefully) goes the route of making Rafa a villain, I think it’s going to be hard for the show to manage to unpack the subject matter successfully when Max is played by a 26 year-old man.On another note, I’m sorry to see coverage of the show go: I’m not loving the show, but I really enjoyed LaToya’s recaps and they’re one of the main reasons I’ve kept watching it in the first place.
I’ll say with A Teacher, I think the age casting was VERY intentional. There’s even a joke (one of the few jokes) in one of the episodes about how one of Robinson’s friends look like a 20-something actor in a teen drama. The point was having it be one of the excuses Mara used to lessen what she did—like at the end when she later tries to say something to the effect that she shouldn’t have let him seduce her and he pushes back that he was just a kid. He follows up with saying his younger brother is now the age he was when things went down and when he looks at him, he very much sees a kid.But you’re also right things would’ve been even more effective had they cast with an actual 17 or 18 year old. Especially in terms of promotion, as the initial promos had everyone calling out Robinson playing a teen.
I’m not sure if y’all saw the Laura Dern HBO movie “The Tale”, but there’s a brilliant scene that addresses how young a teenager really looks (whose in a relationship with someone whose much older).In the movie, Dern’s character was involved with her riding instructor and his wife when she was a young teen and we see (via her viewpoint) just how young she really was when the ‘young version’ version of her is initially played by as an actor who *looks* (and is) older but is immediately swapped out by an actor who IS the correct age.It really put a fine point on just how inappropriate these tropes are when (as the viewer) you see the actor played by someone the actual age they’re portraying. I immediately thought if that when reading your recap.Also, count me in as bummed about your GG2.0 recaps going away. I only just found out today there were recaps as (other people said) the site did a poor job in keeping them visible.
In the case of this show specifically, I honestly can’t tell how sympathetic we’re meant to view Rafa: is his concern for Max genuine or is it a form of grooming? I’m wondering why this “grooming” angle is mostly applied to relationships with a certain age gap because it’s often used for it no matter whether people work in the same business or are on the same level of a hierarchy. The most obvious “grooming” happens between parents and their child. It’s the relationship where most abuse happens. But it’s the least discussed grooming/ abuse situations (church, sports, school are in the public mind).
I think it’s disturbing Max – as a bisexual – is less sympathetic to the gay masc father than he is to the one who changed his appearance to look more femme. I don’t know which message it’s supposed to send: Gays who don’t want sex with men dressed as women are villains?
I think Rafa’s concern for Max is genuine and he can still be attracted by him. There are a lot of couples where one part is dealing with a psychological problem. That shouldn’t be a reason to start or stop it, you can try to help or find help for the other one and still love him. But this series will not go a rational path.
“I think it’s disturbing Max – as a bisexual – is less sympathetic to the gay masc father than he is to the one who changed his appearance to look more femme. I don’t know which message it’s supposed to send: Gays who don’t want sex with men dressed as women are villains?”See my impression of the issue was that his more masc father has a problem with his more femme father’s gender nonconformity. I don’t think that gay men who aren’t atteacted to femmes are villains, but gay men who cheat on their husbands without having a real conversation are. The reason Max is more sympathetic to his more femme father is because it is his more femme father is the one who got cheated on. If the situation were reversed and it was his more femme father who was cheating then I’m sure Max wuld have sided with the more masc father. There is a history of gay men (especially more masc ones) having an issue or not being attracted to femmes, so I am hoping that this is what GG is exploring because it’s a more nuanced queer story, and I think the more masc father’s excuse for cheating points toward that being something they are exploring, so I’m really interested to see where the story goes.
The reason Max is more sympathetic to his more femme father is because it is his more femme father is the one who got cheated on.
Yes that’s Max’s situation. But it was clear from the dads’ talk that the femme one wasn’t blind-sighted about how his appearance already changed the marriage and he even tried to wear a tuxedo because of what happened a while before we first saw them. As a bi Max may be unaware that gays usually stay gay. Dressing like a woman is something people should know of each other at the start of a relationship and not after some years in a marriage as it seems to have happened here.
There is a history of gay men (especially more masc ones) having an issue or not being attracted to femmes I know there is no history of straight men or women having an issue with dudes who aren’t attracted to obese unfeminine ladies who want to be called “They”. I wonder why? Sexual attraction is not a debatable all-inclusive PC fantasy. If Gossip Girl had a set of straight parents, where a husband suddenly decides to dress in women’s clothes, to act feminine and the wife uses Tinder – would the child be as understanding as Max or someone notice that the wife has an issue because she isn’t attracted to an effeminate husband? I don’t think so.
I do wonder why Julie even thought that video would be damning for Zoya. The rich kids on this show are portrayed as rebellious and openly against authority, like how they get their teachers regularly fired, so wouldn’t the whole “f**k school” thing have Zoya gain brownie points with her peers?Also, that’s too bad we won’t be getting your weekly recaps anymore cuz I really enjoyed them. Maybe the website has always been like this, but when I go to the homepage, I would normally expect the reviews section to have the most recent ones as the thumbnails, but these ones never show up. I always have to google gossip girl av club to find these. Like right now, why women kill and american horror stories’s recaps, which were published hours before this, are still spotlighted there.
Two things:1) It’s insane that Obie wouldn’t know that Zoya’s birthday coincided with her mother’s death. He dated Julien for a long time! Surely her mother dying during childbirth came up? No? Or he did just genuinely not connect those dots back to Zoya, in which case, yikes he’s dense!2) I cackled at Julien’s dad going from “Sadly it’s too late to cancel this party” to “If you two don’t agree to a joint party, then both parties are canceled!” in two seconds flat. Which is it? And if canceling the party is *at all* an option, why on earth are you not, as parents, insisting on canceling! Your daughters are behaving insanely! Don’t reward them!
As someone else said, I wonder if these reviews got such low views because they were difficult to find. I’ve almost never seen them on the home page and have had to search for them myself. Bummer, because LaToya is a perfect fit for this show. I often feel like she’s reading my mind.Anyway, I actually kinda liked the Kate Keller stuff this week – it helps further explain her motivations in keeping Gossip Girl going, and makes her slightly more human (but not more sympathetic). Totally agree about the weird rushed quality of Julien’s sudden bullying speech, though. That definitely should’ve been, like, a school assembly the next day.Obie’s judginess this episode tracks for me. He’s always been a kind of rich-boy twist on Dan Humphrey, so I kind of see this as re-creating the OG S1 pattern of Dan seeing new sides of Serena and judging her for them (before always reconciling at the end of the episode). It’s a similar dynamic, except instead of the outsider judging the insider, it’s the insider judging the outsider who’s mimicking an insider. Or something.
I’d be curious to know what the streaming numbers have been for the show, because I’m not seeing a lot of engagement about it at other sites either. It kind of feels like a flop all around. These reviews (and Jessica Goldstein’s at Vulture) are the main reason I’ve been watching it.
I’m sorry the coverage is ending! I’ve really enjoyed your reviews. They are thought provoking and well written. I love how deep you delve into the aspects of the show.I agree that Obie was definitely giving off those “I thought you were a cool girl” vibes, especially with the confrontation right before the video plays. Though I also noted that the moment he got most uncomfortable was when Zoya started talking about who they could get to play her party, and where they could have it. In that moment it seemed less about Zoya not being cool and laidback anymore and more about feeling like she was sort of using him for his money to book a lavish party, even thought that wasn’t really what she was doing, but it may have felt that way to Obie who is used to feeling like a prop from his relationship with Julien. He’s obviously fine with spending money to try and make Zoya feel special, but when it became about getting back at Julien instead of it being about Zoya’s special day, that seems to be when he started resisting and getting more upset, sort of like he’d been waiting for Zoya to fully understand just how rich he is and start using it for her own gain, something he has probably had happen a time or two. I’m not generally sympathetic to the nepotism squad, but at least Obie tries to make an effort to actually do the right thing even if he can be patronizing and self-aggrandizing.Dammit, I am so annoyed that we are getting yet another teacher/student affair storyline. I really thought Rafa was going to try and do right by Max. It would have been interesting to see a story line where Max’s attraction to Rafa could grow into a genuine friendship and mentorship when he figures out that Rafa is different and is one of the few people in the world who doesn’t want to have sex with him. But instead we have Rafa throwing all his principles away and sleeping with a student. I thought he was a good guy, but he is not. He’s basically the same as one of the dudes with the countdown clock until Natalie Portman turned 18. It’s legal so there’s no other metric of morality that matters to him apparently. He says he doesn’t screw students, so does he usually just wait until they graduate? Isn’t that called grooming? I wanted a queer elder mentorship storyline! Though I guess this is what happens when the actors playing the high school students are only a couple years younger than the teachers. I think part of the problem is making the kids too old and sexy, but they also make the teachers too young and sexy, this would not have happened if Rafa looked like Mr. Feeney (or maybe it would have, but that would at least be more interesting and not just a retread with two men instead of a guy and a girl).I want a little more insight into Max and I hope we get it. The thing with the student/teacher affair storylines is that it’s usually because the kid has mommy or daddy issues. Like Pacey (I love Pacey so much and hate that storyline so much), his family was absolutely horrible to him. He needed affection from someone older to understand that he had worth at all. It doesn’t make what his teacher did right, I’m just saying from a mental standpoint that Pacey’s motivations at least made some kind of sense. But that’s not really the case with Max. He has two loving parents at home. Who seem extremely supportive and have an understanding of his sexuality that a lot of queer kids with even the most supportive of straight parents will never have. Yes, his and Rafa’s realtionship turned physical partially due to the blowup in Max’s home, but he was pursuing Rafa previous to that. Was it really just a notch in his belt? Well-adjusted kids do not try to sleep with their teachers. So what else is going on with Max? I think he is the most compelling character at the moment, even if his actions make as little sense as anyone else’s at least we get to see a pretty boy cry and sometimes that’s enough. Thank you for these reviews! I’ve really enjoyed reading them and I hope you do post some write-ups for bigger eps because your interpretations are great!
Yowks! From Wikipedia (Life As We Know It):Dino sees his mother having an affair with his hockey coach. Dino’s secret about his parents’ marital problems weakens his relationship with Jackie. Jonathan makes a scary discovery and suspects he may have penis cancer. Ms. Young makes a surprising move on Ben.
Aww man, I only just started caring about this show enough to want to read reviews, and now they’re going away? And TWOP Jacob buries his sparse commentary in just an absolute mountain of (good) political retweets!
LaToya, I love your GG reviews! I used to always wait for them to be published after watching the episodes. Sad that you’re not going to continue the weekly coverage, hope you still continue to write for the mid season and finale episodes at least.
I want to be more upset about the non weekly coverage but I’m only finding this review a week late looking for today’s so I can’t argue it too much. I do really like this show – and especially episode 5 did a lot of good things – and believe it it.
I know I’m a little late, the show just began airing in the UK, but I wish the reviews had lasted one more week. Bit odd to stop reviewing after the penultimate episode.