‘1899’ Episode 8 Recap: And I’m Floating in a Most Peculiar Way

Having now finished the show’s first season, there are things I liked about 1899 and things I didn’t like about 1899. And man oh man, do the classic-rock needledrops that end each episode fall into the latter category. There hasn’t been a bad song among them, mind you — I mean, am I gonna complain about hearing David Bowie? No, I am not — but they are such a bad fit for the tone of the show it’s insane. What’s more, several are among the most overused pop music cues in film and television. “Don’t Fear the Reaper”? “All Along the Watchtower”? Maybe these are less played out in creators Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar’s native Germany, but surely someone involved in the production could have pulled the plug on that particular part of the simulation, no?

Thinking about the show overall, the hamfisted, ill-fitting music cues seem part and parcel of Friese and bo Odar’s decision to abandon the slow and subtle approach that made their first Netflix series Dark so effective and affecting in favor of balls-to-the-wall pacing and storytelling. There are more MiNd-bLoWiNg ReVeLaTiOnS in any given 1899 episode than there were in Dark’s entire first season. While I respect the decision to just go buckwild in theory, in practice, it just didn’t work out.

And no episode of 1899 has been more buckwild than the season finale, “The Key.” The specifics matter less than the final suite of big twists, of the “everything you thought you knew was wrong” variety. To wit: The simulation was constructed by Maura and Daniel, not by Maura’s father Henry, who’s as stuck in the simulation as any of the ship passengers. They created it, mostly using Maura’s drive, intellectual fixations, and know-how, as a means of keeping their dying son Elliot alive forever. It’s now being run from the outside by Maura’s lost brother Ciaran, who it now seems (emphasis on seems; I wouldn’t be surprised if a new “everything you thought you knew was wrong” twist came along to undo it) is the real evil mastermind behind the chaos. And everybody is being housed in electromechanical stasis, Matrix-style, in a spaceship. Cue “Starman” by David Bowie. (Was the far more thematically appropriate “Space Oddity” too expensive to license?)

Or is it? Is the spaceship just another simulation? It seems entirely possible — even likely — and that’s part of the problem with 1899. As Westworld viewers learned over the years to their increasing frustration, at a certain point, pulling the rug out from under your audience isn’t intriguing, it’s annoying. It short-circuits whatever human connection we might have formed with the characters, forcing us instead to use up valuable mental real estate to figure out if we’re being conned or not. 

Which is a shame, because I think there are characters and performances worth caring about on this thing! Certainly all of the surviving passengers have my affection, to one degree or another; even the loathsome Mrs. Wilson is sympathetic now, thanks to her virus-corrupted body and actor Rosalie Craig’s fearlessly terrified performance. Child actor Fflyn Edwards is just extraordinary in this episode, as he’s tormented in turn by his grandfather and his mother; his terror and desperation for somebody, anybody to take care of him is painful to watch. I’m a big fan of Emily Beecham’s almost equally nerve-fraying work as Maura in this episode. I could watch José Pimentão and Aneurin Barnard play soulful Byronic characters all day. And so on and so on.

And I’ll never deny bo Odar’s eye for the science-fictional surreal. What a jackpot he and Friese stumbled upon with their decision to repeatedly show characters opening up or emerging from literal holes in the air; as I said in an earlier review, it’s pure Magritte, combined with the filmmaker’s preexisting penchant for portals as established in Dark, and it works beautifully. Adding a mute, oil-soaked Olek to the equation this episode as the characters stumble around in one another’s pocket-reality memories is a nice touch.

But the overall project? Not so much. I dunno, maybe the retro cycle has advanced to the point where creating a show that’s a straight-up mash-up between your previous show, Lost, and The Matrix (right down to black and white syringes to stand in for the blue and red pills) is considered fairplay. For me, it just makes me wonder what these formidable filmmakers could have come up with had they jettisoned their more obvious influences and truly blazed a new trail. 

Instead, it feels like we ourselves are stuck in a looping simulation, one in which ideas and images from earlier works of science fiction and mystery-box storytelling have been assembled like lines of code to produce something familiar, yet flimsy behind its gleaming façade. 

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.