Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Sense8 - Isolated Above, Connected Below


Written by Lana Wachowski & J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Lana Wachowski

Lito (to Sao Paolo Pride): "This is Hernando. He is the love of my life. I am a better and braver person because of him."

I know the Sao Paolo Pride scene was actually a smaller plot than the hype for the season led viewers to believe but without a doubt, it was also the best moment from the episode. Lito has come quite a long way in regards to his sexuality and this episode highlighted that as himself, Hernando and Daniela attended the Pride event.

Seeing him on stage confessing his fears before talking about his love for Hernando and embrace being a gay man resonated beautifully onscreen and while it was a smaller story in a far bigger and longer episode, it was also my favourite bit in this one.

Of course the bigger strands of the episode involved Riley and Will meeting up with the lecherous Puck and the Old Man from Hoy once again. While the former was annoying cryptic about blockers (as was Lila with Wolfgang), the latter turned out to be somewhat more useful to Riley by actually giving out some information.

Having Sylvester McCoy join the show was a nice move for this Doctor Who fan and I really liked the scenes between Hoy and Riley as the pair of them began to trust one another. While we didn't actually get the name of the Cannibal revealed to us, we do know that Riley has to go to Chicago alone for more answers.

However given a flashback scene involving Angelica and her Cluster from beforehand, I guess we really aren't going to like what could be revealed to us. Even Angelica herself seems to be showing something of a dark side given the flashback scenes we had in this episode while Will had a rather unsettling body experience with Whispers in this one too.

As for some of the other smaller plots - Zakia opened up to Capheus about her bisexuality and the two of them I guess are now a couple with her encouraging him to run for politics while Sun left her mentor and Kala and Wolfgang also did the deed this week. The scene with Rajan being somewhat caught in the mix though was another highlight for the episode.

- We had scenes with Capheus's mother and Nomi's sister in this episode too. The latter is called Tegan, so another reference to a certain show there.
- We met a member of Lila's Cluster, who also thought Wolfgang was hot. I loved the whole 'viral' scene where Hoy was getting information for Riley. Oh and beautiful Highlands too.
- We learned what happened to Raoul in this one and saw Metzer in flashbacks.
- Chronology: Few days from where Fear Never Fixed Anything left off.

A very strong episode, Isolated Above, Connected Below had some gorgeous characters bits, sex scenes galore (Kala/Wolfgang, Capheus/Zakia), few good action sequences, that beautiful Pride sequence and the last few minutes certainly upped the ante rather nicely too.

Rating: 8 out of 10

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