TADC finale spoilers below (written on 6/4 after a single theater viewing, so forgive me for any misremembered details):
As previously mentioned, episode 9 took a LOT of risks that are honestly kind of scary when you're mid-way through your first viewing and aren't certain whether the end product will be good or not. And I'm so impressed at how many of those risks, no matter how much they bothered me in the moment, made total sense by the time the credits rolled.
Jax being quietly revealed to have abstracted off-screen had my entire theater groaning and muttering to themselves when it first happened. And yet! The rest of the episode shows Jax so much thought and care that I now can't imagine it any other way. The sheer scope of his plotline could have easily turned this ep into The Jax and Friends Show, but Glitch was careful to avoid unnecessary scenes that would make him overstay his welcome or allow his pain to steamroll the rest of the cast.
I adore that Jax's circus flashbacks take the focus off of him in the most literal way possible. They're shown almost entirely from his own 1st person perspective, as though he's just a distant viewer watching the others through a screen. He gets an opportunity in Ribbit's room to open up and start acting like a real person who is inhabiting a real world alongside her, and the camera responds by finally letting him into frame. But once he shuts Ribbit out, we're back to the 1st person. Jax is no longer real at his own insistence, and the camera's attention stays on what matters most- all of the people he is choosing to harm.
Special shout-out to the empathy afforded to Gangle in this regard. TADC very much ended up having a "social murder is never justified even when the victim is a total dick" theme. It's a lovely nuance that Gangle is one of the characters who most embodies this lesson without her being pressured to like or forgive Jax. Glitch stuck the landing on respecting the inherent value of his life without expecting any of the others to light themselves on fire to keep him warm.
(Side note: Jax mentally casting Gangle and Zooble as overbearing nags that exist for him to pull their metaphorical pigtails? Right before we learn how he really feels about femininity/nonbinary identities? OOF. OOF.)
On a completely different note... Pomni casually smiling and then pulling out a fucking gun right before confronting Jax's abstraction was so tonally scuffed that it looped back around to being brilliant again. By this point the other people in my theater were making sounds of pure agony, and it was hands down the funniest part of the episode. I thought I'd remember it as a so-bad-it's-good writing fumble, but honestly? I like that this happens immediately before Jax's mind palace throws a tantrum over how serious and unfunny this episode has been. Making light of such a somber moment with some inappropriately timed comedy is exactly what Jax would have done if the somber moment in question wasn't his own death. It's as if Pomni needed to get into his headspace before she could, you know, literally get inside his headspace.
And my god, the choice to BOTH canonize transfem Jax while also leaving him in the closet was so, so good. It would have been easy for either Pomni or Caine to posthumously out him and then romanticize it because "well, she's already abstracted and was clearly hysterical over gender identity, so we don't need to respect her choice to present as male anymore". I love that Jax remains a he/him until the bitter end. I love that even the reveal of his IRL counterpart doesn't give the game away to the rest of the group. Because no matter how bad his mistakes were, this is nobody's secret to tell except his own.
Plus for all we know his hypothetical good ending would have been he/him lesbianism with Ribbit but THAT'S JUST A GAAAAAAME THEEEEOOOOORRRY-
I think the one scene I still have questions/concerns about is when Pomni and Ragatha just kind of stared at each other in silence for an entire business day and a half. It was so melodramatic that I assumed one of them was doomed to abstract and needed to get in one last heartfelt goodbye for the audience's sake. But no? They're both fine? I dunno. These bitches just gay I guess, good for them. Not as gay as Gangle and Zooble though. Love wins.
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