I love this show, and I really loved this episode - writing, acting, direction, production all on point. On its own it would have been a magnificent episode, up there with "...Electric Sheep" and "Stingers".
My only problem (and reading many external reviews, not just mine) was that it felt "abbreviated" for a season finale. Seasons one and two of this show ended with tensions, but they felt self-contained and complete, so that we could pick up the stories a little down the road when the next season started. In contrast this season ends with some genuine (dare I say "standard") dramatic cliffhangers, so we just have to hold our breaths for nine months to find out what happens next.
Which is why this finale just seems out of tune with the other seasons this way. Also (and again, reviews show I'm not the only one), I really felt gypped that Martha wasn't in the episode, especially after the last scene of the previous episode!
So I wonder (just idle speculation now), what if this was meant to be a finale for the series, not the season? If there had originally been a scene where Martha, guilty about Clark/Philip, committed suicide (as so many victims of "Romeo spies" did in WWII and the Cold War), it could have been a reasonably complete (though unsatisfactory) series finale, knowing that the spies would be caught. Without such a scene, there's enough (though still unsatisfactory) to bridge over into a another season.
The announcement that this show would get a fourth season came rather late in the production cycle. Are we seeing a last-minute edit job to turn a series closure into a season cliffhanger?
I only knocked one star off for the finale issue. All in all, fantastic show, fantastic season, and really, really can't wait until season four!
My only problem (and reading many external reviews, not just mine) was that it felt "abbreviated" for a season finale. Seasons one and two of this show ended with tensions, but they felt self-contained and complete, so that we could pick up the stories a little down the road when the next season started. In contrast this season ends with some genuine (dare I say "standard") dramatic cliffhangers, so we just have to hold our breaths for nine months to find out what happens next.
Which is why this finale just seems out of tune with the other seasons this way. Also (and again, reviews show I'm not the only one), I really felt gypped that Martha wasn't in the episode, especially after the last scene of the previous episode!
So I wonder (just idle speculation now), what if this was meant to be a finale for the series, not the season? If there had originally been a scene where Martha, guilty about Clark/Philip, committed suicide (as so many victims of "Romeo spies" did in WWII and the Cold War), it could have been a reasonably complete (though unsatisfactory) series finale, knowing that the spies would be caught. Without such a scene, there's enough (though still unsatisfactory) to bridge over into a another season.
The announcement that this show would get a fourth season came rather late in the production cycle. Are we seeing a last-minute edit job to turn a series closure into a season cliffhanger?
I only knocked one star off for the finale issue. All in all, fantastic show, fantastic season, and really, really can't wait until season four!