This season is just teeming with interwoven plot lines and has a pace, that makes in an amazing thing to watch. But this episode, they've officially broken the awesome meter and went waayy over the complexity level most people (in the US) can handle.
So as good as the show is, as unfortunate is the situation: If people can't follow it anymore, the most beautiful structure will look like meaningless chaos, confusing and empty, and people can't feel it either.
That's why we see so many people saying that it doesn't make sense, that they lost their ways, that it's not funny, or a mess
It *is*
to *them*. Which is a problem, if *them* — however limited they may be — are most of your audience and the reason you can finance it in the first place.
This is an old familiar pattern.
The same thing happened to Revolver, that film by Guy Richie, that was nearly universally hated in the UK and US, but is considered the best movie he ever made and nothing short of a masterpiece here in Germany and many other countries. It takes a *lot* of brains, and I'm not just talking about obsessive logic skills, to fully follow that film. I can completely see how it might just look like nonsense, if some of the parts went over your head.
So I'm afraid this episode marks where this Phoenix flew too high, and burnt itself on the clouds of the minds that lifted him.
Let's hope the show is international enough by now, that Comedy Central can just ignore a soon-to-come regional ratings drop. Because I'd be very sad to miss this, after *twenty years*, still best show currently on television.
WATCH IT
WHILE YOU STILL CAN.