The Returned Season Two

The thing about answers is that sometimes it's best to not have any at all. Especially if the story in question started off being about more than that. The first season of The Returned never made me feel like I absolutely needed to know all the intricate reasons and connections of why the dead were coming back. The second (final?) season gave us ambiguous answers at best, but maybe too many of them. Along the way, it still delivers on human level drama better than any American genre show that I can think of (except maybe The Walking Dead), but by the end of it, leaning on the mystical(?) puts it too close to Lost territory for the series as a whole to hold up to the brilliant first season.

As it turns out, many of the dead were connected, but not in obvious ways. I think the exploration of this deeper mythology held some promise. For example, the revelations about Serge and Toni's father, Milan and the effect that had on Serge could really be it's own show. That Milan is a key player in the larger mythology as well is almost irrelevant to the power of what their arc explores. And this repeats several times throughout many of the relationships. But I think they go too far in trying to explain the origin of it all by simply adding more layers of questions to who Victor/Louis is. Was he supposed to be death itself? An angel? A demon? God? Ultimately, who cares because this final layer was never something that was addressed early on. From the start, we were lead to believe he was just another returned. But it turns out he's not. He's more than that and by the final moments it's clear he has some extra powers that simply go too far. On the one hand, having him be the literal catalyst for the events of the series for the reasons shown are beautiful. On the other, it comes too late in the game and feels tacked on. It's like they suddenly decided to start telling a different story, one that might have been wonderful on it's own, but here just sort of clashes with everything we'd been watching. Again, too close to Lost for me to get on board with, because fuck Lost (and Lindelof).

By far, the best story is that of Camile, Lena, Claire and Jerome. A story that, interestingly enough, doesn't really have any connection to the larger mythology. In particular, I have to say my favorite actor of the entire thing is Frederic Pierrot as Jerome. He was good in season 1, but in the second season he brings the anguish of an unhinged and desperate father to life in a way that drips off the screen every time he inhabits it. He doesn't actually say many words, but his eyes are eyes I think any parent can recognize even if we've never been through anything similar, because how else would we look. His face is a Molotov cocktail of despair and determination that is ready to go off one way or the other. I sincerely hope this man is just a good actor and that he wasn't drawing on anything real because anything real behind this performance can't be something I'd wish on another human.

Anyway, The Returned is still worth a viewing, especially for the restrained feel of the first season and how it builds to a dramatic and near perfect end. I wouldn't say skip the second season, but maybe lower your expectations going in. I doubt there's going to be a third season. It was sort of a finale type of ending, but you never know.

The Returned Season One

I recently tried to watch Z Nation, the SyFy TV show now on Netflix. I lasted a total of 20 minutes which was at least twice as long as I actually gave a fuck about what I was seeing on the screen, but I'm open minded. It was jarringly fast paced which might be a good way to start a video game, but for something less interactive, I need a moment to figure out exactly what the hell I'm supposed to be looking at before you jump to some other crazy thing in the most jarring way possible. Actually, that's not even fair. It's not that it was fast - that can sometimes work - it's just that it was bad. In any case, I was hungering for something apocalyptic, so I decided to give another show a spin: The Returned (Les Revenants). It's the complete opposite - slow and drawn out and pretty damn near perfect. 

This French series is based on a movie I'd never heard of called They Came Back (Les Revenants), about a bunch of people in a small village in the mountains of France coming back from the dead. But this is not what you'd expect, or maybe it is, given it's French. There's no gory zombies or anyone getting their head bashed in. Instead the horror is about dealing with loss, from the point of the view of the families that had lost loved ones as well as from the perspective of the returned themselves who come back to a world that has moved on without them. It's loss, but also, in a weird way, the loss of loss, that's traumatic. There is some real human drama playing out here while a deeper mystery about how and why the dead have come back unfolds, episode by episode, never showing all the cards at once. 

There are some genuinely creepy situations in the series, but interestingly, I'm more creeped out by how nonchalant the French can be, even at their supposedly most shocked. There was an attempt at an American version of this show and it was apparently cancelled almost immediately. I bet it's because the tone was way off for American audiences who probably need to see the characters lose their shit every ten minutes in order to go with something like this. But that's the thing about this show. It deals with the reality of getting your loved one back. Yeah, the impossibility of that happening would likely freak you out, but a bigger part of you would likely be happy to see them again. And the dichotomy of those two feelings is where the drama lies here.

Anyway, the first season ended with a hell of a bang and I can't even imagine what is next. The second season already aired in France, so I need to track it down soon. I'm not sure I can wait for it to get to Netflix. This show is so good, it's had my inner voice thinking in French gibberish for weeks. I really should just learn the damn language at some point.