Wednesday, April 24, 2019

My Review of Now Apocalypse's 1x04: "The Downward Spiral"


Written by Gregg Araki & Karley Sciortino
Directed by Gregg Araki

Circle Jerk Group: "Men have feelings too."

Yes, yes they do and while the title of the group that both Ulysses and For attended was a bit too on the nose for it's own good, the plot did seem to benefit at least one of them. I had kind of hoped that Ulysses would tell the group about his alien encounters and maybe advance the plot a bit but instead it was mostly for Ford to unload about his own intimacy issues.

I'm not surprised the group initially mistook Ulysses and Ford for a couple until the latter made it obvious he was talking about his girlfriend and not being cool about her sleeping with her ex. Needless to say, he got some interesting enough advice along with the mantra of men having feelings too but if I were Ford, I'd somewhat read in between the lines with Severine.

She clearly likes him but not enough to want to just sleep with only Ford and made that cleat when she seemed more interested in keeping Ford at arm's length during their last scene together. Then again, I'm still slightly convinced that Ford has more chemistry with his best mate than his girlfriend, so there's that.

Speaking of Ulysses - the thing with Gabriel went literally nowhere as the latter turned out to be a no show but Ulysses did get to have sex with a hot delivery straight guy named Tlayolotl (Greg Audino) or T for short. I did find T's candidness about being a straight guy who likes to have sex with men amusing despite being married to a religious woman interesting enough but if he's doing it a lot, then surely he might be bisexual and in denial?

As for the alien plot - still no real advancements there. Severine might have been looking at something but Ford kept distracting her and Ulysses ended the episode by seeing a homeless woman and an icky mess. Other than that though, nothing of real significance there.

As for Carly - she seemed despondent about her acting career, was mostly snarky with Ulysses in between auditioning for new roommates and web camming. I did find her reaction to Ulysses when he suggested the Palm Spring trip (Ford's suggestion of course) rather annoying and it's the first time I did find Carly annoying was in this episode.

- I'm glad Ulysses commented on Tlayolotl's arrival being something out of a porn scene as all the sex scenes on the show have felt like a porn parody, so points for self awareness.
- Carly's clients this week wanted to be humiliated, her to be still and of course to pee. She told Ulysses about the latter one.
- Does Ulysses even have a boss at his work and why is he the only person doing security? Surely he'd at least have one co-worker wherever he's working.
- Chronology: From where the previous one left off.

The Downward Spiral didn't really feel like one as such. We didn't see any of the characters behave any more recklessly than they have been so far and while nothing with the main plot was advanced, at least the Circle Jerk group and Ulysses/Tlayolotl's scenes delivered pretty well.

Rating: 7 out of 10

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