jay-95578

I watched this twice in the space of two days. In fairness to me, that was only because I do genuinely think it's some of the best TV I've seen in my life. It is extraordinary. Both times I finished it I came away feeling slightly shaken, blinking back tears, but still not really knowing whether the more appropriate reaction would not be to weep like Stephen Graham but instead retch like Erin Doherty. While it certainly is true that the immersive realism of Barantini's playscript-like "oners" makes Adolescence scarier than any horror film and sadder than any outright weepy, to zero in on any one of the show's facets would be to do it a disservice. It is, in fact, a creation greater than any short explainer can adequately describe (particularly in its final two episodes which both ascend to God-tier television), so I won't try. It should be enough to say that everything about it, everything including its innovative style, its writing's perfectly judged ambiguity, its half a dozen awards-worthy performances, its perfect marriage between method and intent, even the way the camera eventually lands on a closing shot so magnificently dreamy and sad that it takes the breath away, all of these things combine to create something unique and sublime. Qualities exceedingly rare in TV. Anyway, I've been so busy climbing aboard this bandwagon, being spun out by this excoriating dive into the ways our society - from the individual to the state - so often fails its children (despite everyone involved's very greatest efforts), that I've barely noticed the world going by in a handbasket these last few days. Even so, Adolescence made me wonder where that handbasket is being taken.

When the first officer is on her own in the cockpit and all the hijackers leave, why doesn't she shut the door? Shut the door, land the plane. Problem solved. She must have a good reason I suppose. But now, having descended to 6,000', we don't have fuel to climb back up and get to London, guess that's not really worth questioning either. Also, why is the first officer in the left hand seat when she's trained to fly from the right hand seat? - and why didn't they use her headset to talk to the fighter pilots in the previous episode? - or the hand held microphones, for that matter? - and why don't the air traffic controllers do any controlling? - and why did the captain need to turn on the in flight entertainment system to work out where he was? - I'd have thought the nav display and the FMGC would give him slightly more usable information, no?

I'm sorry. I usually have a lot of patience for shoe's which stretch the truth so long as they're self consistent, or at least artfully made, but I can't abide with this trash.

"The history of the family was a machine with repetitions, a turning wheel that would have gone on spilling into eternity were it not for the progressive and irremediable wearing of the axle." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

An almost perfect finale. Probably not quite the absolute best in the series (I think that title still belongs to the climactic episode, "Connor's Wedding", which delivered on the promise of the pilot); however, "With Open Eyes" was a finale that put everything in its natural resting place and reached the series' uncontrived judgment concerning these people and their lives: "We are bulls**t. You are bulls**t. I am bulls**t. We're nothing."

The big game continues and its self destructive cycles go on and on. It doesn't make any of its players happy - it forces them to live in a gilded prison of emotional abuse and nihilistic emptiness. But why do we, on the outside, care? Because of episode 8. That's why.