I’m really not at all interested in reviewing or analyzing Sense8 again, but I would like to get mah nerds into a discussion about the ENORMOUS plot holes, and the weird turns this in-spite-of-it-all-compelling show has taken. So let’s just launch in, shall we? In no particular, but very SPOILERY, order:
- Wait, WHAT was the FBI after Nomi for, ostensibly? Because as far as I remember, it was just the SFPD looking for her because she ran away from a lobotomy, but all of a sudden the whole alphabet soup are after her for… WHAT EXACTLY?
- So, I guess we’re not worrying about local cultural authenticity AT ALL anymore, right?
- So, Will was on heroin basically 24/7 for 365, but the moment he struck a deal with Whispers he was able to kick, just like that, with only the occasional wistful glance at his still fully supplied works?
- So they all bought tickets to London with WHAT money? Isn’t Lito broke? Doesn’t Nomi no longer exist, much less have no bank accounts? Etc. And where. the. fuck. did Capheus even get a passport?
- They really haven’t improved their relationship with narrative logic, the Wachowskis, have they?
- Did you notice that Capheus is the only one whose passportness I wondered about? That’s because he’s the only working class/poor sensate in the whole show. Wolfgang doesn’t count because: 1.) he’s a lifelong member of organized crime, and 2.) he’s very clearly considered criminal royalty in season two, and 3.) woulda needed a passport anyhow to traffic young women out of former Warsaw Pact countries, which is what Berlin-based baddies DO. Will doesn’t count because some 45% of U.S. cops may have college degrees, (and you KNOW Will woulda been one of those,) which means Will woulda needed a passport to go to Puerto Vallarta for spring break. So, I guess the real question is: why is there only one working class/poor sensate in the show?
- Is it because the working class sensate’s superpower is DRIVING?
- How useless would I be to my cluster if I were a sensate? I mean, hacking out 1000 words an hour (when under the gun,) doing a fairly decent downward facing dog, and knowing how to put together a fundraiser aren’t really the skillsets that are going to bring down BPO or save my clusterschmucks. Do you think the clustermom gets to choose the cluster members?
- Wait, they all went to London with this complicated, and very successful, plan to get into probably the most secure compound in the world, given the fact that they couldn’t even FIND it for a year, and they took Whispers AND Jonas, but they didn’t get Wolfgang back? I mean, Wolfgang and Whispers were in the same facility. They might not have known that for sure, but it’s a near-certainty, since Whispers is in hiding too, so… WTF? (Yes, yes, I know it’s so there’s still something high stakes at the beginning of season 3, but… BAD WRITING WTF?)
- Wait, how DID they find the London facility?
- So is Kala just not even worried about her husband anymore? Even though she was planning a rendezvous with Wolfgang in her husband’s Parisian appartement?
- Is Tuppence Middleton pregnant? They put her in middle(ton)-hiding clothes in a buncha scenes. NOBODY IS FOOLED BY THAT, YOU KNOW.
- Like, did NONE of the 100 or so diners in Berlin see Lila fighting with and shooting a gun at Wolfgang? Are the Berlin police incapable of noticing that several of the guns have Lila’s prints on them and that those are the guns responsible for a lot of the bodies in the restaurant? In Sense8′s weirdly misogynistic world, does a woman with an accent taking off her blouse and crying somehow override CSI, investigation, eyewitness testimony, and, like, common sense? Because Lila sticking around and crying into her copious cleavage after the restaurant fight was basically her handing herself over to the police, unless die Berliner Bullen are really the Keystone Kops.
- Is Sun answering “I would” to the question of whether or not Lila was stupid enough to attack Wolfgang in a public restaurant — and the implicit question as to whether Wolfgang should be stupid enough to attack her first — really a good enough reason to do it, for either of them?
- So, we’ve decided to scrap the whole ambitious global narrative greatness that Sense8 was trembling on the brink of — and busily withdrawing from — last season and just plunge the show directly into a pool of chilled tropey Velveeta, yes? Because… I think I’m actually kinda okay with that…?
- And WHY didn’t Wolfgang just kill Lila at the end of that fight?
- How amazing is it that all eight of them are super into raves?
- Is there anything more anglo-centric than naming Sun’s love interest “Mun” (pron. “moon”)?
- Who the fuck is the hotness that plays hot Detective Mun, and where can I get more?
- Like, did NONE of the 1,000 or so gala attendees in Seoul, or the handful of cops sent there to arrest him, see Joong-Ki pull a gun and SHOOT A COP IN THE GUT? Or, you know, turn around and, together with his security detail, start shooting into the crowd? Is the implied corruption able to silence 1,000 gala attendees who are, it is to be assumed, among Seoul’s elite?
Are the Seoul police incapable of noticing that all of the guns have Joong-Ki’s and his goons’ prints on them, and that those are the guns responsible for all the bodies at the gala? In Sense8′s weirdly misogynistic world, does the Korean media just turn against women because patriarchy, overriding evidence, CSI, eyewitness testimony, and like, common fucking sense? Are the Seoul police trained by the same people as the Berlin police? - How kickass is Sun, tho’?
- And how, on Earth, does Sun’s prison warden not notice that these groups of men who have no business in his/her prison keep showing up there and getting their asses kicked/necks snapped by Sun? Is this not even the SLIGHTEST BIT suspicious? Did the jerry-rigged noose hanging in the broom closet with the DNA from the hands of the dead men lying all around it rope-burned all over the end of the noose, not somehow tip them off that something was amiss?
- In what world was THAT Nomi keeping her promise to not make her sister’s wedding all about Nomi? I mean that wedding party toast… I mean, I love me some Nomi, but she really DOES make everything about herself, to the point that when, in the proposal scene, Neets talked about the voice in her head telling her not to let this one go, my immediate response was “WHY THE FUCK NOT?” Isn’t Amanita half of what makes Nomi so awesome, and ignorance of the limitations of hacking the other half?
- Why do I love this sloppily written show?
- Come to think of it, why does EVERY SINGLE SENSATE in our main cluster either make everything about themselves or have the FUCKING WORLD making everything about themselves? Except Will. Kala has people falling in love with her and bringing shit to her, and life is so handed to her on a platter that her conflict is literally “I don’t love the gifts life is giving me enough.” Sun is the center of the universe in the sense that everyone goes out of their way to dump on her. It’s like, random people off the street walk half a block just to spit on her shoes. Everyone in Lito’s life is focused on Lito; Capheus does, like, one impressive thing, and suddenly his entire slum is writing graffiti about him, the local crime lord is going legit behind his example, his greatest enemy saves his life, and he’s asked to RUN FOR FUCKING PRESIDENT; Riley has all of London wanting her to do their drugs and all of Iceland driving her places; and fucking Wolfgang kills his uncle and suddenly everybody wants him to be king of Berlin? WTF?
- Why is poor Will the only one left out of the everybody-in-my-city-is-obsessed-with-me-fest?
- Wait, I’m not willing to let Lila go yet. What is the deal with her supposed to be? I mean, I GET that she’s Magneto (or maybe Mystique) to Wolfgang’s somewhat murdery Wolverine, but how does selling him and his cluster out to Whispers (Sense8′s William Stryker, I guess) benefit her sensate-first world domination plan?
- Why was Wolfgang and Kala’s sex scene so unsexy? Sense8 usually does sex so… well, “well” isn’t the word I’m really looking for. How about “stickily?” Why was there so much awkward ankle positioning and fake “o” face? Capheus and Zakia seemed to do okay in the same sequence (although not great, I have to say; why is the sex in season two not as good?)
- When someone is kidnapped and they put duct tape over their mouths, how is it that none of them ever has asthma or, like, allergies, so their nose closes up and they die? (This has nothing to do with Sense8, btw, it’s just the sort of question that belongs in its world.)
- How much do we love Amanita’s three dads?
- How much do we love Lito’s threesome?
- Was that actually Johnny Depp in the Lito Hollywood Party scene?
- How did that slimy motorcycle-riding sensate (was his name Puck?) know that Sun needed help? I mean, he could visit Riley before that, but he couldn’t see Sun through Riley, and Riley wasn’t specifically calling for help, so how did he know a.) THAT she needed help, and b.) where to go to pick her up? Is this just part of Sense8′s extensive hand-waving?
- Is everyone else over Sun’s slime-ass little brother’s storyline? I’d like for him to be arrested already, please.
- Can we get some of this on the show?
- Was that the point of Riley’s DJ set? To try to make eye contact with sensates in the crowd? ‘Cause it seems like kind of a dumb plan, plus they never spelled out that that was what they were doing.
- How awesome were the Kenyan sensates when they showed up in Capheus’ living room. Why haven’t a bunch of Brazilian LGBT sensates shown up in Lito’s living room, given the Pride Parade? Or Korean sensates shown up to help Sun after the gala? Or German sensates, you know, given the amount of time Wolfgang spends in clubs and bath houses?
- And did this make it into an actual scene, because I clearly need to watch season 2 again?
SOCORRO O BRIAN BEIJANDO O MIGUEL SHDHEYIJHSSUSOKW TO PASSANDO MAL pic.twitter.com/Yh7C8WzwhU
— Sense8 da Depressão (@sense8dadepre) May 29, 2016
- Anything else?
Why was Sun in her underwear for the entire show?
It was like she was allergic to clothes.
Because some of her underwear was SPARKLY.
This is a good show and good questions as well. I’m wondering the same questions as well.
Amsterdam, the Eastern European countries mentioned, London and Berlin are all in the European Union and all of them except London are in the Schengen Area. All Germans have to have an ID card and they can enter London with that. For the country Germans as EU citizens do not need to show anything as there are no border controls if you go by train or bus or car to those countries. Also: I have never met a European who does not have a passport. That is an American thing.
1. Because…BPO
3. Sloppy explanation…Kala’s counterdrugs mentioned in the show.
4. Silas Kabaka. Lito. Nomi. Kala. Money and Hacker…ism.
9. Wolfgang was NOT in the same facility, according to co-writer JMS.
10. Will-Wolfgang had broken into Whispers’ safe earlier during the season, and that included all his access cards and blah blah.
13, 20. I think most of them can be attributed to Wachowskis’ love for cheesiness and action sequences that can be dumped later during the more serious plot stuff and I find it cute, actually. Sloppy, but cute.
22. That IS actually menioned during the season, by Mun.
25. Capheus is not running for president, to be specific. It’s more like a local administrative position. Gangs in Berlin don’t really all want him to be king, except for that Christmas Special gang leader.
27. Lila did imply she is lustful for revenge and that’s all.
28. Tina Desai is very uncomfortable with sex scenes.
32. No, they hired a bunch of hollywood professional look alikes.
33. Puck’s 300something sensate connections via the Archipelago and…yeah, Lana Wachowski’s love for that actor and how much she wanted all those jokes that came after that. Surely, sloppy but might be explained in the next season.
37. Lito’s pride scene was not in the script originally. The crew flying to Brazil was literally a last-minute decision, just to include that scene, because…Lana.
38. One plot hole is why didn’t Whispers keep an eye on Riley’s dad so he can figure out where they are. But at one point they say that BPO doing manhunt is resource and confidentiality consuming and not easy.
(I need to correct myself, the pride scene WAS in the script, but they thought they wouldn’t get to film it – the actual explanation is one that gets addressed quite a few times during the last half of the season and it’s that very few sensates aren’t on blockers when attending these events. Even Riley’s plot driven dj gig scene didn’t attract more than just a few sensates who also went on talking about blockers and the risk (and the sensate monk seems to be having some extra abilities at blocking other people without pills – and that’s also addressed at the airplane sequence, if I remember correctly)
Generally, I tend not to give that much importance to plotholes, since the stories written by the sisters are usually like fairytales or children stories and they contain a lot of wish fulfillment-based turns. Plus, their work has many many faults, but I tend to prefer creators that are imperfect but have qualities that you can’t find anywhere else.
just finished the show (yeah im late so what) but only thing i can complain about is the last episode. super rushed. it needed those 12 episodes or at least an extra long finale. i did like the fact that the sense8s are FINALLY together in person but i would have liked them to have saved wolfgang and it just end with them having jonas and whispers so season 3 will be the official war