in my short post last night, i promised to come back with more thoughts in the morning, so here they are. i do want to state at the outset that i have been critical of PB in the past (s6 was -- imo -- a disaster, the real character assassination was michael's, etc.), but i am one of the few that really enjoyed this movie, so i thought i'd thrown in my two cents. i'll go through the notes i made on my phone as i was watching last night, then expand on a few topics i've seen discussed on here and on reddit.
a few initial viewing notes:
let's get this out of the way before we start: cillian? fine fucking WINE. jesus christ.
he and barry keoghan actually look eerily similar, which i think is interesting cause i've living in ireland for ten years and never saw anyone else who looks like them.
i liked the opening scene at the BSA factory. specifically, i have been doing a lot of research on war reporting lately for #Reasons and there's this rumour (at least amongst war reporters) that you do not 'hear the one that gets you.' i noticed that the bombing sounds in the background get gradually quieter until the one that 'gets' them that you cannot hear at all until the blast. this shows again that 1) SK is very aware of his canon and of the literary and film tradition he evolves in (more on that below), and 2) an incredible use of sound in PB. it made me think as a throwback of the meeting at the Garrison in s5 with the Irish where you can hear a train in the background, reinforcing the nazi imagery (the association between nazism and trains, etc.)
the idea of tommy writing a book was funny, yet bizarrely acutely in character
duke stole the guns from the BSA factory, same as tommy did. everyone treated the move as insane at the time. i don't think tommy thinks it's that insane.
the film had a whole host of fan service/symbolism moments people seem to have missed because they were too focused on what happened to arthur, which wasn't fan service. messy list but: the mud. the flipping of the coin. when the theme song plays, there's a woman dressed in all black with a pram walking in frame. the list goes on. i don't think it's correct to say that SK forgot everything that made the show the show. i think people just haven't watched the same show (more on that below).
yes, the birth year on arthur's grave is "wrong." but also, that's always been wrong. if you've ever tried to write fic about the PB childhood, you've certainly come to the same conclusion that the birthdays we were initially given in the first ep with the campbell files made no sense. they had to change that.
heavy lies the crown is basically the whole thesis of the show, an something that has also inspired a lot of my own writing. i actually almost loved that as a last line more than in the bleak midwinter.
the callback to 'i nearly got fucking everything,' which imo is one of the best TV scenes to have been shot in the past twenty years, was great. the will reading made me cry. give my horses to someone who has no use for them. :'(
i liked the fact that it's sort of duke's fault (because of duke's initial mistake with the BSA) that tommy dies. the cycle of guilt continues indeed.
on greta jurossi, duke, and the long-lost love:
i will admit this: i am a bit done with SK unearthing these random women from tommy's past for plot reasons, then doing absolutely nothing with them. i have maintained for years that the whole greta jurossi plot was dumb to begin with and didn't really need to exist. the show clearly states in the early seasons that grace -- for better or for worse -- is the Real Love™ and i think that from a writerly craft and narrative perspective, having anyone beforehand explicitly named and acknowledged does cheapen the show's essential love story. and, whilst i don't actually love grace myself (will remain #teammay until the day i die) but i do think it would be dishonest not to acknowledge that as an overall narrative, the show does seem tommy/grace as its big love story. the way SK is constantly retconning this grinds my gears as a writer, especially because again, he never takes these women anywhere.
now, i have seen people saying that it's a misinterpretation to understand duke's mother as a long-lost love figure because the film never actually says this. i see the point, but i also think what goes unsaid in symbolism is important. the imagery of the fair, the colour-schemes when talking of that day, the way tommy has a double-take when he sees the Evil Twin™ (more on that later as well) do all very much hint at a long-lost love. i don't think it's that big of a stretch in terms of interpretation.
in that context, having duke coming out of the woodwork was obviously weird, especially since the heir apparent was and always will be michael, so why kill him then fish out a secret son?[1] and, with michael dead, the heir apparent is charles, so again, why fish out a secret son? i think this was weak writing and agree with a lot of the criticism but i also think it works for a film (more on that later).
on religion and the spirits:
i think there's an academic thesis to be written (and maybe someday, i will write it) on PB's relationship to religion. i think it's one of the dramatically under-explored and under-analysed themes of the show that everyone sort of accepts and moves on, whereas i think SK actually had a Lot of things and subtext to say about it.
PB is a show that constantly intermingles "traditional" religion (i.e. catholicism) and the "gypsy magic"/spirits.[2] tommy's entire trajectory is that of a man whose life experiences make him fall into cult-like religious practices towards the end of his life because of hardship, grief, ptsd, and constantly living on the edge. i will die on this hill but the curse storyline in s6 is the story of a man losing in his fucking mind to something he cannot control (illness) and turning to a higher power for answers and to cope with his guilt (as well as the fact that all the gold in the world cannot save you from TB). it was never meant to be taken literally. the show has stated this time and time again, religion's just a foolish answer to a foolish question. it starts with a bloke who's mildly superstitious (the coin, the horse, etc.) and ends with someone who believes he can see ghosts. that is one of the key trajectories of the show. when grace dies, tommy is still in a state of mind where he can see himself going there, and makes the decision not to. when ruby does, he isn't.[3]
this is the same thing here. he is "seeing spirits" because he's high as a kite. that's it. the palm reading is bullshit and he knows it. and i think even if you did want make the argument that he's genuinely seeing spirits (ada's apparition being less "rationally explainable" than the rest), it is a sign that he's losing his mind and not a positive thing.
i actually don't see why they needed to tie arthur's death to this. SK has apparently said he was writing tommy assuaged with guilt and that the characters themselves revealed to him what happened to arthur -- which, fine, more on that later -- but i think from a purely narrative perspective, the whole show had enough build up for this, and ruby's death was enough. he was already losing it by then, anyway.
i do think it's significant (again, in this storyline) that he dies "rational". the ghosts are gone by the time of his death, which i think again, reinforces the point SK was trying to make.
the ganster tradition, arthur's death, ada's death, and tommy's death
i'll expedite thoughts on ada's death to say she was clearly the collateral victim of the overall point below, and i think that's fair. that's coming from a die-hard ada fan like myself. i love ada, she's my girl, i even have an unfinished fanfic about her, but she needed to die for the Plot and i accept that.
on arthur's death, now: i think the issue with some of the fandom discourse about this is that a lot of people are analysing PB like it's grey's anatomy. omgggg they've killed my fave!! and tommy would NEVER kill arthur. that's never been this show.
this show stands as an exercise both in tradition, and in reaction, to a large amount of gangster/crime/mafia canon that -- imo -- explain this move. sibling rivalry is a constant in many of these shows and films, and many of them push it to the death (French TV series Mafiosa comes to mind rn, but there's countless others). one of the very first scenes of the show actually sets this out from the very first episode with, i think so that you don't have to. i will again die on this hill and maintain to my death that finn was supposed to be a red herring at the end of s5 and that arthur was supposed to be The Rat™, or that at least SK consciously set him up so that he could be, then changed his mind post-helen mcrory. the arthur/tommy rivalry is one of the key elements of this show and because it is a gangster show in the tradition of gangster shows, it had to end like this. i think saying "tommy would never kill arthur!!!!" is 1) a misunderstanding of the character and 2) a misunderstanding of the larger tradition and canon the show is very intentionally part of. the whole point of these series is 1) strong family connections and characters who claim they would never kill their own kin, and 2) a descent into countless instalments of the contrary. tommy isn't parting with tradition here, he's right within the thesis statement.
i actually like that SK went there. i think it was a bold choice, and an intelligent choice, in the circumstances (more on what i mean by that below). i think having it be an accident or an act of mercy would have been weaker, narratively, and it wouldn't have echoed in the aforementioned tradition in the same way. i also think what cillian said about how we only have tommy's version of events very interesting here, in that it leaves the door open to other interpretations. i also think that at that point, tommy was and knew he was heading towards death, and was "cleaning out" the family with him. either because he knew arthur wouldn't survive without him or because he is a possessive king who thinks he owns the people around him and must take them with him in death -- that isn't clear.
on tommy's death i have no notes. i think it was perfect (again, in the circumstances, see below). i think anyone who expected him to survive is either delulu or cruel. killing him was the kind thing to do, again, in line with the above tradition.
lastly, on The Circumstances™:
i think one of the issues with fandom (and i see this well beyond PB) is that fandom tends to operate in a vacuum. it tends to only look at the work whilst refusing to look at the circumstances around it.
covid and helen mcrory's death completely upended SK's design for the show. i think we need to recognise that. i think mistakes were made in the re-write of s6 in light of that, but i can also understand the genuine grief of the team and crew over helen's death may have factored into those bad decisions. i think that's when the decision to ultimately kill off the entire original core family was made, as well as that to hand off the baton to the new generation in some way. because after the passing of such an important character that they didn't get a say in, as well as the fact that michael and ruby were obviously going to die, that was the only reasonable path forward.
as a result, we got a film, not a season. and i'm begging people to understand that this is a film. yes, the secret kid plot is a bit weak in the context of the series, but in the context of the film, it isn't. it's just another kid tommy had. SK needed to get a tonne of points across with very little time on his hands. would i have liked to have a full season of this to build up duke's character, iron out the backstory, etc.? yes, of course, that would have been better. but sadly, this isn't what SK had to contend with. especially because post-oscar, let's be real, cillian wasn't going to stay in this forever and he can't have been cheap.
this is also the thing with arthur. they just couldn't have paul anderson there. this is hard to stomach, especially as someone who really admires his work on the show, and i really wish him the best, but he is no longer capable of ... well, acting, let's be real. the man is constantly in and out of jail and rehab -- there is a point where he just had to be written out. and in that context, this isn't a show where characters actually get to move to america and #startanewlife, so he was going to have to die. and having him be killed by literally anyone but tommy, at this stage, would -- imo -- have been weaker writing, for the reasons explained above. again, this is making the best of shit circumstances.
in light of the above, i think the same can be said about the Evil Twin™. they had killed off michael's character and presumably decided to hire barry keoghan as a new lead for the new show, and needed to introduce him somehow. that's the reality of it. i don't think it's just to make money. i think SK just genuinely wants to create this new show (let's hope it's better than House of Guinness). was it laughably lazy? yes. but also, again, i think it was a plotpoint that SK had very little time to convey and went for the easy (and lazy) option. imho, i think she could just been a "sister" and that would have worked just as well, the twin thing was over the top, but sure look. i think it allowed SK to introduce barry keoghan's character to take over in very little time, and him being tommy's son was an easy shortcut into the series that didn't need three seasons of character building. again, i think in the circumstances, it sort of works (ish).
again, i liked the film. i liked it a lot more than s6. i liked it a lot more than House of Guinness, lol. i cried during the will-reading scene, and i think it was the perfect ending. was the entirety of the film perfect? of course, not. i think the love story with both the sister and the Evil Twin™ was stupid (though i did like seeing tommy smile when teasing her), i think a lot of these elements could have been introduced earlier in the show (instead of spending So Much Time on finn), etc. but again, in the circumstances they were all dealt, they did good work. was it on par with s2? of course not. but, you know, i think it was overall a fitting conclusion to one of my favourite shows of all time.
i think it may be time for a rewatch soon!
[1] the real reason being that michael was SK's "darling" in a "kill your darlings" scenario but he didn't have any real plan on what to do with him after s2 and the whole thing went of the rails, obv, but i digress.
[2] there is an adjacent point on the show's treatment of "gypsy"/romani culture here that i won't get into but that is very valid. for the sake of this, i'll use the vocabulary used in the show.
[3] i would also argue that this was the whole issue with s6, where SK had this whole plot in his head about the curse and tommy losing it to religion, etc. pre-written, and refused to kill his darling and do away with that plot line when helen mcrory died, which precipitated the show into wtf territory, but that's a another conversation entirely.
