Carole & Tuesday – 09 [Dancing Queen]

Episode 09 of Carole & Tuesday is essentially Brightest Mars part 2, as we spend an entire episode to the bottom half of the bracket. This is where I wish the staff spends that much attention to details to its writing, rather than music writing, because all the songs played in this episode are featured in full performances, and good ones on top of that. Angela’s performance, unfortunately, is amongst my least favorite one. It screams “Top 40” material for me. At many turns, I could see the show set itself up for some surprise payoff: like it could go the opposite way to make Cybelle the winner, for instance; or how Cybelle’s obsession can affect Tuesday in a more significant way, but they’re not the case at all. Instead, the whole thing plays out rather predictably, with Angela proves herself to be more “serious” in her music than the judges initially thought. But the issue with that is that, as we the audiences follow Angela right where she switches career, there’s little development from here to indicate that she’s actually serious about music at all. On a similar note, I was expecting the AI judge to comment about her music (as her music is monitored by the AI freak composer), but turned out he didn’t leave any comment at all. I believe he’ll be more critical later on but for now he works as comedic relief at best.

Otherwise, we have a rather fun episode of the remaining contestants showing their fangs. Hilarious and misguided in similar measure, the Mermaid plays a song consists entirely of swear words. Imagine what would have been to listen to this song with censored version: all we hear will be an uninterrupted beep. They say that this song says who they are, a gender-ambiguous state, but for me it’s more like their attitude towards the rest. But the tune is charming nonetheless. At the risk of taking these characters lightly (I do think the show is guilty of that), there’s still a fine craft to the songwriting there. The same can be said for GGK (I believe she’s based from real life FKA Twigs) and Cybelle’s songs, which have mysterious air, dreamy and exactly my kind of songs. In a perfect world, Cybelle’s performance would beat Angela’s at any time.

There are some hints towards other development Carole & Tuesday might tackle in the future. Earlier when we hear about Carole’s mother press, she mentioned the fact that the Earth has cast a shadow upon Mars (or so my sub implies). I don’t even know what she means but if it were a life-changing event, this thread might be tangled with Carole & Tuesday in the future (remember the “8 miniutes that changed Mars” bit). It’s also worth noting that Tao is noticing our girls’ talents, more as he notices the non-AI sound from our duo, which will add as a fuel for more rivalry between them and Angela. Gut and Angela’s Mama has some nice bounce off as managers from each side, but they again play more for laugh. Lastly, I like the way Cybelle controls over Tuesday, which makes a nice point that Tuesday has to voice up her own opinion, even if that’s a rejection. The factor that left me unsatisfied, however, is that this conflict is resolved way too quickly and slightly that it feels underwritten and awkward.