Once I formulate what a hypothetical season two would have looked like, I’ll offer up a review of tonight’s series finale, after the jump…
A lot of the action in tonight’s finale was predicated on all of the episodes that had come before it. This might seem like an obvious statement, but not all serialized shows work in the manner, or at least to the extent that Lights Out did tonight. While some shows would really be focused on the action of the handful of episodes that had come before it, LO was concerned with all of the episodes.
It all started with the cold open, wherein Lights experiences a (fairly clichéd) dream which encompasses all that he’s been through, all of the moments that led him to this point: his initial defeat in Leary-Reynolds II, his fights with Teresa, his forays into the criminal underground, his various training regimens. But it does stop there. We are also treated to small moments like Mike the Reporter telling Lights not to give (echoing the reporter’s near-scrape with alcoholism) or Light’s once again having eye problems during the fight.
It was moments like these which not only let us know all that Lights had gone through to get to this fight, but also gave the fight itself a greater sense of urgency, a heftier dramatic weight. The greatest of these, at least according to this episode, was the Morales dive back in “Crossroads.” While this was obviously important – Lights’ inability to win that fight hung over his head as he went into an even tougher one – it wasn’t the only one, and I appreciated that the show recognized the other elements at play, even if I felt it put perhaps a too much emphasis on the reveal of the dive.
“This time, these are your judges, you hear me?” – Pops
But obviously the centerpiece of tonight’s episode was the fight. While, according to my calculations, the fight took up something like a third of the episode, I can’t shake the feeling that the episode should have given even MORE screen time to the battle royale. But then again, I went into this episode hoping that the show would do something like that, if only because I am a sucker for episode where an abnormal amount of the air time is spent on one particular thing, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Perhaps the most brilliant thing of the fight was the way that the show used the commercial breaks efficiently; the two commercial breaks that aired during the fight scenes helped to separate the three rounds over which the two duked it out. It helped to give connect the audience on an emotional level to the fighters, as every time they took a breather, we did as well.
Yet even without this, the fight would still have been interesting. As it was never certain that the match would end in a victory for Lights (more on this later), the show effectively kept us on our toes be having Reynolds beat the shit out of Lights in the first round, only for him to really rally somewhere near the end of the second. By keeping a possible reversal on the table, the show kept the outcome of the fight from being predicted too soon.
Yet even when it became clear that Lights would win, the show made sure to use this time effectively as well, as it was now able to cut away to Brennan, or Teresa, reminding us that as good as this win might feel of Lights, there were other invested in his win as well.
“Teresa…who won?” – Lights
As much as we all like to see a protagonist win at the end of a story, there is something that is dramatically beautiful and resonant about a loss, especially when it can speak in its own way to all of the work that it took for a person to get to that point, and all of the hubris involved. Yet since the show gave Lights a win with the fight – and I would argue that in this instance the win was needed, given the emotional investment that is required of an audience to stick with a sports story over a thirteen week period – they had to find a loss of equal measure to counter that.
And so they did by bringing back his head trauma in full force in the closing minutes. Lights may have won this fight, but he has literally lost his mind because of it, a trade-off nobody’s going to be happy with, the least of whom being Daniela. And though this episodes ended up serving as the de facto series finale (and it gave enough resolution to the main story to work as such), this revelation proves that the show would have had some idea of where to go next season, especially an idea that wouldn’t just have him going back into the ring time and time again.
“I said a prayer for both of them today. You should too.” - Teresa
There were also some smaller character beats that weren’t perhaps directly related to the fight, and these were fairly hit-or-miss. For example, I liked Reynolds calling Lights out at the weigh-in over his recent criminal activity, and it found the confession scene to be particularly powerful (and it was a great bit of acting from Holt McCallany). But we didn’t really need that moment between Teresa and Jennifer, especially the villanizing of the latter, and though Brennan’s machinations during the fight did have a direct connection, it actually served as a distraction from the main action, a bit of action that added nothing to the overall episode.
Though Lights Out was never a great series (though it was mostly a very-good one), tonight’s finale was a great episode, an hour that people will point to years from now when they claim that the show should have gotten another season. And you know what? They will be right.
What did everybody else think?
Additional Thoughts:
There were obviously a few other, fairly significant plot lines that I didn’t cover above. I am saving these – as well as a few other thoughts – for a review of the entire season, which will hopefully be up within the next week.
“Make him take a nap. Even if you have to sit on him.”
It may have been an easy choice, but dammit if I don’t psyched every time I hear the opening chords of CCR’s “Fortunate Son.”
So Lights keeps the girls from seeing the fight in person, only to have them stay at home….where they have access to the fight via the television. Good parenting there, Patrick.
Anybody who’s familiar with boxing want to explain the rules concerning holding and the like?
“How’s the eye?” “Check the other guy….son of a bitch.”
How the hell was that one guy able to cart of Reynolds in his arms? That just doesn't seem possible.
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