Sense8 – ‘Who am I?’, ‘Obligate Mutualisms’, ‘Polyphony’ and ‘Fear Never Fixed Anything’

"Who am I? Do you mean where I'm from? What I one day might become? What I do? What I've done? What I dream? Do you mean ... what you see or what I've seen? What I fear or what I dream? Do you mean who I love? Do you mean who I've lost? Who am I?

"I guess who I am is exactly the same as who you are. Not better than, not less than. Because there is no one who has been or will ever be exactly the same as either you or me."

Okay, so... I'll be honest, I didn’t; review the first three episodes of this series before because I figured we'd binge through the season and I'd do it in a oner. Then the news of the cancellation and unresolved cliffhanger hit and we lost momentum. Now there's the promise of a last hurrah and resolution, so... Here we go.

Season 2 of Sense8 retains much of the feel of Season 1, with our multicultural cluster of Sensates(1) each doing their own thing, but there's a much stronger arc feel, not least because three of our characters are deep into the arc so that their thing is arc thing.

Will and Riley are still hiding from Whispers, with Will playing cat and mouse as each tries to locate the other. Whispers pins them down to Iceland, thanks to an elaborate ruse with yoghurt and seagull soundtracks, while Will ultimately gets the drop on him, allowing the cluster to set up a meeting with one of his superiors. Unfortunately, Whispers reverses the advantage by murdering his boss after he makes a deal with the cluster, forcing them back on the run but leaving Will with actual blockers instead of heroin.

Never alone.

Capheus is going about his business, but having attracted the interest of a journalist has become quite a celebrity, even beyond his neighbourhood. He is approached to consider running for office, and while he protests that he is not a politician, he is told that people don't want a politician; they want a leader. He goes to the journalist, possibly for advice, but is driven off by her jealous colleagues, who hint that he is a fiction she created and crudely asserting that his interest must be carnal and is thus hopeless, because she is gay(2), leaving him a little adrift.

Wolfgang and Felix hover on the edges of a potential gang war, and are unexpectedly offered a club to run. The owner's secretary makes eye contact with Wolfgang and starts turning up naked and sexy in his brain, revealing herself as part of another cluster, one apparently aligned to some extent with BPO for protection. I practically punched the air when Wolfgang actually told his cluster-mates about this instead of keeping it as a pointless secret.

Kala remains somewhat disconnected, although her pharmaceutical knowledge is key to understanding the blockers, and she begins to discover not only that her father-in-law's religious intolerance is deep-seated and hateful, but that her husband is more interested in making delivery dates than providing good quality drugs.

I'd completely forgotten that Sun fought the same cop on a roof in her
underwear.

Sun is forced to escape from prison after her brother hires guards to murder her. She goes on the run with the old lady who killed her abusive husband, although her partner in crime then hands herself in so that Sun can get away. Sun goes into hiding with her old martial arts teacher, who is then visited by what seems to be an honest cop, who fought Sun in their student days and was roundly thrashed.

Nomi remains in hiding with Bug, doing the cluster's hack work, until Bug suggests a way around her problems. Reaching out to 'the Guy', he arranges a meeting in a cinema showing one of Lito's films (giving us a lovely scene in which Bug remotely fanboys at Lito,) with a contact who shows in a V for Vendetta mask and offers 'e-death' – Sense8's version of The Dark Knight Returns' clean slate – in exchange for an unspecified but non-tawrdy future favour. Nomi's records and warrants promptly vanish.

Seriously, I'm pretty sure everyone else in the bar just saw Lito neck eight
tequillas.

Lito's career founders as he is typecast as doomed, gay characters, causing him to reject an invitation to be president of the Sao Paulo Pride Parade. He also reminisces about one of his first gay lovers, a photojournalist who turns out to have been part of Angelica's cluster and a victim of BPO's purges. Lito returns to the bar from last season to drink shots with the cluster (not sure how that works to an outside eye) in part in memory of Jonas, who is killed having outlived his usefulness. The bartender tells him that Lito's kiss inspired him. He proposed to his boyfriend and they have enjoyed the best year of their life. This not only shows Lito what he can achieve as a gay actor, but propels the cluster into their next big act of rebellion.

Their last run at Whispers revealed how big the organisation is, which they realise means that there must be lots more Sensates out there. Thus, Riley agrees to DJ a gig for one of her old contacts, in order to put the message out. Three conspicuous figures – one in saffron robes, one some sort of biker and Sylvester McCoy in a Barber hat – see the gig, and Riley draws McCoy to 'visit' the stage, prompting him to flee, but getting their message out before she and Will escape along the Thames ahead of Whispers and his goons.

Man this season is a rollercoaster ride, with first the cluster and then Whispers getting the whiphand week by week(3). Next episode is going to be a downer by that pattern, but on the upside, Sylvester McCoy!

(1) Although this term is actually dropped for the most part in favour of 'homo sensorium'.

(2) She may well be, but the immediate read of this is 'won't sleep with us'.

(3) Or however often we manage to catch it.

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.

Sense8 - 'I Can't Leave Her'

This is pain.

Sense8 wraps up its first season with a barnstorming eight-strong one-man rescue mission, as Will races to spring Riley before Whispers can make contact with her. As the separate plotlines collapse into one, I won't track the Sensates individually.

First off, we see Riley's whole painful birth and loss experience, stranded in the snow with a dead husband and a dying baby. It's grueling, and feels like much too much, although in fact it all comes home in the end of the episode.

Next, Wolfgang wraps up his family business by killing a lot of people. Will stops in to warn him that his Uncle was wearing a bulletproof vest, and Kala's chemical skills make an improvised bomb to help him take out the muscle, but the coldblooded assassination of the Uncle is pure Wolfgang, marking him out from the others in the cluster and horrifying Kala, who is still in tears later in the episode.

The rest is the rescue. Nomi and Nita use the late Dr Metzger's credit cards to arrange a flash sports car to race Will to the research facility where Riley is being held. Riley recovers consciousness briefly and Jonas and Yrsa both urge her to top herself to save the rest of the cluster. Will, however, promises that he is coming for her, which is a defining moment for him and the cluster and sets them apart from their 'parents'. Where Jonas, Angelica and Yrsa all felt it was impossible to escape or defeat Whispers, they are at least ready to try.

“Men cannot stand to see a beautiful car in trouble.” 

“It’s a primal instinct. Look at you, you’re hesitating.” 

“It’s a really nice car.”

Nomi directs Will to sabotage the car as a distraction, citing his reluctance to do so as proof that no man could fail to be moved by the plight of a flashy red sports car in pain. Then she forges him access to the building, where Lito steps in to smooth-talk Riley's location from a nurse. Sun crashes the room in her inimitable style, then Kala administers a wake-up shot to the unconscious Riley. As they make for the exit, however, Will sees Whispers and their eyes meet.

Relentless, Will gets Riley to an ambulance and Capheus hotwires the engine. Nomi directs him towards a mist-bound pass where Whispers' helicopter can not follow. Whispers tries to block them, telling Will he knows he won't endanger Riley or the pilot by crashing into the chopper, but Will trumps his game of chicken and lets Wolfgang take control. In the pass, Riley has to confront her loss, and then take Will to safety while he anaesthetises himself so that Whispers can not use him.

We end with the eight gathered on a boat, in fact or visiting, as Riley spirits the unconscious Will out of Iceland, having overcome her loss to become the hero, because it's important that having been the object of the rescue she finishes as the agent.

Given how a lot of the plots have worked out, I was glad that this one didn't resolve through pure violence, but through the interaction of the varied skills of the eight Sensates. It was also good to see Kala getting to do something besides being conflicted. A lot was left open for future series - in particular Whispers' foothold in Will's mind and Sun's ongoing incarceration - and many potential connections - such as the drugs and diamonds from Mumbai - yet to be explored, but the purpose of the season was to build the world and bring the cluster together, and this was achieved in fine style.

Sense8 made a good fist of its overall message of human unity, especially in this final episode. There has been a lot of violence in the series, but Wolfgang's actions here stepped into a different level and in many ways served to provide a cap on the potential of violence to solve problems. This was important, as there was at least one point where Will and Reilly had a good chance to assassinate Whispers and let it go. Presumably this was to avoid presenting deliberate murder as a resolution even to as horrific a foe as Whispers, but in universe is easily explained as the shock of Wolfgang's actions resonating in the network. Few of the Sensates are innocent of violence, but he inhabits it far more readily.

Man, I am reading all kinds of symbolism into this shot.

Let's talk about symbols, archetypes and that final shot.

Capheus is the centre, the heart. In the image he is the sun. I'm pretty sure he visited more people than any other and he always wanted to know about them and where they were. If this is a show about empathy, and it is, then he is the hero, because he wants to know and to like everyone. He knows violence, is somewhat inured to it, but it doesn't own him. He is the Knight, an Arthurian figure who truly believes that might should serve right.

Nomi is the brains of the operation, and more than any other the senses; she stays local, but lives global, her hacktivist networks and electronic infiltration the electronic equivalent of the Sensate cluster. She is the Crusader, refusing to let a wrong stand. She also knows pain, rejection, but also love.

Lito is the Trickster, who lies with all his being, but he also understands the transcendent quality of love. While Jonas may call love within the cluster the purest form, the most passionate, the most elevating love affairs in the series are Nomi's relationship with Nita and Lito's with Hernando. Nita gives Nomi strength, while Hernando gives Lito heart.

Will is the Soldier, duty-bound. In any other show, he would be the hero, the straight, white, alpha male who rescues the damsel, but here he is one of eight and also in need of rescue. Actually, everyone is in need of rescuing at some point, and everyone rescues someone, even if not physically.

Riley is the hardest to categorise, because the mystery of her past is such a dominant part of her character. I think, in the end, she is the Hero, the one who more than anyone faces her past and emerges stronger and better. She has the greatest pain, and thus shows the greatest strength.

Kala is also difficult, but I think she is the Idealist. She tries to do what is right, tearing herself apart to do it, and while she clearly hates and is a stranger to violence in a way most of the others can no longer understand, she is willing and able to defend those she loves.

Sun is the Warrior, cool and detached and effortlessly capable, in business as in combat. Her pain is a part of her strength, a rock on which she plants her feet, and she has been disappointed so often that only hope can open her heart enough to be hurt.

Finally, Wolfgang is by his own definition the Barbarian, the cluster's own monster of the id. He is the last to be shown in the closing group shot; for a moment it is almost as if he has detached from the cluster. He is cold where Sun is cool, embraces violence where Capheus accepts it, and knows what is best in life.

So that was Sense8 Season 1; the planned arc is five seasons, so fingers crossed it can keep going.

Sense8 - 'We Will All Be Judged By the Courage of Our Hearts', 'Death Doesn't Let You Say Goodbye', 'What is Human?' and 'Just Turn the Wheel and the Future Changes'

Again, a marathon watch, so I'll thread the episodes together. In a weekly series this would probably be a poor way to review, but for a block release like Sense8 it actually works.

Capheus (Nairobi)
Capheus decides to step away from Kabaka's business, despite the fact that it will mean no more medicine for his mother. He makes up with his friend and partner Jela in a scene which contains one of the most succinct pieces of relationship establishment I have ever seen:

Mrs Jela: Hey shithead! It's motherfucker!
Jela: How’m I supposed to tell them apart if you keep calling all my friends motherfucker? Oh. It’s this motherfucker.

Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to see Van Damn retire; the Superpower gang want him to hand over Kabaka's daughter to them for revenge, otherwise they will kill his mother. What is already a tough choice is made more so as Capheus reveals to Riley that when he was a boy his mother gave birth to his sister, only to be forced to give her up to an orphanage for lack of food.

In the end, he makes the only choice he can, and goes to confront the gang alone, fully expecting to die. In the absence of the girl, they produce a bound and beaten Kabaka and order Capheus to 'be a man' and kill him. Fortunately, this triggers another share with Sun, and all kinds of rowdiness ensues. Capheus flees with Kabaka with the gang in pursuit. Will helps out when Capheus visits and admits he believes he is about to die, but it is Capheus who faces down the leader of the Superpowers and brings Kabaka home to his daughter.

Sun Bak (Seoul)
As we surely all suspected, Sun has a chance to establish her prison yard chops when she trips the bully who keeps stealing her trainer's work. In the ensuing confrontation at the painting wall, she drops half a dozen of the bully's crew before the guards subdue her. In solitary, she receives a paintbrush as a token of regard from the other inmates.

Hope arrives in the form of her father, who explains that he has decided to come clean, having realised that his daughter is important to him, regardless of tradition. Her lawyer visits, and she agrees to let her father do this, despite the consequences for her brother. A day later, her brother comes to tell her that their father has apparently committed suicide in remorse and she attacks him, knowing that he killed their father to save himself.

This, right here, is shit about to get real.

Nomi Marks (San Francisco)
Nomi and Amanita are truly thunderstruck by the violence that they witnessed in the murder of Dr Metzger, opening the montage of pain in 'We Will All Be Judged...' They fall back to Amanita's family home, where Nomi and Will work the case in part of an ongoing collaboration between her hacker smarts and his cop skills. She loses her tools, however, as Whispers brings the heavy crew to their hideout and this is where Sense8 really gets to play with its concept.

Trapped in an alleyway by two federal agents, Nomi asks for help and Sun hops in with her usual extreme badassness, while Will provides expert analysis on the agents' tactics. Nomi then hops a bicycle until she can find a car. "But I can't drive!" she protests, before finding herself experientially in the passenger seat. "I can," Capheus assures her, and he can. This is a scene that could only happen in Sense8, and manages to top both the orgy and the 'What's Up?' scene for proof of concept.

Nomi retreats to her old apartment, having used Will's badge number to put out a BOLO reporting her last seen boarding a flight to Australia. Amanita finds her there - not sure how or why they let her go yet.

When Riley collapses, Nomi works to keep her off the radar, knowing that if she is discovered, Whispers will trace the entire cluster. Will joins her to work out what to do, but Jonas visits them both and tells them - prompted by Whispers - that Whispers knows, he is going to Iceland and knows that Will will not be able to resist going there as well.

Kala Dandekar (Mumbai)
Nomi describes the dislocation following Metzger's death as akin to being in a cinema where everyone else is laughing but you don't get the joke. This segues to Kala, watching an apparently hysterical movie with her family, but in tears from the communicated grief of Wolfgang. Later, she asks to have the wedding in her own temple, which prompts her Papa-gi - Rajan's father - to seek her out there and ask her to call the whole thing off. He does not approve of religion, as was noted earlier, and rather than see this as an out she takes umbrage at the attack on her faith and refuses to cancel the wedding at his say so. Before he can press his case, a masked gang deliver a run by stabbing, leaving him bleeding on the pavement at Kala's feet.

Kala gives her statement to the police, omitting the specifics of Papa-gi's visit. As he is in a coma, Rajan's mother feels able to ask Kala to pray with her.

Later, Kala visits the temple again and is greeted as the hero who lured the enemy to be killed. She rejects this, and Will steps in to help her run off the fanatics.

I'll be honest, this is the segment that is most dragging, and Kala only really kicks in when she interacts with the other Sensates, like watching Van Damme movies with Capheus or being all awkward with Wolfgang. In a way, this is because she is the most normal, and the only Sensate to show any significant revulsion of violence. Even Riley is afraid of violence, but not notably shaken by it, and Nomi's reaction is a bit of a one-off. This is made explicit when she watches Lionheart with Capheus and comments that the film is violent. 'Life is violent,' he replies, and while he is a good man with a heart as big as outdoors, that it his truth and why he is able to channel Sun without being wracked with guilt.

Towards the end of 'Just Turn the Wheel...', she asks Sun how she deals with emotional turmoil. Sun tells her that to seek to avoid feeling is to know death, and that she puts all that she cares about into her fists and fights for it.

Riley Blue (Iceland*)
Riley and Will share a moment, and a kiss; a touching scene nicely offset as Will's partner walks in on him. Getting settled in Iceland, she visits an old family friend, Sven, who offers to drive her anywhere she needs to go.

In 'Death Doesn't Let You...', Riely visits the scene of her childhood encounter with 'the hidden folk' and encounters Yrsa, an older Sensate who works with BPO, but does her best to conceal undetected Sensates from notice. She wanted to scare Riley away from Iceland, with its high volume of DNA researchers per capita. Ojnce one Sensate is found, BPO can then trace the psychic connections to others. When their meeting crosses with Riley's visit with Will, Yrsa derides love within a cluster a 'pathological' and a form of extreme narcissism. Learning that Jonas is talking to Will, she cuts the meeting short, telling Riley that Jonas is a hunter, working for Whispers to find new clusters. This seems odd given that in episode 1, Whispers was unable to interact with the visiting Jonas and told Angelica that he was looking forward to meeting him.

Riley next visits a graveyard, where we learn that she was married to a man named Magnus who once picked her up from school on a pony, before he died, along with their newborn daughter Luna. She discusses loss with Capheus, and provides the episode title: 'Death doesn't let you say goodbye.' She then attends her father's concert, but the music triggers birth memories for all of the cluster, ending with Riley remembering giving birth to her daughter as the car her husband was driving them to the hospital in went off the road. She suffers a violent nosebleed and collapses.

Wolfgang Bogdanow (Berlin)

This is not what is best in life.

Kala visits Wolfgang at Felix's bedside, and we learn that they were more than just working partners. Friends from childhood, with a shared love of Conan the Barbarian (seriously, this series has a thing about life-influencing movies,) who became brothers, not by an accident of blood, but by choice, setting up another important pillar of the overall thesis of the series.

Wolfgang's uncle visits and tells him that he must put an end to his rebellion; toe the family line, as he does not want to have to bury him.

Visiting a holocaust museum, Wolfgang sees various members of the cluster and has a rare clash with Will, who doesn't get Genghis-by-Conan references. Cousin Steiner visits Felix's hospital room and threatens to kill both Wolfgang and Felix if he doesn't get his diamonds. He arranges a handover and plans to counter-ambush Steiner, but is unable to get enough space until Lito steps in with an expert lie to put Steiner off his guard, allowing Wolfgang to take out Steiner and his thugs with a pistol and a rocket launcher, because the man has pizzazz.

He takes Felix from the hospital and secretly installs him in another, where his family have not influence, before going to deal with his uncle. Kala begs him not to and they kiss, but he says this is what he has to do, or his uncle will destroy everyone he has ever cared about.

Lito Rodriguez (Mexico City)
Lito is at first delighted to hear that Daniella has retrieved her phone and that Joaquin will not be releasing the photographs, but less so when she turns up to a late night meeting with a black eye to explain that in exchange for the phone, she agreed to marry Joaquin. This is too great a sacrifice for Hernando, who turns up on set to explain that he is leaving Lito, although he still loves him very much. "We will all be judged by the courage of our hearts," he tells Lito, quoting the film he is shooting and setting the title of the episode.

Lito gets drunk, insults a gay barman who hits on him and then visits a gallery where he had his first date with Hernando. There, he and Nomi discuss art and shame; his fear of exposure and the loss of his career, and her experiences as a shy boy whose father wanted him to 'man up' through the tried and tested method of institutionalised locker room bullying. Faced with his cowardice, Lito wallows in tequila and finally tries to end it all, but the gun he tries to eat is a lighter (providing a splendid moment of bathos at the end of an overwrought montage.) "Fake," he decides, like his entire life.

Inspired by his visit with Wolfgang, Lito makes a magnificent apology to the barman, then swaggers into Joaquin's place 'to get my friend back.' Joaquin begins to beat the tar out of him, but then Wolfgang returns the favour. As well as making a nice change from Sun doing all the fighting, it showcases a different style, Wolfgang having all of the brutality with none of the grace. Lito and Dany return to Hernando and the three are reunited.

Will Gorski (Chicago)
Diego sees Will kissing air, in one of the few lighter moments of 'We Will All Be Judged...' and then suffers through Will's conspiracy theories as his partner works some off the books contacts, partnering with Nomi to discover the existence of the Biologic Preservation Organisation, a sinister multinational who sound like they've escaped from the pages of the X-Men. He also finds security footage, showing the lobotomy victim receiving a package with a suit and a gun and suddenly seeming to come to life again. All this is too much for his captain, however, who suspends him.

Will revisits his dream of the girl being lobotomised, the girl he has been trying to find for most of his career. Once more she warns him not to look at Whispers: "That's how he found me." Jonas visits Will, who apologises for getting him caught. Jonas tells him that Angelica believed that love between members of a cluster was the purest form of all. He also reveals that all the members of the cluster were born at the same moment.

In 'What is Human?' they continue their discussion, Jonas suggesting that far from a new evolution, Sensates probably predate the declining empathy that has made 'normal' humans the most efficient killers ever. This is an interesting statement, as an increasingly small number of the Sensates have not killed anyone yet. They also discuss conflicting allegiances, which becomes important as Whispers prompts Jonas to bait a trap, apparently specifically for Will.

With one episode to go, there is a lot for Sense8 to wrap up, and it's hard to see how much mileage it would have as an ongoing serial. Like True Detective it is so caught up with the specifics that trying to move the same characters to a new situation would likely not work. I guess they could reboot with a new cluster, perhaps crossing over some of the original characters for continuity? That would allow a season which didn't have to reintroduce all of the old concepts, and given that it is the big set pieces in 'We Will All Be Judged...' and 'Just Turn the Wheel...' that are the first to really pull it all together, that could be a big advantage.

* I'm trying to be city specific, as no one country is a single cultural milieu, but much of Riley's stuff seems to happen in rural Iceland, with just the concert in Reykjavik (or possibly Reykjavik is even less urbanised than I imagined.)

Sense8 - 'What's Going On?', 'Art is Like Religion', 'Demons' and 'W.W.N. Double D.'

The other kind of morning after.

With a four episode binge, I may get a little muddled here and I won't be distinguishing much between episodes as I give my recap. Sense8 specific terms are mostly explained under Will's header.

Capheus (Nairobi)
Thanks to the help of the 'Spirit of Van Damme Korea* Lady', Capheus is a local hero and the Van Damn is packed. His actions also bring him to the attention of the powerful Silas Kabaka, a crime boss who wants 'Van Damn' to work for him, offering a full regime of genuine AIDS meds in exchange for a simple bag delivery.

With Sun not in a receptive frame of mind, and not yet able to Share at will, Capheus is robbed, but through his own guts and running speed recovers the bag and thus passes Kabaka's test. He also gets to Visit with Sun and Riley, and it becomes apparent that of all the Sensates, he is the one most willing to just accept that this is what is, rather than thinking it is a trick or an hallucination.

While clearly not a gangster at heart, Capheus is drawn further into Kabaka's world because the crime boss appeals to his goodness of heart, by asking him not to run drugs or guns, but to transport his daughter to her leukemia treatments, shielded less by Capheus' as a fighter than by the anonimity of the Van Damn. The connection with the little girl - who wants to be Wonder Woman - is immediate and touching, but the truth of Kabaka is reinforced when, during his daughter's birthday party, Silas takes Capheus to watch him sever the hands of his previous top runner for betraying him.

"Do you come here often?"

Sun Bak (Seoul)
Sun finally gets to talk to her father, Kang-Dae Bak, who is trying to cover up the financial irregularities that the bank have wanted to talk to her about. With a little assistance from Will's police training she tracks her brother down in a sex club and drags him to their father's office. Kang-Dae confronts Joong-Ki, who has embezzled - and squandered - a heap of money from the company's clients and is about to be caught, unless - as their father points out and Sun is quick to understand - she, as the daughter of the family and thus overlooked in the public eye, were to take the fall.

This is a difficult decision for Sun. Her father and brother consider it a done deal, and because of this she is reluctant to take the fall. As they are both facing a decision, she and Capheus are drawn together to Visit, where he helps her to see that what matters to her is not that her surviving family are shits, but that she made a promise to her dead mother. Hence in 'Demons' she confesses publicly and, thanks to most of the money being unrecoverable save from her brother's nasal membranes, is refused bail, and in 'WWN Double D' is sent to prison, where she falls in with a group of women who, having all rebelled against their shitty male relatives see her as a kindred spirit.

"I pushed my father's wheelchair into an open elevator shaft. With him still in it."

She is assigned to 'female vocational training' and must learn to sew. When her teacher is bullied by the prison hard woman, one can not help but suspect that someone is going to be invited to stitch this sooner rather than later. Despite her strength, Angel appears in the aspect of Sun's mother to warn her of danger now that she is not free.

I realise I'm using a lot of images of Sun, but as the first few episodes were
heavy on Nomi's storyline, these are big on Capheus and Sun.

Nomi Marks (San Francisco)
Despite Amanita's pyrotechnics, Nomi is still in hospital, and Dr Metzger is keen to move up the surgery. At the last minute, however, Will is able to use his growing awareness of the connections that the eight share to pick the locks on her handcuffs and allow her to escape to the lobby, where Amanita gets her to freedom.

With the help of friends, they avoid the unmarked cars outside their place, but find it trashed and all of Nomi's equipment and journals stolen. Thus 'WWN Double D' sees them staying with Amanita's mother and putting together a black hat hacker rig with the assistance of Nomi's old hacker buddy Bug, a man for whom she - as the underage son of a wealthy family - took the fall in the wayback. Bug is an interesting and uncomfortable character, who having known Nomi as 'Mike' would obviously like to think of himself as an ally, but has no ability to do so and, needing what he can supply, Nomi has no space to call him on it.

Amanita and Nomi's battle cry is 'What Would Nancy Drew Do', so they clone Metzger's phone and place a call to his mysterious boss, Dr Matheson, who immediately realises who Nomi is. They also meet a survivor of the procedure planned for Nomi, a man in an apparently catatonic state. When Metzger interrupts them breaking into his place, however, the catatonic lobotomy victim appears with a gun. Moments earlier, Jonah warns Nomi that 'Whispers' is coming, and as the man kills Metzger and then himself, we see the mysterious man who came for Angel in place of his reflection in the mirror.

This scene had a lot in it to love; ironically more than the Nancy Drew movie.

Kala Dandekar (Mumbai)
Wedding plans move on apace, with only passing reference to Kala, despite her fiance's insistence that he wants the wedding to be a visible bond, and that he should be bound to her as much as she to him. This move against Hindu tradition is given a darker slant, however, when a monk at Kala's temple hints that Rajan and his father want to completely overturn Indian tradition and outlaw the temples. On a rooftop, and simultaneously in a Berlin Karaoke bar, she comes face-to-face with Wolfgang and a connection is made.

Haunted by this, but not sure what to make of it, she gets most of the way through her wedding, but then Wolfgang appears and tells her she doesn't love Rajan. He then reappears in 'Demons' and their connection develops. He tells her it was love at first sight for him and he believes it is the same for her. She tells him she is sure he is a demon sent by Ganesha to test her. Later, in 'W.W.N. Double D.', she talks to him about science and faith, and how she once, as a child, climbed into a float in the shape of Ganesha to look out through his eyes.

Aml Ameen has the best face. His smile is infectious, and his
scowl terrifying.

Riley Blue (London)
Avoiding her temporary flatmates' noisy sex, Riley walks the streets of London to her happy place overlooking the city to get high. She's sort of background in 'What's Going On?' and in 'Art is Like Religion' she only really comes in to connect with Capheus.

In 'Demons', Riley and Will make the first almost deliberate connection, although she retreats from explaining why she dropped out of their last link (due to a drugs shootout) to a cop. When the dealer Nyx catches up with her and tortures her to reveal the hiding place of the money and drugs she genuinely ditched out of panic, Will has a major freakout in a cop bar, punching out a couple of other cops as he Visit-Shares to get Riley away from her attackers. Her story starts to come into focus as she Visits with Sun and explains that she saw what she thought was one of the Hidden Folk as a child, who told her she was a curse on her loved ones, and thus blames herself for her mother's death. Sun encourages her to go home.

Riley hops on a plane and flies first class to Iceland, the first real indication of the wealth of her own background. "You are lucky," the Visiting Capheus notes; "Privileged, not lucky," she notes, but he urges her not to dismiss the wonder because of that. She is met by her slightly otherworldly father who plays the ukulele at the terminal, but over breakfast a barely-seen, perhaps-imagined figure tells her she should not have come home.

Wolfgang Bogdanow (Berlin)
Wolfgang and his partner Felix shift half of their diamonds to philosophical Jewish jeweler Abraham, whose mother survived the holocaust. Wolfgang gets a chance for a bit of development here, mostly by comparison to Felix. Felix is the fast-talker and thinks of himself as a dealmaker, much like Capheus' friend Jela, but Wolfgang listens and understands people; Felix wants to live large now they have money, Wolfgang doesn't want to change who he is. At a karaoke bar, Felix sets him up to sing 4 Non Blondes' 'What's Up?' and triggers the episode's set piece and one of the absolute standout scenes so far.

This conversation is also taking place in the rain, and the intercutting is spot
on.

His main appearance in 'Art is Like Religion' is showing up at Kala's wedding, wet, naked and full frontal; so that's something you don't often see on network TV. In 'Demons' he shows that his pronouncement that Kala doesn't love Rajan is not merely down to some egocentric assumption that she must love him. 'You wanted me to say it,' he tells her, and it feels like this is a facet of the Sensate bond, as well as another manifestation of his listening persona.

A long talk with Kala about faith and science leads Wolfgang to decide to travel to India. Felix is leaning towards coming too when they suddenly can't contact their buyer, but before they can leave, Felix is gunned down in a drive-by by the douchebag hardman cousin they sharked in the diamond robbery.

Lito Rodriguez (Mexico City)
Lito is seriously spooked by Joaquin, allowing Daniella to prove her worth by smoothing over a misstep with Hernando and drawing the odd trio closer together. In 'Art is Like Religion' he becomes distracted on set when he experiences Sun's PMS, becoming overwrought and hyperemotional. It's a bit of a caricature, but then I suppose he isn't used to it, and it's played for real emotionality instead of pure yucks, especially when Hernando has to talk him down when a Visiting Sun spooks him in traffic. He gets it together for a big action scene later, which is played out against a chase scene with Will as a full on gunfight, despite the deliberate presence of the wires for the stuntwork.

In 'W.W.N. Double D.' the relationship is really beginning to flower, but then Joaquin turns up and, in a struggle, steals Danielle's phone, which has pictures of Hernando and Lito together, because Danielle is really behind the times in terms of digital security.

Will Gorski (Chicago)
Will pulls in a favour to try to get to see Jonah. He fails, but Jonah is able to contact him and explain some of the basics of being a Sensate, in particular 'visiting' - where one Sensate appears to be where another is, even able in some sense to touch what is there, via the senses of the other - and 'sharing', where knowledge and skills are exchanged on a much deeper level. The former can be done intrinsically between the eight bound souls of a cluster, and with any other Sensate with whom one has made eye contact; the latter is reserved for the cluster. Through a mix of the two, Will is able to free Nomi.

With Jonah in federal custody, Will tries to track Nomi - including a tense phone call with her mother - and find out what happened in the abandoned church. The aforementioned chase happens when Will and his partner try to run down a witness, but end up in gang territory, Will's adrenaline apparently firing up Lito's perfomance. He meets up with Riley and they do a phone test to confirm one another's existence, and he is then drawn to aid her against her attackers.

'What's Going On?' (the episode is named for the lyrics of the core song, rather than the title) features one of the big moments of the series to date (and by to date I mean by episode 7). It eschews the viscerality of the fight scene from 'Smart Money's on the Skinny Bitch' and instead focuses on an emotional link, triggered when Wolfgang sings karaoke. Riley cues up the same song on her ipod, and it resonates through the cluster, leading to all eight singing in time (in particular Kala and Wolfgang.) There has been some criticism of the use of an American song for this universal moment, but I guess sometimes you're a slave to your audience and your influences.

'Demons' has a similar scene in the telepathic orgy in which Nomi and Lito javing sex at the same time triggers a shared experience which pulls in Will and Wolfgang. Will's apparent acceptance of the sudden appearance of sexy gay men in his mental space, despite his identity as a straight, white cop, is impressive, but the scene is more obviously service than the former, or maybe I just like musical numbers more than sex scenes. More poignant perhaps is Sun and Riley's moment of connection. "I thought I was alone," Riley admits. "So did I," Sun replies, but they aren't and - if I'm understanding the point of the show aright - neither is anyone else.

Meanwhile, 'W.W.N. Double D' - which I love as a motto - showcases just how good the show has become in the space of a few episodes at cutting back and froth between the different characters and stories, and at weaving them together (the main one I noticed this week was that the stolen diamonds were originally sold on the black market from Mumbai, with a possible link to Rajan, whom I guess might also be selling drugs to Kabaka?) It also manages a number of radical tonal shifts with aplomb, taking Nomi and Amanita from whimsically costumed housebreaking to deadly danger, and Lito's group from delight to desolation on a dime.

* I don't know if it's part of their intrinsic connection, but not having anyone mistake Sun for Chinese is a smart touch. It could get really old.

Sense8 - 'Smart Money's on the Skinny Bitch'

The smart money is indeed on the skinny bitch.

Okay; let's call this by Sensates, not least to help me remember their names.

Capheus (Nairobi)
After being absent last episode, Capheus comes centre stage. First, we learn that he once wanted to be a zebra, which seemed like an easy life, although 'the lion is a downside.' Then he and his friend Jela make a backstreet connection to buy AIDS medication for his mother (and opt to snark at the snotty dealer, which may come back to bite them.) When the drugs are stolen in a holdup, Capheus charges after the gang, unexpectedly beating down four armed gangsters by channeling Sun's martial arts skills and briefly Will's firearms training, mirrored with scenes in the fight club and the firing range.

Sun Bak (Seoul)
Another absentee last week, we see Sun being chased by the man from the bank, who is threatening to involve the authorities, while she can not get a meeting with her father. A flashback shows that she works with her brother because she promised their mother she would look after him, but her 'message' for her father (punching a hole in his secretary's desk) leads into her inner life, which is conducted in a flashy underground fight club.

Nomi Marks (San Francisco)
Nomi learns that she has been marked down not only for non-consensual surgery, but also forced drug administration. The first attempt at her operation is cancelled by a fire, possibly started by Amanita, and her doctor - who clearly knows more than he is letting on - describes her as being 'under quarantine'. The level of illegal is hard to judge here, but I'm guessing high.

Kala Dandekar (Mumbai)
We touch base with Kala this week, mostly to reference the fake drugs which are making Capheus' mother even more sick. This is part of a general thesis of human interconnectedness underlying the particular interconnectedness of the Sensates.

Riley Blue (London)
Riley is marking time, finding shelter with a friend and establishing a little backstory about her time in Iceland.

Wolfgang Bogdanow (Berlin)
Wolfgang takes a turn in the box this episode, with no scenes at all.

Lito Rodriguez (Mexico City)
Lito learns that Daniela is not just keen to be a gay couple's bessie, but also trying to duck a clingy ex. The ex, Joaquin, turns up at the set and insists on taking Lito to lunch, where he displays an unnerving knowledge of how to kill a man.

Will Gorski (Chicago)
Will recalls dreams in which he saw, as a child, someone being lobotomised (quite possibly in the same procedure planned for Nomi.) A girl in the dream - revealed in Will's police standard issue obsession file to have gone missing at that age - tells him not to look; 'that's how they found me.' Not sure he did the right thing, he tries to talk to Jonas, but he is being taken away by Homeland Security.

'Smart Money's on the Skinny Bitch' pays its dues in general storytelling, but its crowning glory is the spectacular final set piece where Capheus draws on Sun's abilities to defeat a gang. It is also hinted that his sudden and uncharacteristic decision to fight comes from his connection to Sun and the buried rage she has clearly been itching to unload on her brother's smarmy, sexist business partners. As well as a solid action sequence, this is the first chance the series has taken to really dive into the meat of the Sensates, and what makes them both powerful and dangerous, the pooling of eight sets of skills and knowledge coupled with the transfer of emotional states.

A couple of the stories are marking time this week, and Mexico still feels disconnected from the others, with Lito alone having made no significant contact with the other Sensates. Nonetheless, this was a good episode and redresses some of the balance from the last, which was very focused on the white folks.

As a random observation, I keep wanting to talk about 'last week', even thought the episodes aren't released weekly.

Sense8 - 'I Am Also a We'

Awkward.

The pilot episode of Sense8, 'Limbic Resonance', was absolutely packed, a necessary side effect of introducing eight primary characters. 'I Am Also a We' focuses in on a smaller sample, allowing us to learn more about that slice of the cast.

In London, Riley is dodging gangsters and sees Will in her mirror, even suffering a sympathy cut when he cuts himself shaving.

The principal focus of the episode is on Nomi, and draws many of its themes from her identity as a trans-woman. After a fall during a Pride parade, Nomi's evangelical mother - a storming, monstrous turn from actress Sandra Fish, as she strives to pin Nomi down and force her to accept the name Michael along with her family's medical insurance - isolates her from her girlfriend Amanita and effectively has her committed, pressuring her to have an operation on her brain. The threat of hallucinations is of course heightened by the impossible appearance of Jonah, but a call from Amanita grounds Nomi, who is determined to escape.

The conspiracy against Nomi's identity mirrors that against the Senseates as a whole. Will and his watch are given Jonah's photograph and told that he is a terrorist, presumably knowing that he would try to contact Will, leading to a car chase in which Will and Jonah jump perspective into each other's cars. Will is uncertain about his calling, since his fellow cops see him as a traitor for saving a young gangbanger's life, but still cop enough that he can't just let Jonah walk.

In Mexico, we learn that Lito is actually in the closet for the sake of his career, dating a string of girls to deflect suspicion. When the latest gets pushy and uncovers his secret, she is unexpectedly delighted that she gets to be the beard for a cute gay couple. This, along with Kala's engagement party and her fiance's Shah Rukh lipsynch provide moments of lightness which lift and heighten the drama elsewhere. Props also that the Indian woman having doubts about her wedding is engaged to a charming, handsome chap that she chose; her questions are deeper than that.

'I Am Also a We' makes Sense8's core themes apparent: Identity, persecution and connection across boundaries. The persecution of the Sensates mirrors that felt by all of the characters in some other aspect of their lives, and all are struggling with their identity. Sun and Capheus make little or no appearance, so hopefully we'll see more of them next episode, and I expect to see these themes appear in Capheus' life, as they already do in Sun's.

Sense8 - 'Limbic Resonance'

Cast shot!
Back row: Sun Bak (Bae Doona), Will Gorski (Brian J Smith), Riley Blue (Tuppence Middleton), Kala Dandekar (Tina Desai); Front row: Capheus (Ami Ameen), Nomi Marks (Jamie Clayton), Wolfgang Bogdanow (Max Riemelt) and Lito Rodriguez (Miguel Angel Silvestre).

In a derelict building, a woman who is not pregnant is giving birth, watched over by two men who are not there. To keep from being taken prisoner, she kills herself, her suicide witnessed in the dreams of eight complete strangers.

'Limbic Resonance' is a slow and rambling sort of pilot, focused on introducing us to the characters and oddly untroubled with the ins and outs of its high concept. We haven't even heard the word 'sensate' yet (although the trailer assures me this will be an in-universe term.) Perhaps this is because it is the brainchild of the Wachowskis and J Michael Straczynsky and they feel they can take a pass on received pilot protocol, or maybe it is another advantage of Netflix instant release schedule. Season 1 is all there from the get go, so a throat-grabbing pilot is less important than what the creators feel is the relevant set-up.

So, what we get is a random walk through the lives of eight people: Capheus drives a minibus in Nairobi and cares for his sick mother; Sun Bak is a successful Korean businesswoman who is treated like the tea girl; Nomi Marks is a pride political blogger; Kala Dandekar, a moderately pious Hindu who is having second thoughts about her marriage; Riley Blue, a London DJ with a criminal boyfriend and secrets; Wolfgang Bogdanow, a Berlin locksmith and safecracker from a criminal family; Lito Rodriguez, a Mexican actor with secrets; and Will Gorski, a Chicago cop.

That's a lot of people even if they were only involved in one plot, but they each have their own bit even before they start experiencing each other's lives. Capheus is in competition with a rival minibus company (his minibus, Van Damn, suffering from the relative popularity of Bat Van,) while Sun is struggling to be taken seriously compared to her playboy brother. Nomi's struggle is for acceptance into an LGBT community that sees a transwoman as a male interloper*, while Kala sees the death of her independence in her marriage. Riley's boyfriend uses her as a lure to try to rip off a drug dealer, Wolfgang is determined to beat the safe his father never could and put one over on the more ambitious criminals in his family, Lito has some sort of creative block and Will is troubled by the way the system is giving up on the ghettos.

And then all eight see 'Angel' committing suicide in their dreams, and begin to experience auditory and visual hallucinations which are in fact the perceptions of other members of the disjointed group. What does it all mean? Who is the man hunting them? As yet, we do not know, but it's an intriguing enough group to want to come back and find out.

* This seems to be the character and plot attracting the most buzz, and I can see why. It's currently the most compelling - perhaps because it's the least done - even though I struggle a little to get past her partner Amanita's accent (it's probably a good enough American accent, but I'm so used to Freema Agyeman being 'London' that it's weird; like Kenneth Branagh in Dead Again**, and equally with a character who doesn't really need to be American.)
** Oddly, I never had this problem with House, despite years of watching Hugh Laurie play variations of his native posh British.