3 episodes deep into Station 11, I might fallen asleep seeking to watch the display two times. I wasn’t simply annoyed with its self indulgence, I used to be bored.
From the outset, Station 11 is a display that spells out grand ambitions in transparent phrases.
A post-apocalyptic HBO Max miniseries set within the fast aftermath of a perilous and extremely contagious flu, Station 11 is a display a few fictional pandemic — shot, produced and launched all the way through an precise pandemic. However in lots of ways in which pandemic is subservient and unimportant. Station 11 is a display about issues. About giant concepts and subject matters. It is a display about survival. About trauma. About taking shelter within the transitive energy of artwork and the connective tissue of our shared humanity.
Learn extra: Overview: Station 11’s HBO Adaptation Got here at a Bizarre, however Excellent, Time
In different phrases: urgh.
This can be a display that opens with King Lear. A display that makes flagrant use of Shakespeare as a story and framing instrument, but additionally has the gall to position itself on the middle of a grand literary canon.
As soon as once more: urgh. The largest urgh I will be able to muster.
3 episodes deep I jumped into considered one of CNET’s many Slack channels to sell off at the display with my co-workers. It was once self-indulgent. It was once uninteresting. It took itself approach too significantly. It was once top by itself provide. It was once essentially unsuitable compared to a display like, say, Yellowjackets – which masked its personal subject matters of trauma beneath the guise of a crafty and compelling thriller field display.
“Station 11 sucks.” I believe that is what I typed. I used to be mistaken. I could not were extra mistaken.
Simply seven episodes later, on the display’s conclusion, I went crawling again to that very same workplace Slack, on my fingers and knees, to inform everybody that – in truth – Station 11 is among the highest TV presentations I believe I have ever observed in my lifestyles and that each human being alive will have to make efforts to observe it.
So pretentious
Jeevan and Kirsten.
Parrish Lewis/HBO Max
My favourite second in Station 11 happens midway thru episode 9.
Jeevan, one of the most display’s major characters, has been having a look after Kirsten, a kid actress obsessive about a comic book e-book – the titular Station 11. A comic book e-book she carries along with her all over the place as she travels within the post-pandemic international. A comic book e-book that provides her hope in determined instances.
After trekking again to their house base, Kirsten realizes she’s dropped the comedian e-book within the snow. Annoyed, now not rather working out why it issues, Jeevan angrily stomps again into the desert to retrieve it. Throughout the hunt, a wolf assaults him, mauling him part to loss of life. As he crawls on his fingers and knees, combating for survival in excessive subzero temperatures, he stumbles around the comedian e-book, buried within the snow. In entire agony he starts studying it, earlier than tossing it apart, screaming: “IT’S SO PRETENTIOUS!”
It is a shockingly cathartic second. To start with, it is humorous! A superbly timed second of comedy in the middle of a gloomy, visceral second. I laughed out loud. However it is also an acknowledgement, a crystalized second of self consciousness. The display is speaking about itself, without delay to its target market. Sure, Station 11 is pretentious. It is a display actively wrestling with giant concepts – swinging for the fences, navigating the worth of artwork in a global full of struggling.
However Station 11 is additionally self-aware sufficient to understand it is asking so much. Of its target market, of itself as an leisure product. That is essential.
A large ask
Why will have to we care a few tv display? Why will have to any roughly artwork subject? In a global the place I in finding myself drifting clear of so-called “status TV,” Station 11 pressured me to invite myself that query.
Just lately I have been much more likely to eat never-ending, disposable anime, or binge watch feel-good truth presentations like Outdated Sufficient and The Nice British Bake Off. Given what we’ve got all long gone thru over the past two or 3 years, it is been tough to summon the “giant mind power” required to revel in a display like Station 11. A display that forces us to reckon with giant questions and massive concepts.
Station 11 is going in instructions you could now not be expecting.
{Photograph} by means of Ian Watson/HBO Max
That is exactly why I discovered Station 11 so repulsive at first. In the middle of COVID-19, a length of ground-shaking political strife, you might be in point of fact gonna question me to interact with a TV display a few touring troupe of Shakespearean actors appearing Hamlet in a post-pandemic wilderness? That is a large ask.
However Station 11 works as it laws on each imaginable stage. It is so simple as that. It is a well-written display, with nice performances and soundtrack that can hang-out you lengthy after you’ve gotten completed staring at.
Station 11 swings for the fences however hits the ball blank. It takes time to ship on its daring imaginative and prescient, however should you stick thru that preliminary sluggish burn – struggle thru that preliminary repulsion – you’ll be able to be rewarded with a display that has nuanced issues to mention on each “Critical Subject” it dares to broach. This can be a display about households – actual and inherited. It is a display concerning the legacy of shared trauma. A display about artwork as a shelter. If that provides you with the ick, I am getting it. However in an overly actual universe the place we are deep within the desert of our personal ache and struggling, Station 11 is as very important as tv will get.
