brendan-63701

I've been really enjoying the season, but this episode was very strange. Mixxy's behavior didn't match the characterization and build up, then deleting messages is suspicious. I just don't understand why she was so mad at Suzie all of a sudden. Why is Sunny snubbing Suzie so badly? I felt so bad for Sunny but then Suzie didn't seem to be concerned something was wrong with her right away. Then Sunny was nice to the Mother in law. I was very confused multiple times during this episode. I don't care about the Yakuza lady and her father much. They haven't linked it into the rest of the plot well at all and it's getting too long without doing that. Really much worse than the rest of the season.

Boiling Point is an extremely tense restaurant story filmed in a single shot. The execution was superb, it fit the intense claustrophobic experience of working in a restaurant perfectly. It also moved very naturally, never feeling like a gimmick, the film transitioned seamlessly between characters as we followed a crazy night of service in the busy restaurant. The film did an excellent job of establishing unique characters very quickly and showing us the dynamics of the staff in the first minutes of the film. We also got hints and clues of what was to come early on, the small details slowly built on each other, growing the tension and anxiety as the plot progressed and the night descended into chaos as the problems piled up.

This was an incredible pilot, filled with beautiful cinematography, I was transported to medieval Japan. The pilot does an excellent job of quickly establishing the political situation in Japan, the power structures, the political scheming, the plots of the time. We also are shown the honor culture of the time very early, the need felt to commit Seppuku to maintain your honor. It shows the clash of cultures, and how shocking this would be to an Englishman arriving onshore (a stand-in for us American viewers). This episode shows a lot of promise and seems to be setting up a great season with complex political dynamics and interesting characters who bring their own cultural backgrounds with them.