What I’m Watching: The Man in the High Castle (Season Finale)

The Man in the High Castle: Season 1, Episode 10 “A Way Out” (B)

Juliana summarized her feelings about seeing events that definitely didn’t happen in this timeline in the reel by saying that everything she did wasn’t to achieve any goal since that’s not how things played out in this universe. I think that a show about the Axis powers winning World War II and conquering the United States would have been plenty interesting enough, and adding an additional element where extrauniversal events are shown in cross-timeline films and characters close their eyes and open them to find themselves back in the world we know is unnecessarily complicated, and the quality of the characters and their storylines don’t match. Nice guy Ed did his best to dispose of a gun in the simplest way possible, but slippery fingers meant that he got caught red-handed, and Frank’s punishment is to watch his friend implicated and presumably executed for a crime that he tried to commit. Juliana going into Nazi headquarters to bring Joe out for his own execution and then letting him go was futile, since nothing is accomplished and he freely admitted to being a Nazi spy. Things in the Nazi regime are much more problematic, of course, as we got our first glimpse of Hitler, who managed to talk Rudolph into killing himself instead of executing him, and John got the drop on his captor and managed to triumphantly call Hitler and report that he had captured a traitor. It’s weird when we end up rooting for the bad guys, but that has much more to do with the fact that John, and Rudolph for that matter, are much more well-written and interesting characters than any of our so-called heroes. This show is going to have a second season, and I am a bit intrigued, but I’m not anxiously awaiting it.

Season grade: B
Season MVP: Rufus Sewell as John