So, this series manages to continue to be everything I indicated in the title line. My numbered initial comments reference each episode as I watched it as I was watching it slowly but as it progressed the necessity to binge got the better of me and so remarks are not episode specific.
1: I found that I needed to check back to some past references as they were quite (necessarily) frequent and it was some time since I saw Series 2. The new Californian Silicon Valley setting is allowing for some very sharp and funny comedy, often with a pleasingly hard edge. It will be interesting to see if this continues as the terror and the horrors really kick, as they surely will do. And many of Joe’s comments are very funny and sharp, revealing his perceptiveness cleverness, and awareness – except when it comes to himself of course.
2. It continues to be excellent. The voiceovers and flashbacks are more frequent but needed I think – they are not yet irritating. The therapist scenes are remarkably good – and for one of the very first times in film in my experience, what the therapist was saying was good/sound/perceptive and intelligent advice. Her advice is often objectively good. Likewise, J’s reactions are funny and perceptive in equal parts. But one minor point – how does Love manage to apparently single-handedly keep supplied a good size cake shop given her young child and no visible helper. One element that I am finding unrealistic (and, having now seen all, that remains a minor practical query.
3. The excellence continues – and the entry of the anti-vax theme is smartly appropriate and does not come across as emphatically laboured. Likewise, the remarks about Missing White Woman syndrome (or baby – Madeline McCann and the current Australian victim). The ideas about masculinity/fatherhood/the effect of a child on a family and relationships are also fascinatingly and powerfully explored
4 & 5. The hunting expo and ‘finding the inner man’ are wonderfully funny – for some reason I think Zuckerberg…The savagely satirical elements are of central importance, not least as embodied in the jaw-dropping Sherry and Cary. It makes the series very effectively contemporary as well as being an excellent way of progressing the story and character development by putting Joe and Love in such a setting.
And from now on, remarks having seen the whole series (and trying not to drop any spoilers). The character development of Sherry and Cary is fascinating, particularly in the final episodes. They become both somewhat more sympathetic (to a degree) and more interesting as the way they were shown in the start did not necessarily give much apparent scope for that other than being objects of mockery but, Sherry in particular in the final episode shows that there is a lot more to her (and her relationship to her husband), than we might have thought. Their final situation and circumstances are very satisfying indeed but the satirical element applied to them and their type remains as strong as ever. The final episode definitely had Gothic elements which JUST about worked – but it was touch and go at times and the ending does hint at possible further development. But I am not sure how many times Joe can continue to say ‘she is THE ONE’. He has already said this two (three?) times in the series. I suppose further development of this, or something like, will have to depend on his degree of self-awareness, the apparent development of which in this series was one of the best-written aspects of his character and gave it much more depth than one would have thought from only seeing him in the first series. His character and (some)moral development has been one of the best-written aspects of the whole series.
So, the allure and appeal of this toxic character continues and will be interesting to see if it can be as well-sustained in the next series as the previous 3 – but it must be approaching its dramatic end now, I would have thought.