TexAgs91 said:
Yeah, I get what happened, and to put what I said above another way, I'd be fine with it if I were watching the series after it had been completed.
But when these vibe episodes come, I'm just thinking about how they're slow rolling the rest of the season to leave us with Manousos appearing at her door step, and then end credits and a year long wait.
Hopefully that event happens but we get more that we weren't expecting, otherwise it's like the season has already ended and we're just watching everything we knew of at the end of the episode before last play out for 3 episodes.
I'm more and more convinced that Carol and Manousos are going to clash at first. When Carol made the video that Manousos finally watched, she hated the Others just as much as Manousos. The only difference was, her hatred was partly expressed by making them do her bidding (thus being in contact with them) while Manousos flat out refused contact. Carol also needed to engage the Others in order to study them and thus try to find a way to reverse the virus. Manousos was trying in his own way (scanning the radio stations), but again, in utter solitude. Still, Carol and Manousos' hatred/goals were the same.
Now?
Manousos is going to show up (my guess at some point in the second half of the next episode), only to find a different Carol than the one in the video. A somewhat defeated Carol. An exhausted Carol. A Carol who has found a way to tolerate the Others/co-exist with them in her own way… which is almost assuredly not going to sit well with Manousos.
IF that ends up being the case, Gilligan likely isn't going to save that clash for season two. Or, rather, we'll at least see the beginnings of their clash play out this season, and then maybe see the rest of it over the first few episodes of next season. I say this because that clash is too juicy, and lends itself too much to Carol's character arc
this season, to be paused then resolved next season. In other words, any cliffhanger is more likely to be plot centric, not mid-character-arc centric, if that makes sense.
We need to see the "cost" of Carol "choosing" the Others THIS season, through Manousos's eyes, for any of this to pay off in satisfying fashion, and for her to be able to come full circle before the season ends.
Think of it this way… essentially, the job of a writer is to play God to your characters, testing their moral fortitude by throwing challenge after challenge at them, ultimately having them come out the other end a changed person. And right now, to that end, it appears to me as if Gilligan is testing Carol's RESOLVE. She's too lonely and too desperate to keep fighting, to keep rallying, to keep trying to find a cure. So she gives in and accepts the Others, if only because of how much she needs that hug, even though she almost assuredly still begrudges them deep down.
That said, if you had to name one, what is the one quality Manousos represents above all? What did half of this episode spend underlining emphatically? Because I would say it's, not coincidentally… his RESOLVE. In other words, thematically speaking, Manousos is Carol's resolve marching across half the planet to get to her, and then she's ultimately going to have to choose whether to embrace that resolve again or not. And my point is, I don't think Gilligan is going to save that choice for season two. IMO, in this scenario, the better season one "cliffhanger" is Carol finally "waking" from her stupor to embrace Manousos' mission/point-of-view - to embrace her RESOLVE again - and then, at THAT point, we cut to black, so to speak, heading into season two.
Then again, seeing as I'm not nearly as seasoned as Gilligan when it comes to this stuff, maybe he has something even better planned. I'm not saying I'm right - chances are I'm wrong - but this is all my current read to the best of my expertise.
