Sense8, on Netflix!

[PanTheMan]

So I started watching Sense8 on Friday and burned through the entire first season by Sunday.

It’s about 8 individuals whose minds become 1, as in, these 8 characters share a singular conciseness, which becomes an amazing connection between the diverse characters. This connection becomes like a superpower, and it’s truly beautiful. Also, it’s an awesome cast!

For me, this is without a doubt the best show I’ve seen since LOST. While Once has filled the void LOST left for several years now, Sense8 is the show I’ve been waiting for.

I recommend everyone touch it out, and if anyone wants to talk about it, I’d love to get in on the conversation.

Just btw… Sense8 is definitely for adults, so to any interested adults out there, have fun and enjoy. While watching Sense8, I laughed, I cried, and I jumped out of my seat as if someone had scored a touchdown. Amazing show!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3JQpS5M-34

 

[trekfan92]

I watched the first two episodes. Holy crap that was confusing lol. They should have made it Sense 5 or something. Eight people is way too many to follow. My friend at work says I’ll get used to it as the episodes go on. other than it being confusing I do like it so far.

[RumplesGirl]

*stumbles into thread blinking somewhat owlishly*

I just finished Season 1. I have…things to say.

Okay, first…Pan, I know you’ve been wanting me to watch this series for awhile now and talk about it with you but I kept having to put it off to watch other things/get caught up with other TV shows. I finally managed to sit down and watch it, and like you, I burned through the first season because I simply couldn’t stop.

Overall rating: 9

This is a very very very very good show. That’s a somewhat trite and remedial way of saying I really liked it, I know. More depth to follow but my bare bones, very general reaction is that this might (no, scratch that)…this is Netflix’s best original drama to date. Granted, their other super smash hits–House of Cards and Orange is the New Black–also had stellar first seasons but have petered out recently, and while I think Sense8 shares a lot of similar threads to OitNB, there is something *more* to Sense8 than there is to OitNB or HoC.

A little less comedic situations than you have in OitNB but with more heart than you get in HoC; in other words, instead of me struggling to constantly define OitNB as a comedy or a drama, Sense8 is a straight up drama with a capital D, even though, like I said, it shares a lot of similar themes (more to follow…). I think that “it” factor that makes Sense8 stand above the other Netflix originals is that it’s so unbelievably relevant to the point where the plot doesn’t actually matter. It’s…well, it’s doing what SciFi is bloody well supposed to do, which is look at our modern society by examining some sort of future or advanced human (the latter in this case) and making us all reflect on how we’re conducting our lives today in the here and now.

This is going to be pretty scattered and probably tangential because I literally just watched the finale but here goes. I think there are three important things to talk about when it comes to Sense8: the plot, the characters, and what the Wachowskis are actually doing or saying.

The plot is more or less straight up science fiction in the modern world. It’s nothing totally revolutionary. You have a group of “other” individuals who are somehow set apart from the rest of society, in this case by virtue of telepathy. They are different and thus feared or hunted by some other group, in this case Whispers and his men. You see this frequently: X-Men, Alphas, as examples. The plot, though, I don’t think is the selling point of this series.  In fact, they could marginalize the plot of Whispers as a whole, and I’d still think this show would do incredibly well.

And, to a point, the plot of Whispers was marginalized this season. It wasn’t like it played too big of a vital role. A lot of episodes mentioned him or the BPO plot in passing but the real meat of the story isn’t this science fiction, hunter vs prey story: it’s how the Wachowskis want to tell the stories of people whose stories are never told and show that they are just as human (and perhaps MORE human) as the people’s whose stories are told on a daily basis and that by ignoring these “other” stories, we (those doing the ignoring) have disconnected from the fabric of humanity.

See. I told you this was going to be wildly random and tangential.

This is why I think Sense8 and OitNB have a lot of similar threads. OitNB is also about telling stories that don’t get to be told, the stories of the disenfranchised, in their case the Litchfield inmates who comes in a variety of colors and types. Obviously Sense8 doesn’t have inmates but in a lot of ways the main characters, the senseates, are just as trapped. While Piper and her friends are literally trapped by the Litch fences and their own prison sentences, the Sense8 are trapped by the confines of society that refuse to grant them personhood and agency because they are somehow beneath the society in which they live.

Kala is a woman in a culture where the parents largely make the decisions about marriage and she can’t even voice, really to anyone, that she doesn’t love Rajan because how could she not–he is apparently perfect for her.

Sun is the big sister who is told that her role is to guard her brother and her father to the point of ridiculous extreme because in her culture, her father and other male relatives are deemed of greater value even though Sun COULD DESTROY YOU WITH ONE LOOK. (I really like Sun).

Cepheus is poor but well intentioned and trying to make an honest living but soon discovers that the only way to affect the sort of change he wants or make the sort of actions he wants to make, requires selling part of his honor, because he can’t crawl his way out of his society, one bus ride at a time.

Lito lives in a culture where he is the picture of masculinity–hard, beautiful, and a man of action in his line of work. Like he tells Nomi, he can’t be the kind of actor he wants to be and be gay and yet gay, and closeted and in a seriously loving and long term relationship, he is.

And then there’s Nomi herself and this is where the plot vs what the Wachowskis are doing really comes into play. (side note: but I think Nomi’s success as a character largely stems from Lana W. being transgendered herself). One of the first big plots for Nomi is her captivity by Metzger who wants to, essentially, lobotomize her because there is something wrong with her brain and openly refuses to listen to what Nomi is trying to tell him and won’t allow Nomi any communication or access to the outside world. Take it out of the plot context and it’s exactly–exactly–how some people view transgendered men and women in our world. That the way they tell us who they are, how they feel, or the way they want to live their lives is somehow the result of a misfiring of synapses in the brain.

That’s what I think the Wachowskis are trying to do, really. Yes, there must be a plot because it’s still a TV show and you can’t have a show that is totally devoid of plot and just an examination of the human character (well, you could…it might be called Seinfeld or Mad Men…) but the plot doesn’t matter as much as the characters and the stories being told about them as people interacting with other people. Science fiction-y mumbo jumbo aside.

I touched on a few characters but I did miss a few so I’ll backtrack.

Will: I like Will, I do, but I think he might be the weak thread in the series. He is as everyday (for someone who experiences telepathy) as they come. He’s the white, midwestern, Good Guy who believes in justice and fairness and saving people and who has a bit of a rough home life. Paging Jack Shepherd, anyone? It’s not that I dislike Will, but it’s that he’s no where near as compelling to me as Lito or Nomi because we see people like Will in society all the time. Will’s story is told a lot–again, without the telepathy–but in general his story almost doesn’t fit with the delicious diversity of the show. He is white bread in a sea of ethnic and multi-cultured delights. That might have been a bit of a tortured metaphor.

Riley: First, I love that they have an Icelandic chic. That’s just..not done. Sense8 is so concerned with equal representation but they could have easily had their European Female be from the continent, from a place TV audiences are familiar with already. But no…they went with Iceland. It took me awhile to warm up to Riley because, like Will, her story seemed pretty straightforward. Traumatic past, ran away, doesn’t want to go back, drugs, sex, rock and roll. It’s only in the last two episodes when we get the low down on Magnus and baby Luna that I began to seriously sympathize with her. I also love that she was the hero in the end, the one who had to get up and push herself to save everyone. If it had been Will–the white heterosexual American boy–saving the day, there would have been some serious frowning.

I like how self aware Wolfgang is, he knows he’s a monster. His loyalty to Felix is kinda beautiful (like his non-romantic version of Amanita or Hernando).

My fingers are actually going numb at his point from all the typing so I may have to wrap it up.

Favorite Sense8: Nomi and Lito

Jonas thoughts: don’t know if I trust him. don’t know if that matters since outside of the Cluster I’m not sure they should trust anyone. But I do want more of his backstory. And obviously just more Naveen.

Best ship: Nomi and Amanita. GAH. THOSE TWO. Perfect.

Funniest Moment: “I see you! I see you villain!” (I’ve been yelling this at people…)

Okay. That’s what I got for now.

ETA: my fingers are too tired, but please insert J. Michael Straczynski every time I talked about the Wachowskis and their vision. Obviously he’s a big part of this too. (Also, I may have to think about Sense8 in connection to B5)

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

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