What I’m Watching: His Dark Materials

His Dark Materials: Season 3, Episode 6 “The Abyss” (B)

Asriel is not doing a great job of even bothering to feign sympathy upon learning that his daughter is dead, and Mrs. Coulter didn’t hold anything back when she made it clear that she didn’t blame herself for what had happened. After trying to push Serafina Pekkala to take out her own grief on her, Mrs. Coulter’s attitude shifted considerably by the end of the episode when she realized that the prophecy might in fact be true, that she would be able to defeat death. That did explain why it was that the alethiometer showed that she was dead, but it’s also a place in which Lyra and Will’s fearlessness enabled them to be extraordinarily powerful. Jumping so that the creature would catch her was a bold move that could have ended in disaster, and instead she named the terrifying entity “Gracious Wings,” which hardly seemed fitting given its sinister disposition. Will was able to find his father quite easily, giving us a welcome return from Andrew Scott as John Parry, who talked to Will about a daemon he had never met. Roger going first through the window Will cut felt symbolic, and now this will take us into the final two episodes of this show and the “final rebellion” that has officially begun. I’m glad that it’s been decades since I read the books and therefore I don’t have any recollection of how things turn out, which should make for a suspenseful and hopefully satisfying viewing experience for the rest of this series.

What I’m Watching: Valley of Tears (Penultimate Episode)

Valley of Tears: Season 1, Episode 9 “The Abyss” (B+)

This episode felt like it jumped around a lot less, focusing in on its various storylines without breaking too much from them. The first few minutes were all about the tank with plenty of pressure and an intensity on the battlefield. The humorous banter between Meni and Melakhi helped produce a useful conclusion, that the Syrians were all about closing their hatches while keeping theirs open could actually provide the unit with an advantage since they would be able to see more clearly. Melakhi’s motivational speech about how the Syrians were on their way to his mother’s home in Jerusalem seemed to rally the assembled troops, and Meni fittingly relinquished command to the man who knew what he wanted and how to convince others that it was right to fight for it. Marco’s confession about trying to save his mother was an important moment that Melakhi seemed to take as best he could, and Meni and Yoni had their own version of a lukewarm father-son exchange that ended more positively than I might have expected. Avinoam and Dafna’s expedition to find Yoav ended in Avinoam’s almost immediate surrender and capture, and I thought that we were going to see him being interrogated at the end of the episode after he tried to talk too much to the other prisoners around him. Instead, we heard an argument made that it was indeed the Israelis and their Zionist imperialist ideals that started this war that began with a surprise attack, and the interrogator didn’t seem all that sincere about their shared culture when he didn’t get the answer he wanted. The finale will surely feature some closure, and I don’t imagine that all of these characters will survive what’s coming.