Let me back up a bit. With all of the buzz surrounding Netflix's latest original series (how great is Netflix? Seriously), you'd think that Sense8 would be the online network's greatest triumph since House of Cards. Like Cards and Orange is the New Black, Sense8 tried to stand out by changing the game. Its writers and producers, the Wachowski brothers, conceived of the series as a vehicle to break down barriers that plague science fiction.
While it may be true that some of the lesser science fiction serials and movies tend to evade issues of politics, sexuality, and gender, it can be agued that the most lauded works within the genre are steeped in the divisive politics of their respective eras. Star Wars broke down race and gender barriers, and the rebooted Battlestar Galactica made analogies to the war in Iraq and rigged elections their foundation for story telling. In fact, with the exception of some of sci-fi's hokiest incarnations, the genre is often the first to tread into the taboo.
Sense8 certainly can't be faulted for its attempt to join the ranks of such groundbreaking events, but what it does in the arena of political and social advancement is two dimensional tokenism. Unfortunately, the hype surrounding Sense8 is fixated on its cast, not its content. Namely, (SPOILERS AHEAD)...
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...one of the main characters is a closeted gay male soap opera actor, one is a lesbian played by a transgender actress, and a supporting character, another lesbian. That's great, but that doesn't tell Sense8's story.
Beyond its 21st Century cast, Sense8 is a story of eight individuals scattered throughout the world, psychically connected by what we believe to be an angel, played by Daryl Hannah. After the characters, the "sensates" are connected, we're carried from location to location learning a little about each of them, but ultimately not enough to care about more than one or two.
Dramatic music unbefitting each scene overshadows an underdeveloped storyline and weak dialogue. After you strip away the poor direction, we're left with a flat narrative dripping in arrogance. You'll easily recognize elements of the brothers' greatest project to date, the Matrix franchise, in each of Sense8's characters.
But the Matrix, a novel idea for its era, was ultimately killed of any value by its sequels. And Sense8, being somewhere between network television and a miniseries, doesn't have the bandwidth to send us on a trip across the big screen, even a bad one.
Seemingly relying on their Hollywood reputation, the Wachowski brothers don't just try to take science fiction to a realm of gender neutral sexual ambiguity, they try to use science fiction as a vehicle for pious melodrama, something that hasn't been done with moderate success since Oliver Stone's Wild Palms. Only in Sense8, the campy comedic relief of Palms is replaced with a dull lecture that makes Crash look like an Adam Sandler movie. Sense8 is essentially castrated of the science and fiction that makes the genre exciting, leaving us with dramatic vignettes that make no sense.
Exactly one hour into the series premier, something exciting finally happens, presumably in time to make you want to watch the next installment.
It's difficult to tell if the premise is even worthy or knows where it's going, but there is potential in the mystery. How are these eight tethered together, and more importantly, why? But being left with a cast of stereotypes from the school of first-world hard-knocks, it's hard to care, and you're left to assume that the angel brought them together because no one else on earth should be forced to spend more than five minutes with one of these tired archetypes.
What has made Netflix so great is, to date, we haven't been delivered cliches. Streaming original content requires an advanced level of writing and direction that can't rely on weekly focus groups. Releasing an entire series in one day is daring, and also risky, much like a blockbuster movie. Netflix caters to an audience that demands the unexpected, and often even its main characters are unlikable. But they are unlikable in a dynamic and interesting way.
Netflix is bloody, it's sexy, it's provocative, and offensive. Its audience has network fatigue, they're intellectuals who understand that humans - even the most super - are flawed. But from Daredevil to Hemlock Grove, flawed as our heroes and anti-heroes are - we understand enough about them to understand why we identify with them, or why we revile them. Until Sense8, Netflix hasn't delivered a character disliked simply because they're an annoying cliche.
What Sense8 has exposed are the growing pains of streaming original content. While some originals like Daredevil have proven that they can successfully engage us in what is essentially a pre-released series, or a thirteen hour movie, Sense8 proves the need for network consultation on behalf of writers and directors who've lost touch with their target audience.
Even Netflix's most widely panned originals such as Hemlock Grove manage to engage our binge-watcing curiosity by being silly, grotesque, or just plain addictive. Were the premier of Sense8 aired on a major network, even the CW, it's questionable whether a second episode would have ever aired.
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