A MOCKERY KING OF SNOW: Some thoughts on what is either the season or the series finale of Kings. My first post on the crypto-Biblical show; my second. Spoilers, but not ultimate ones, i.e. I won’t tell you how it ends. I’ll just give you a rough sense of a couple things which happen on the way there.

The most striking thing to me in this episode was the scene in which Jonathan realizes God didn’t choose him for the crown. Finally, I can get behind Sebastian Stan’s acting! I haven’t felt that way since the first episode. He shows unspoken thoughts completely clearly, without relying solely on the lip-wobble he substitutes for emotion in most of the other scenes of this episode. He does a thing which always gets me, where you laugh or smile while saying something obviously painful. (There’s a bit in the acting book Audition which suggests playing against the obvious emotion of a scene; even a quick moment of that reversal can go a long way toward conveying emotional complexity and shaky control.) Stan has to sell this scene, and its many shifting parallels: God as father, God as lover, God as enemy, God as king. There were at least two moments where I felt like I knew exactly what Jack was thinking, even though those thoughts weren’t articulated–in a show which tends to spell out way too much.

…After that he mostly reverts to lip-wobbling. But still–despite the cliched dialogue, that was a really effective scene.

Other things which worked for me: There are some comedic moments dropped without warning into the grimth. I really liked that hairpin twist of audience reaction, and it cut through the melodrama.

Rose is great. Silas is stupidly great. William Cross is evil and great! So, in a startling twist, is his Culkin-played son.

There’s a scene with ridiculous dialogue, but I loved it anyway, because what at first appear to be noir conventions are completely overturned. A city rainstorm, which ordinarily would be treated as isolation and abandonment by justice (cf. the beautiful series finale of Veronica Mars) is instead treated as if the country and the genre were still agricultural–rain is providence. I’m actually more impressed by this than by the many times the dialogue has spoken from within a monarchist worldview, since it’s harder to think in alien metaphors than to think in alien lines.

I’m not sure how I feel about the deeply obvious father/Father parallels. Various lines where you’re not sure whether “him” is capitalized. There’s some lovely later stuff where the same thing is done with enemy/God-as-Enemy, which is a callback to a previous tank-laden scene and also reminiscent of Judah Halevi.

eta: I’d forgotten, until I re-read my first post about this show, that the enemy/God parallel is present from the very first episode. Oh man, that’s hot.

Things which didn’t work for me: Everything involving God except Rev. Samuels’s lines, and the aforementioned rain scene.

Specifically, the implication that God instituted the monarchy is directly in opposition to the Hebrew Bible. Which… maybe okay???, if I had any sense of why that change to the Biblical text was made. Which I don’t; because God is still mostly just a tank.

Neither Jonathan nor David appear especially devout. In fact, they’re two of the least devout main characters–only Rose and her brother appear less concerned with God!–which is just weird. And, as I’ve said from the beginning, this change makes the story vastly less interesting than the Biblical canon. This final episode showed Jack moving closer to his father in his view of God (which would still be a far cry from the devotion of the Biblical characters), but still, what is God in this series other than celestial election returns?

On a less-intense level, I note that the front/homeland tension of the first few episodes was completely dropped and pretty much never regained. I’m sorry about that. American television should have a show for that, and I’m not sure there’s another one.

I think the ending of the episode fits with the series but doesn’t expand it.

Do I want this to be renewed? I’ve heard rumors that it might be. And… I’m conflicted, but mostly yeah, I want more. On the one hand, its portrayal of God–Who surely should be an important character!–is shallow and convenience-oriented. And it’s hard to watch a David story where I deeply dislike both the Jonathan actor and the Michal actress. On the other hand… this show is doing such an unusual, risky thing. And I’m interested! They know how to build suspense. They give me something to think about, even when I can’t stand their choices. I want there to be a space on television for souffles, even if I think this particular souffle is a bit floppy.