Control

I really dig the entire show so far but this episode was a low point. Boring to death! Unemotional, strange, no real character arcs.. just strange.

I get it; it's a metaphor for all those smelly, dirty people at Walmart who cling to their Gods and religion. When a man awakens in the middle of the night to find someone watching his handicapped preteen daughter and the police just shrug their shoulders, he should not go out and buy something so he can protect his family.

Because when he does, he will only frighten his neighbors and be more of a risk to his own family.

He should forget about danger to his child and put his trust in the government, they always do a good job.

This will allow the police to return to what the government wants them to do, issue fines and draw chalk outlines around bodies.

They won't need much chalk for a little girl.

This episode really spoke to me: it's a fun, subtle and poetic character piece which makes you think about all sorts of existential questions and rewards you with a beautiful emotional insight at the end.

Control was directed by Tim Mielants who also made the extraordinary feature film Patrick (2019). For those who have seen both Patrick and Control, notice the emotional similarities between Ed and Patrick. In addition to being both gentle handymen (and they even have the same hammer!), they both face the loss of a loved one and then plunge themselves into an obsessive occupation: that's their personal way of dealing with that pain; an escape into some kind of emotional armor. As a result, they also risk losing everything and everyone who still can make their life valuable. In both films there is this moment of sudden insight and their broken heart gets a chance to heal.

I really like this series a lot. With that said, unless I'm missing something, this episode was pointless and totally skippable.

While it seems that this episode could be skipped and take nothing away from the overall series, it's actually a story of consequences from previous episodes. Danny's father, Ed, is living with the consequences of his son's actions. Ed's own actions create consequences for the rest of his family. On it goes.

Ed is probably the one character to show a bit of reasonable emotion in this series. He feels he has failed in his most important job, protector of his family. Ironically, his obsession with protecting his family makes him negligent at the same time.

The moral of the story is that you can't fix everything, so you have to fix what you can.

The downside is that this episode is far too long. It tries to build emotion and empathy with long, silent moments that test the patience of the viewer. The photography has some great moments, but not enough to forgive the half hour of unnecessary time in this episode. And, yes, the robot was a stupid thing, but it fits the premise of the series.

Ed and Jakob were the only two characters I actually cared anything about in this series, and my patience with Jakob ran out after he basically gave up on himself. I actually hope things work out for Ed.