gotta love that bryan finds himself in an alternate reality in which alt-bryan clearly doesn’t know finola and was even likely involved in killing her dad (as mentioned by this new reality’s “partner”) and his first moves are to a) immediately track down finola and b) be completely honest with her—about her dad, about being from another reality, even about her importance to him. never mind that he has no clear status of the conspiracy in this reality or that by doing so he is putting himself in danger from his new partner.
even in another reality he is telling her the truth no matter what. she really went from barely a coworker to person he trusts the most in any universe like—when that boy commits, he commits.
While the twins found their way back to each other, it looks like multiple realities have now merged. We just saw the beginning of this with Maddox not having gone to the restaurant where he had a confrontation with his wife about her wanting to divorce him and instead learning about it by being given divorce papers. It puts into question everything Bryan and Finola have said and done up to this point on the show. Which things will they remember happened the way they did in our prime timeline and which things will have merged from other universes?
Rewatching Debris because of reasons and noticing the details I missed the first time such as that Ferris told Finola in the pilot already that Maddox saved Bryan from prison in Afghanistan.
Also, Bryan to Maddox: "She's falling in love with me but trying to remain professional." 😂😂😂
All the sarcasm (mostly Bryan's) and antagonism and distrust! And yet at the same time already have mostly truthful (except by omission) deep conversations about why they're doing what they are and what they think of the debris' purpose.
Uh, yep, the creepy corpse tornado.
Oh, Bryan saying the girl with the little brother who died reminded him of someone - it was Asalah! But he was really good with the girl.
And then he saved Finola's life.
Yeah for someone who isn't used to being treated as a human (💔), Bryan's not that bad at being human.
ok i started watching debris (nbc) as a folding laundry procedural and wasn’t all that impressed with the first several episodes. the pacing was weird, they weren’t establishing the partner relationship effectively and i could take or leave most of the cases of the week...
well since midseason it has completely won me over with its absolutely bonkers (by tv trope standards) decision to have the two partners with divided loyalties stuck in a web of conspiracy who don’t even know each other that well decide to go directly against orders and just...tell the other the truth? like almost immediately?? and keep doing it even when shit completely hits the fan???
they don’t completely trust each other and yet make this deliberate choice to share the truth over and over and over again.
like they’ve gone from barely coworkers to co-conspirators to maybe possibly full on rogue in a few short episodes? and i am so here for it.
after all the hype about big revelations happening in the debris finale, i was woefully underwhelmed. this was an episode literally about ‘emotional resonance’ but it had none (apart from a few bryan and finola moments). this show has (or should i say had since it’s now been cancelled) so much potential for cool sci-fi mysteries but that is not enough if we don’t connect with the characters. we need characters we put our trust in and relationships (platonic and romantic) we can root for. in general, the regular and recurring cast was a revolving door of either untrustworthy villains or interchangeable day players. even in the beginning, it was hard to know if we trust could truly trust bryan or finola. and even when we did start to care about bryan and finola, we were given their moments sparingly.
it’s no surprise that the multiverse two-parter with our leads in full ride or die mode are the ones the audience connected with the most, drawing in new viewers and cementing brinola as a ship we wanted to sail. while the time jumping mystery was intriguing, it was the emotional resonance of bryan and finola’s relationship that made us care about them and the show. furthermore, the twins were more than random-debris-victims-of-the-week. instead their familial love grounded the chaos of the multiverse and made them excellent partners with bryan and finola to solve the problem and complete the mission. watching the four of them get to know each other and work together was everything i wanted from this show. honestly, i was shouting at the screen that i wished the twins could join the team permanently.
sadly, the finale had very little of bryan and finola’s ‘emotional resonance’. a small thing that would have made a huge difference is if bryan had come back early and gotten captured by otto’s gang. first, he could have had his own moment of betrayal with george and trying to talk to him about it. then bryan would have known about the memory wipe but be unable to do anything about it or them forcing the pill on finola. next he could have had a super cool moment with finola, where he tells finola to remind him about who he is and their mission together after his memory is wiped and finola could ask ‘all of this sounds crazy. what if you don’t believe me?’ and bryan would say ‘i’ve always believed you’. hit us in the feels please! after they deactivated the debris and bryan collapsed, they could have let finola run over to bryan and when he wakes it still would have been a shock for him to look at her with full recognition in his eyes and say ‘finola’. then the scene could continue as it did in the show with otto’s revealing bryan as the third man. watching bryan and finola go through hell together would have made all the difference.
in the end, it was no surprise that george betrayed them because they never made us trust him in the first place. as for maddox, his family storyline has to be the biggest waste of space in this show. if you took it out entirely it wouldn’t make a difference at all. in fact, it would be an improvement as the time could be filled with better things we actually care about. the major problem with maddox (besides being a government goon totally fine with weaponizing the debris) is that he not only actively lied to our leads but he made them lie to each other. for someone who is supposed to be ‘on their side’, he was really the biggest villain of them all. if maddox was with influx and had been stealing all the parts for his son, it would have made more sense. maddox’s biggest sin wasn’t his stealing but that he didn’t trust his team to help him steal. this is a huge contrast to bryan and finola whose trust in each other allows them to betray the system together to help save her father. maddox trusts no one, not even his own wife. why should we trust him? when bryan said that they need to tell maddox everything at the end, i screamed ’NO!’ lol cause he is not worthy of their trust. there’s really only two options for brinola: go rogue and recruit people to their cause or continue with orbital but start a splinter group to undermine it.
i don’t fault nbc for the lack of viewers. if this show was like that fantastic two-parter every week, it would be easy to promote this show and gain a decent size audience. high concept sci-fi and fantasy shows cannot move slowly in revealing the mysteries unless your character development is off the charts. even doctor-lawyer-cop procedurals live and die on how much the audience connects with the characters. worldwide competition for tv series is increasing, i’ve spent the last two months binging korean dramas including a few in the sci-fi/fantasy genre. it’s incredibly rare for their shows to have multiple seasons. the majority are limited series with 16 full-hour episodes (the equivalent to 22 american broadcast episodes) with which to tell their full story. i’m finding this refreshing as they hold nothing back ‘for next season’. they put in all the great character development and all the cool mysteries which have actual answers but they’re also not afraid to have a slightly open ending if they could come back but which in no way detracts from what the series has accomplished. american tv writers of high concept shows please take note: put it all out there like you’re not coming back because you’re probably not, but leave a crack open for you to put it all out there again. and above all, make us care about the characters. brinola you will be missed but not forgotten. they deserved better.
All right, I’d better write this up right after watching the newest episode or else I’ll never do it.
Firstly, I need to scream about Finola and Bryan’s partnership!
OMG, I love it so much!
I’m not even shipping them – I mean, I can see the potential for it in the future, but I don’t need it.
I just love how they built their relationships starting from not even liking each other then begrudgingly accepting they have to work together, then starting to like each other as they get to know each other, then suspecting one another, and then coming to trust each other over other people.
I knew Bryan had to fess up he knew about George before Finola confronted him and he did and the build up of trust between them since has been beautiful.
I hope it continues that way, even if there might be some snags of distrust yet to overcome, I want them to really become strong partners who can rely on each other no matter what.
Yep, I am highly invested in this partnership. Because I haven’t had a show with this kind of relationship for a long time, I think. And they could be the new Mulder and Scully. I want them to be the new Mulder and Scully. Except Finola would be Mulder and Bryan would be Scully. ;) (I mean, they are even introducing themselves in that order.)
So, their bosses are shitty and obviously both Americans and Brits have ulterior motives and are doing something nefarious behind each other’s backs. (And of course, Maddox is secretly dealing with Russians – which we know but the characters don’t, so that should be fun.)
Speaking of Maddox, Bryan’s relationship with him reminds me a bit of another relationship on another show (@eveningspirit, because you’re also watching, it reminds me a bit of Ward & Garett 😭) and I can’t wait to learn more about how Maddox saved Bryan etc. (And he’s obviously holding it over him and using it to manipulate him.)
And I love that Bryan started off like this cold, reserved guy who just does his job, but it was soon pretty obvious that he wanted to do the right thing (like, it didn’t sit well with him to keep Finola in the dark about George from the start.)
Oops, do I have a new favourite character? I guess I do. (You know, seemingly cold and composed with mysterious/complicated past and sort of morally grey – it’s my type.)
Speaking of, there are a lot of mysterious things happening and they’d built up the tension welt but I hope we soon start getting some answers.
The line from the Influx baddie about how ‘this technology will be free’ was highly intriguing. I mean, obviously Influx are very, very bad, judging from all the stealing debris, kidnapping, murder, and human experimentation, which is probably just the tip of the iceberg. But maybe they have a ‘good’ end goal in mind? Not that that justifies the means, because it doesn’t.
What else? Oh, Sebastian Roche, whose fault it is I’d even heard about this show, appeared in eps 5 and 8! But I hope they give him something to actually do, because so far his acting skills have been completely wasted.
BTW, what even is his persona 2.0, a clone? An alien wearing human skin? Because it appears Agent Brill is dead.
And why is George covering himself with an aluminium foil instead of a blanket? Maybe he’s a clone after all. Or it’s PTSD thing/consequence of reanimation. (Also, I wouldn’t trust Influx to not have lied what they had done to him.)
So many questions, so few (or no) answers.
I see the show is doing poorly ratings-wise, so with my luck it'll probably be cancelled before we get them. Especially considering it's on NBC. Why do I always get invested in shows that have no future? *sigh*
Basically, it has The X Files meet Arrival meet Les Revenants vibes with some international espionage and political games thrown in.
And it is creeptastic – it is creepy at times (well, the first two episodes were, the third not so much), but in the way that I can handle.
The leads are likeable enough and have enough potential for character development to be intriguing.
So, I’m digging it so far and I’ll keep watching (until NBC cancels it or it gets ruined beyond recognition, as it tends to happen with shows I like, but, oh well, a gal has to live a little dangerously sometimes. ;))
I had no time to meta about episodes 10-12, so I’ll just mention a few things I don’t want to forget.
I loved the duo of episodes 9 & 10 with different realities and Bryan and Finola looking for a way back to each other along the Sean and Katherine, though it was a bummer they didn’t remember anything.
So, Bryan is a war criminal and Maddox saved him from prison – that was narratively brilliantly done with foreshadowing in the previous episode’s alternate reality.
I’m sure there were other things of worth, but me and my memory. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now, the finale.
It was so good.
We finally got quite a few answers (even though some questions remain/appeared anew).
As some people suspected, George turned out to be working for Influx. And they want to ‘help’ humanity ‘transcend’ to a higher level of consciousness using the debris. No matter how many individual people they sacrifice in the process. Very philanthropic.
So, that’s what the ‘this technology will be free’ line form earlier in the season, repeated by George, was about. And apparently debris is enabling some sort of mind-reading(something/whatever Otto was capable of doing with Bryan)/telepathy/interconnection between minds/hive consciousness.
George had no qualms about Bryan losing his memory, but Bryan wasn’t affected due to the injections he’s been taking as a precaution since a previous incident with debris involving Garcia and another agent. Good to know that Maddox is actually helping.
Speaking of Maddox, obviously Bryan and Finola decided to tell him everything (just didn’t get to it by the end.)
Meanwhile, it turned out that Maddox’s dealing with the Russians was of personal nature in order to acquire the piece of debris that would help/cure his son.
Just in time, as Julia almost committed suicide.
Damn, now I feel sympathetic towards Maddox.
Though, what did he do with Irina? Probably killed her, I doubt she let him take the debris without a fight of that he let her just walk away.
And then we saw the ball of light find a native American man and followed him into a cave where Seb Roche’s character (Brill or whoever/whatever he/it is) was waiting to ‘begin’ something with either a clone or the original Finola in cryostasis (like the people from the toxic air episode).
And then the episode ended.
And then I couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night (not because of the show)and peeked at twitter, as you may have seen, and found out that NBC cancelled the show.
Which I’d expected, but it still made me angry, probably more that I’d be otherwise because it was after such an intriguing season finale.
Also, yeah, I noticed NBC pulling its old tricks, cancelling shows right after the finale, so they were able to milk all the advertising money from every last view they could. :/ *sigh*
A least it was good while it lasted. It was a really good shown, in which once for a change the suspense didn’t hang on (romantic) relationship drama. And I particularly liked the partnership between Bryan and Finola, which could have perhaps become one of the iconic ones if the show continued.
But, it is what it is. Despite being cancelled, I’m glad I’ve watched it. Maybe it’s even better this way, because it ended on a good note and I’ll have good memories of it instead of it being potentially ruined in the future like it tends to happen with TV shows all too often.
