This season is just such a waste- it feels like we've waited an eternity (we have) for season 5, and with each episode I've been loathe to finish, I find myself in a peculiar position; that of forcing myself to get through them in one viewing, and with the possible exception of Mou Mou, I have yet to finish a single one all at once.
In previous seasons, I've felt ravenous for more, like I needed to consume the whole thing in one delicious sitting, gorging myself on all the episodes in one gluttonous view, no matter how many hours it took because even though I knew full well what was coming, I needed to bear witness to the story and I would not be the only person unaware of the glorious conclusion, unable to engage in conversation, fear of missing out.
But this particular season finds me shutting off episodes part way through, sometimes multiple times. Something I've never done with this show before, but I just can't engage myself into this maelstrom of unmanageable disjointedness. There's no ebb or flow to this, nothing to insist itself upon me and my time, even though I have enough of it to give to at least a single episode, I become so withdrawn and lost in other thoughts I find I'm rewinding to see what part of conversation was missed or just continuing on with little care as to what I missed in the first place.
It's not horrific, it's perfectly okay as melodrama goes- like watching that escapist soap opera during semester finals to just rest your brain and it will do just fine, but you're perfectly content to put it back on the shelf until you need a respite again. It's lacking in so many ways it's difficult to pinpoint the exact problem but nonetheless they persist and I'm not even all that curious to see where the season leaves off.
As a whole, it's a perfectly fine combination of actors and words, but taken together it's like watching oral surgery performed; it seems painful, uncomfortable and unnecessarily complicated for complications sake. I've already laid out my discontent for West/Charles, but it needs to be expressly laid bare how banal and laborious Diana's character is. She reads as unhinged, completely anorexic (by this period she was on the thinner side but still a stunning woman) whose bones protrude in obnoxious ways, and on the verge of lunatic fringe, when in reality this was simply not the case. This portrayal seems intent on relying on two things, a single 'look' of hers- downturned head with eyes turned up, looking coy, and that of a deer in headlights, nothin in between, no nuances or depth.
This season seems content to be nothing more than the last gasp of something once great but now devoid of character- content to exist in banality, dwelling all too comfortably in mediocrity. I've not even a desire to finish the episode much less the season, which I'm sure I'll do at some point but I'm pretty okay with letting it languish in my 'continue watching' area of Netflix.
What a disappointment this season has largely been.
