Sense8 - 'A Christmas Special'

I missed you guys.

Christmas brings many gifts, and one of the most welcome this year was Sense8's Christmas special, disingenuously entitled 'A Christmas Special'. It's apparently been over a year since we wrapped up Season 1, and in the intervening time Jonas' conviction that the segregation of humanity has heightened the species' effectiveness as engines of hate and death has only become more convincing. Let's hope that our beloved cluster can restore a little faith in connectivity.

Capheus is still pretty awesome. I miss the original actor, but apparently he's
not the easiest to work with.

We begin fairly bleak, with Lito outed and rejected by his fans and industry, Kala married to a man she doesn't love, Nomi pursued by government agents and hidden by Nita and a kind of LGBT*Q underground railroad, Sun in solitary confinement, Wolfgang on the edge of an impending gang war and Will and Riley in hiding with Will's mind shrouded from Whispers by the magical shield of heroin(1). And Capheus has turned into a different person! This, I have to say, is shit.

Fortunately, it gets better. The outing prompts Lito to embrace who he is and resolve his circle from a legion of fawning agents to the core of Hernando, Dani and the cluster. Nomi and Nita are surrounded by love, even as they are pursued from place to place. Sun continues to be supported both by the cluster and by her fellow prisoners, who club together to bribe the guards to let her have company. Felix wakes up and pretends he's going straight for a laugh. Okay, Will and Riley are still in hiding and locked in a perpetual stupor, and Kala's marriage seems to be relegated to comic relief, but the rest are doing okay.

The creepiest creeper who ever crept.

The special essentially follows our heroes through a turbulent year, including their first shared birthday celebration and another psychic orgy, which Kala - despite honeymooning in the right time zone - completely misses out on, because heaven forbid that any situation conspire to help her maintain her marriage. Kala's story is weird, because she's committed herself to marrying Rajesh, which is obviously a mistake, and keeps doubling down on it while everyone else is being awesome. Even Will, all smacked up on joints of heroin as he is, is able to sneak a Visit to Whispers and see that he has a family that he mostly tries to hide with 'blockers' (which in Sensate terms are sort of like heroin but without the debilitating side effect of being heroin, and are completely unrelated to the 'sleepers' prescribed to non-conforming telepaths in co-creator Michael J Strazynski's Babylon 5.)

We also have the obligatory fight scene, as a group of 'lawyers' try to assassinate Sun, and the birthday party montage is joined by a musical communion to the tune of 'Hallelujah', which is hella cliche by now, but honestly I can't think of a more apt song for It's a Very Sense8 Christmas than one that has come to be associated with Christmas but is really about sex. Nomi and Nita seek shelter with slightly creepy nerd Bug and help him to find a new family, which is adorable. Lito goes home to his mother with his boyfriend and... whatever Dani is(2), who takes him in without hesitation. Riley takes Will skating, but the happy moment is spoiled by Whispers - apparently he doesn't have much to do on Christmas Day - and then at New Year Wolfgang is almost jobbed by a rival mob faction.

'A Christmas Special' is about 50% recapitulation/reminder of our setup, and 50% awesome Sensate action. Some of the former is okay, although the first half drags a bit. We ended up watching it in two goes because it got late, and I suspect that if we'd left it another ten minutes we'd have got through the second hour going 'just at the end of this bit' every ten minutes. It remains a beautiful, heart-wrenching story of randomly and sincerely connected people and the hard, cruel world that wants them to be less awesome, and I dig that, especially with the current rise of nationalist fuckwittage(3). The special loses Kala, Riley and Capheus a bit, and that's a shame, but I have hope that the new series will bring it back together.

And then it's going to kill someone, of course, and I will be all of the sad, but we'll cross that Bridge of Sighs when we come to it.

(1) I think. Hard drugs identification is hardly my Mastermind specialist subject.
(2) I feel that there ought to be a term, but am not down with the kids.
(3) I try not to bring politics into these reviews, but honestly it's hard not to.