Spoilers Siren- Season 1

[kitik]

I just watched all 4 season 2 episodes yesterday. Kind of glad I watched them all at once, because as mentioned above, they haven't exactly been moving at warp speed.

Not a whole ton of mermaid action so far. Levi at the bar was kind of fun. I like the idea that there's no downtime in the ocean. After setting up the sonic explosion problem in the very first scene of the season, it looks like Xander of all people is finally going to be the one to do something about it. Maybe.

And yeah, we finally got some of that freaky deaky stuff at the very end of episode 4.

 

[Greg Cox]

This season has been a bit of slow burn so far, but, whoa, things are starting to pay off.

(I wonder if this is a Freeform thing? CLOAK & DAGGER also took its time last season.)

 

[Mr. Adventure]

When I’m having a bad day at work I wonder if I hiss at my coworkers if they’d back off? I’d probably end up out on the street but it’s tempting.

 

[Anwar]

When I’m having a bad day at work I wonder if I hiss at my coworkers if they’d back off? I’d probably end up out on the street but it’s tempting.

Worked for Pee-Wee Herman.

 

[Anwar]

Whoa, that was quite the cliffhanger finale. Even if it's just the Spring Finale.

 

[Charles Phipps]

This is the only show on television I legitimately root for a polyamorous relationship to emerge on.

Also, for Mermaids to be shown to be cannibals.

Come on, you know want to eat those humans!

 

[Christopher]

This is the only show on television I legitimately root for a polyamorous relationship to emerge on.

I think it's interesting how swiftly cultural mores are changing with the current generation of young adults who are the network's target audience -- that there's more widespread acceptance of polyamory and that a show like this (on a Disney-owned network, mind) can present it matter-of-factly as a healthy romance rather than something strange or controversial. I think that's cool. I'm so sick of stories about jealousy and mistrust between partners.

So after a fairly slow burn to the story arc in this half-season, everything builds to a climax really quickly in the last 5 minutes of the "spring finale." A lot of stuff happened very quickly, with no time to savor the victory over the oil company because there were a couple of cliffhangers suddenly sprung on us.

Once they did that scene midway through of Calvin getting caught on the hook and getting dragged by the cable, my first thought was, "Okay, nice that they're realistically showing the dangers of the fishing life," but then a moment later my writer's perspective kicked in and I realized "Oh, of course, they're establishing the cable and hooks as dangerous now because somebody's going to have a deadlier accident with them in the climax."

 

[kitik]

Is Sarge dead? When they showed him getting his throat slit, I certainly assumed that was the end of him. But the mermaids seemed to be trying to do something with him or take him somewhere at the end. Were they taking his dead body off to mourn him or to save him? Anyone get a better read of that scene than me?

What about Calvin and Xander? They gave Calvin the ultra obvious setup, telling his girlfriend how much he loved her.

Looking at the structural collapse on that drilling ship, it would be surprising if everyone on that ship was safe and sound. But surely this show isn't interested in a storyline that shows Ben and Maddie feeling guilty for killing innocent people.


Apparently the second half of the season airs in summer, maybe starting in July.

 

[Christopher]

Is Sarge dead? When they showed him getting his throat slit, I certainly assumed that was the end of him. But the mermaids seemed to be trying to do something with him or take him somewhere at the end. Were they taking his dead body off to mourn him or to save him? Anyone get a better read of that scene than me?

I was wondering about that. After all, the opening scenes made a big point that the reason the military wanted to study Ryn was because of mermaids' extraordinary regenerative abilities. So it's hard to say.

What about Calvin and Xander? They gave Calvin the ultra obvious setup, telling his girlfriend how much he loved her.

Hmm, they'll probably keep Xander around, but Curtis Lum is only a recurring guest, so Calvin might be a goner.

Looking at the structural collapse on that drilling ship, it would be surprising if everyone on that ship was safe and sound. But surely this show isn't interested in a storyline that shows Ben and Maddie feeling guilty for killing innocent people.

I dunno -- this show often tends to be smarter than I expect. They might actually address that.

Apparently the second half of the season airs in summer, maybe starting in July.

I believe the preview they showed did indeed say July.

 

[kitik]

The show is back. So far I'm not completely digging the first 2 episodes of this part of the season, but we'll see where things go. I have a feeling they're setting up something along the lines of see-this-is-why-humans-and-mermaids-cant-be-together.

Anyways, looks like we are going to get two episodes tonight. I'm going to guess that it has something to do with next Thursday being the 4th of July, but it's kind of weird to double them up in the middle of a season like this. They must have a very tight schedule for whatever they're airing in August after Siren is done.

I dunno -- this show often tends to be smarter than I expect. They might actually address that.

lol, "luckily, no one was hurt"

We'll file that one under "the vfx crew made a really cool looking collapse without being told that it should look like something where no one would be hurt".

 

[Christopher]

It's okay so far, though it's a bit early to get a sense of where things are going with the new story elements they've added.

Xander letting the boat go down and getting a job at the bar seems like the kind of plotting decision that was motivated by money -- it lets them shoot more scenes on the standing set of the bar rather than needing to do expensive location work on a boat. Although in the premiere, they sure spent a lot on the underwater FX shots, which looked impressive. I'd like to know how much of the mermaid stuff is prosthetics and how much is CGI.

 

[Christopher]

The show took a bit more of a supernatural turn than usual with the visit to the mermaids' undersea fairyland. It's usually pretty grounded for a mermaid story, but the sea floor swallowing up the minisub and the glowy light pulling them forward were a little out there.

One technical thing that bugs me about this show: Whenever the music plays, there's a faint, high-pitched popping sound in a regular rhythm, which I assume is the click track, a sort of electronic metronome to keep time for the performers. That shouldn't be audible in the final mix, but I can always hear it here, and it's a little annoying. Maybe my ears are more sensitive to high frequencies than the show's makers are so I can hear it when they can't. I guess that means I'm not yet old enough for presbycusis (loss of high-frequency hearing with age) to set in.

 

[kitik]

undersea fairyland

Yeah, that was pretty crazy. The showrunners have been imagining what all this undersea stuff would look like for the past year or two, and they finally wanted to commit some of it to screen.

Was surprised to see Nicole spying on them to that extent at the very end. Looks like Ben was right not to trust them.

Hope Maddie's dad shows up sooner rather than later. I don't think we've seen him in the past 4 episodes. (Maybe they had to cut some actor budgets to pay for the extra underwater effects we've gotten lately.)

Those bad guys sure picked the exact right time to attack Calvin.

 

[Anwar]

I guess things were scheduled differently in the US than Canada, we only got 1 episode last week.

 

[kitik]

No new episode in the US tomorrow. But I guess we'll be even again next week.

 

[kitik]

So, what was going to happen there in that creepy cabin? Were they going to worship the mermaids? Were they going to try to have some crazy orgy to dilute their gene pool? (They had complained about the limited gene pool before, when Helen and Rick first met the rest of them.)

And did Ryn really not know Ben was a Pownall? I just kind of assumed she knew by now. I wasn't expecting that to be a plot point.

 

[Greg Cox]

Caught up for the Summer Finale tonight. I confess: I was pretty sure the creepy cultists were the actual graverobbers, but I was wrong about that . . ..

 

[Christopher]

I really hope that Levi's sudden disappearance turns out to be an actual plot point that gets explained tonight, rather than just some random actor-availability issue they had to write around. Ditto for Nicole.

 

[Christopher]

I really hope that Levi's sudden disappearance turns out to be an actual plot point that gets explained tonight, rather than just some random actor-availability issue they had to write around. Ditto for Nicole.

Eh, no such luck. I guess it's just a plot hole. An unfortunate weakness in the season.

The finale was rather strange. For most of the run, it seemed like the show had taken an awfully quick swerve into dystopia, and it seemed implausible that people would believe the mermaid footage on TV so readily. But then it turned out that the whole "Two months later" martial-law scenario, complete with multiple parallel subplots, was just what flashed through Ben's mind in the few seconds he was underwater deciding what to do about Ian? I'm sorry, I have trouble believing his imagination is that vivid and detailed. The whole thing feels like kind of a cheat. And I don't think we needed to see Ben's dystopian fantasy to understand why he'd choose to do what he did to protect Ryn. We've spent two seasons seeing how concerned he is for keeping the mermaids secret and protecting them from exploitation. So pretty much this whole episode seemed like an unnecessary indulgence. I mean, it's clear enough that there was a larger social commentary here, but it didn't fit well into this show.

 

[kitik]

Holy fishlips, that was one of the most drastic tonal shifts in television history. It went from zero to apocalypse in 1 second. I went from wondering if we'd get a season three to being absolutely certain this was the series finale, it was obviously the end of the story.

But then the second Maddie dies, I 'm like "wait a minute, this can't be right", and then of course it wasn't.

I'll admit, when Ben was swimming down there, I was thinking that perhaps he should consider not saving Ian. You know, with the whole kidnapping and trying to run someone over with your car stuff. Though I am surprised they actually went there.

So I'm going to say I definitely enjoyed that episode, the sudden apocalypse caught me off guard.


Now, that said, if Ben had just decided to not save Ian right then and there in the first 3 minutes of the show, with no future shown, I would have been okay with that. The reason seemed rather obvious. Of course then we wouldn't have gotten 35 minutes of crazy mermaid apocalypse.

I really hope that Levi's sudden disappearance turns out to be an actual plot point that gets explained tonight, rather than just some random actor-availability issue they had to write around. Ditto for Nicole.

We might get an answer in the third season. Or maybe not. Though I was surprised when they brought back Chris, so it may just take a while.