Anyone else… falling off?

I don’t know how else to put it, really. I’ve enjoyed a lot of S2, but I think I started to fall off a bit at episode 6. Episode 7 pulled me back, particularly given the ending’s visuals overwhelmingly suggested Mark was fully reintegrated. Episode 8 pushed me back into uncertainty, and now episode 9 has done very little to assuage my concerns.

It just feels like the pacing and writing has gone seriously downhill from S1. The actors are all great as ever, the cinematography is great (with the exception of the absurdly on the nose cabin shot). But overall it feels like the show is kind of off the rails plot wise, to me, and I really do hope it can recover.

Dialogue generally feels a bit more stilted. No one is asking obvious gigantic questions, presumably because the writers are withholding the answer to that one for the future. Pacing is thus shot to hell, to the point it genuinely feels like individual lines of dialogue are being said slower and with larger pauses between them. “Cold Harbour” is starting to be repeated so goddamn much it no longer sounds like a word, it’s just a carrot being repeatedly dangled in front of us and out of our reach so we keep going.

On the plot front, the Cobel stuff feels like it’s been crowbarred together awkwardly, I keep expecting it to improve and it hasn’t. Irving has almost certainly been banished from this season, which is understandable if the finale doesn’t have a way to fit him in but means we likely have 2 more years to understand his deal, when he’s probably the most intriguing character right now. Miss Huang has been unceremoniously deported to Svalbard, with zero chance of her returning next season. Gretchen/Dylan was a really interesting plot thread that’s just been sort of wrapped up at lightning speed, the show abandoning the really interesting question of if it was cheating and Gretchen’s complicated feelings towards Dylan for “it is cheating and so she’s leaving” presumably so they can crowbar Dylan into position for the finale. And that’s not even touching reintegration, which at this point appears to practically have been a marketing gimmick, for all the effect it’s had.

Milchick has been a pretty clear positive, but also I feel he’s still lacking as a character? I want to get to know him more, I’m getting his character arc but I feel there’s a ton of his character left out of sight. We know how Cobel and Huang ended up in that office, yet Milchick is a complete and utter mystery. I don’t know what his end goals are, I only know his short term goals of getting more respect from his peers and superiors. Idk, I just want some more with him?

I dunno, I just really hope that they can land this thing in the finale. But even 70 odd minutes does not feel enough, and there’s clearly going to be a lot that’s still left unresolved. I’m like 99.999% sure the final shot of E10 will be Mark encountering Gemma and then a cut to black, leaving us on a cliffhanger for another 2 years. I don’t expect everything answered immediately, but I do kind of want the show to stop throwing cliffhangers at me, particularly if it keeps pulling the exact same cliffhanger each time. My fingers are crossed, but I no longer look forward to watching the next episode in the same way I did for S1, or episodes 1-5.