blog entry #4

I think it was two years ago that I finally watched “Peaky Blinders” for the first time. I immediately fell in love with the show and its aesthetics and became so obsessed with it that I watched it several times in a row – then two more times with my mom. I just couldn’t get enough. Unfortunately, even the best shows can’t fully escape the fate of going sour at some point and, as I’m watching the final season of “Peaky Blinders” on Netflix, I’m sorry to say that the spark, the heart, and the soul of the show is quite gone. I’ve seen too many shows in my life to know that it’s a disturbingly common tendency among showrunners to make each new season bigger and darker – until there’s nothing to speak of but darkness and dullness and drudgery of watching something that has become barely palatable, which is exactly what happened to “Peaky Blinders” in the end. Unlike the previous seasons, the sixth season lacks everything from plot to tension that was particularly palpable during the final minutes of the fifth season. Now not only is there no tension, there is no dynamic or action of any kind – apart from some sporadic explosion or other. Mainly, it’s just a rambling, disjointed, and repetitive exposition. There’s no balance between dark and light. There’s no light. Period. No humour. No love. No sense. No brilliance. No wit. The story lost its grip and any meaning. I knew that the sixth season would be difficult to watch for a number of reasons, but I wasn’t prepared to watch something so… dead. Just like Tommy’s eyes. I push myself through each episode of barely tolerable acting and boring conversation between bored to death people that cannot stand each other. Even music is not what it used to be. It’s jarring. Every note rings false: loud and out of tune. All the bonds are broken and no Polly to keep everything and everyone together. Helen McCrory’s terrible loss is too painful. I don’t feel like I’m inside the story anymore. I just don’t feel it. Perhaps, making fascism, nazis, and their sympathizers part of your main storyline wasn’t such a brilliant idea, after all, because any normal person will feel instant rejection and revulsion upon seeing them, and that’s even before they open their mouths and spew out all those horrible things. It’s one thing to watch your protagonist deal with an imaginary antagonist, however repugnant, and it’s quite another matter to watch him rubbing shoulders with actual historic figures, obviously too bored with their lives, who smoke and drink and reminisce about how they made Jews eat grass while drinking coffee, as though it’s something normal. I’m sorry but that’s not the show that I started watching and that’s definitely not the show I want to continue watching. There’s something very wrong there. In the past “Peaky Blinders” had so many iconic scenes and dialogues, but now it’s just one dull scene after another. With two more episodes left to watch I feel like the show is beyond salvation just like Tommy Shelby himself. The only good things so far have been occasional glimpses of Ada’s badassery, even rarer glimpses of Alfie’s idiosyncrasies, and Cillian Murphy’s acting. With one more episode left to watch I feel like it has been a massive waste of my time. Well, I guess the final episode wasn’t as bad as the others. I think it tried to recapture some classic moments of the past, but, generally, the whole season was a massive disappointment and wasn’t worth the wait. Tommy’s story was meandering at best and as for the rest of the characters they didn’t seem to have anything to do at all.