Gettin' My Eps In: Constellation S1E7-8
Sometimes you have to finish a season in one go so you can get on to the next thing.
I’m ready to start a new show or two, having recently finished The Sympathizer, so let’s do the final two episodes of this show at once:
Constellation
Season 1, Episode 7: “Through the Looking Glass”
Written by Peter Harness
Directed by Joseph Cedar
Streaming on Apple TV+
Is there a general consensus on the usefulness of flash-forwards? They seem to be a common technique used in TV and movies, but ever since I read a review in which a critic complained that they’re often pointless, I tend to wonder about whether they ever add anything to a story. At best, they might give us a glimpse into something we think is going to happen, but by the time the story gets there, our newfound knowledge contextualizes what we’ve seen, potentially providing new insights. But at worst, they can seem like a writer/director/showrunner has acknowledged that their story is kind of boring, and the only way to keep people interested is to let them know that they’re eventually going to see something exciting or interesting. In these cases, we spend the entire story waiting to catch up to what we already know is going to happen, making the journey just seem like an exercise in filling in the details.
Looking back at the flash-forwards we’ve seen in Constellation, they kind of fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, but after the show has caught up to the glimpses of the future it has shown us, I’m leaning toward them not being especially effective. They gave us a look at the main character, Jo (Noomi Rapace), being in a confusing situation, but they didn’t really add anything to the confusion that she was already feeling throughout the series. In fact, it might have been better to let that confusion gradually build rather than showing what seems to be its ultimate endpoint.
So, with this episode, Jo and her daughter Alice (Rosie and Davina Coleman, who actually get to play two different characters for once) arrive at their family’s remote cabin in Sweden during a blizzard. As we saw previously, Jo thinks she hears Alice calling for her from across the frozen lake next to the cabin, so she heads across the ice to find another version of the cabin, with another version of her daughter hiding in a closet, where she’s freezing half to death. We’ve learned that this is actually Jo’s real daughter, but Jo has been stuck in a parallel universe with a different version of her husband and daughter. But now maybe she can be reunited with her family and find a way back to her home universe.
Well, that could potentially be the plan, but the rest of the episode involves the characters crossing back and forth across the lake and ending up in different realities. Jo keeps being reunited with her Alice and then losing her again, and the two Alices gain the ability to communicate with each other across the multiversal divide using a cassette tape recorder. Also, there seems to be a third version of their cabin that’s abandoned and dilapidated, so maybe this lake is the nexus of all realities or something.
To add additional interest, other characters also get involved. Both versions of Jo’s husband Magnus (James D’Arcy) also wander across the lake looking for their daughters, getting increasingly confused along with everyone else. In one reality, Magnus is accompanied by Henry (Jonathan Banks), who has ostensibly come along to look for the experimental quantum device that Jo stole, but also because, as he says, “I’ve been through this before.”
And, well, not much else happens in this episode. The characters spend time running back and forth, there’s a bit of excitement when a lantern gets knocked over and starts one of the versions of the cabin on fire, and Jo decides to stay in the wrong universe for some reason, apparently deciding to let her real daughter go so she can save the girl who isn’t really her daughter. Oh, and somehow, Henry switches bodies with his alternate-universe double, Bud.
There’s a little bit more that happens, including a teaser for some additional confusing events that will happen in the season finale, but I gotta say, I didn’t get much out of this episode. Jo seems to realize that she’s stuck in a different reality than where she came from, becomes excited at the idea of being reunited with her real family, and then gives up on the idea of getting back to where she’s supposed to be, all in the course of an hour of running around in the snow. I hope we get a good explanation for her reasoning, or at least some sort of consideration of her mental state, because there’s not much of that here.
Well, let’s find out:
Constellation
Season 1, Episode 8: “These Fragments Have I Shored Against My Ruin”
Written by Peter Harness
Directed by Joseph Cedar
Streaming on Apple TV+
Season finales often give viewers just enough to make them want to come back for more in the future. They may answer a few questions while leaving things open, laying the groundwork for future plot developments. It can be a tricky balance; showrunners will want to make things satisfying, offering a climax to one portion of the story, while also making viewers want to come back for more. Or, in some cases, they may be unsure about whether they’ll get an additional season, so they may provide a somewhat satisfying ending while offering a hint that there is more to come.
The latter seems to be what we get with this finale for the first season of Constellation, which may or may not come back for another season at some point. The previous episode ended with Jo being found by her husband and emergency services after she had absconded with their daughter and taken her to a remote cabin, which she subsequently burned down. That certainly doesn’t seem to be healthy behavior, so this episode starts off with her being taken to a mental hospital to receive treatment (the opening shots, in which the camera moves down through the clouds to see an ambulance proceed through mountain roads to a small European village where the sanitarium is located, are lovely).
As she gets treatment, it seems like things are maybe taking a step backward, as Jo continues to insist that what she has experienced is real. She never uses the term “parallel universe,” but she tries to explain that her daughter is not her daughter, her husband is not her husband, and she’s in the wrong place and doesn’t know if she’ll be able to get back. It’s the same thing we saw earlier in the season, with people trying to convince her that this is all in her head. However, the person who is trying to do the convincing here is Irene Lysenko (Barbara Sukowa), the head of the Russian space agency, who went through the same thing in her younger days (her parallel universe self is the dead cosmonaut whose body struck the space station and kicked off all of this craziness). She urges Jo to accept her current reality, since there’s nothing she can do about it.
And as the episode progresses, that seems to be the focus, making it a return to what I liked about the series. It’s a fairly quiet episode that becomes about living with mental illness. A person can be absolutely certain that something impossible is true, and it can be difficult to let go of what they were feeling when they were gripped by extreme emotions. But they have to realize that it’s best to move forward and not only live a happy life but be there for the ones they love. That’s the choice that Jo ultimately makes: to be the wife and mother her family needs. Even if she’ll always have the thought in the back of her mind that this isn’t “right,” she can do her best to make it as right as possible. That’s kind of beautiful, and it’s a choice that many people make every day as they try to move forward with their lives while receiving the treatment they need.
There’s a bit of intrigue that also gets sprinkled throughout the episode, mostly focusing on Bud and Henry, who switched bodies last episode. Bud, having returned to his rightful universe, seems to be ready to live Henry’s life, enjoying the apparently luxurious circumstances of a Nobel laureate scientist. Henry, on the other hand, is stuck in Bud’s miserable existence, having been arrested for murder. And while he’s able to pass a polygraph test where he states that he doesn’t know anything about Bud’s life or the crimes he committed, the FBI agents questioning him say that just means he believes what he’s saying, so they’re going ahead with the prosecution. Also, we learn that Jo is pregnant, and the image from an ultrasound is strikingly similar to the interference pattern from Henry’s quantum experiment that we saw in previous episodes.
All of this is somewhat intriguing, and it’s likely to play a role in a potential second season. I’m not sure if I’ll be coming back to watch it though. I don’t know if we’ll see any more of what I occasionally found to be profound, and it’s likely that the story will return to multiversal shenanigans that don’t make a whole lot of sense. It could be interesting, and maybe the birth of Jo’s child will offer an opportunity to explore post-partum depression or similar concerns. But given the uneven nature of this first season, which occasionally showed flashes of brilliance but often got bogged down in mysteriousness, I might not want to go through all of this again. I guess we’ll see, but with so many more shows to watch, it might be best to opt for something that will hopefully be more satisfying.
Update: Well, looks like the show has been cancelled, so we won’t be getting a second season. That removes any dilemma for me, and I can be satisfied enough with how it ended.
And that wraps up the first season of Constellation. For the next show I’m planning to write about, I think I’m going to try to go through the first season of Silo as quickly as possible, covering a couple of episodes at a time. That way, I can be ready for the second season when it premieres in a few months.