Welcome everyone, to the penultimate episode of Now and Then, Here and There! This week sees… well, it sees a lot. Bullets fly, people die and Hamdo re-enters the picture. Is it any good? Lets jump in and find out.
Overall I think this was an interesting week. It doesn’t add anything as a follow up to last weeks topic regarding abortion, children, pro-life etc, but I think that’s for the best. I stand by what I said last week, how I didn’t agree with its politics or what it was trying to say, so moving on was probably the best option. The worst thing to come out of that was how, thematically, it feels a little disjointed. But once you get into the episode and start experiencing what is happening I think the shift is negligible. Basically what I’m saying is: Now and Then had a small bump last week but we are now back on track and stuff is happening. So lets talk about this weeks tragedies.
While this week doesn’t continue the question of abortion and childbirth in a dying world, it does bring us back to the thread about children in war. Doubling down on how it is the young and innocent, the children and those to come, who suffer the most. Whether they are transformed by lies and conditioning into monsters like Nabuca, robbed of their families like Soon or die young trying to do the right thing like Boo. And you know what? I liked it. Not the child murder, that’d be weird, but the way the message was conveyed in the story. I’ve suspected for a long time that not everyone, if anyone, would get out of this story alive. But I always suspected it would be Hamdo killing everyone. To have the children tearing each other apart while he watches from his ivory tower? It’s much more effecting.
Speaking Hamdo, Now and Then made an interesting parallel between him and Elamba. Sort of giving him screen time, some more depth, without actually showing him on screen. The way Elamba’s fear and desire for revenge drove him to ever greater acts of violence, even going so far as to shoot an innocent doctor just for disagreeing with him, seems to point towards Hamdo’s own descent through paranoia. It makes you wonder what Hamdo was like before… all this. More than that though, what it does is make clear that Elamba was a bad guy. That whatever side you are on, victim or aggressor, if you sink past a certain point you can become just as evil as what you are fighting against. And at that point you have to wonder, is it worth winning if this is what you have to do?
Moving on, lets talk about Shu for a moment. I’ve said multiple times that I want Shu to have a “Come to Jesus” moment. For his naive ideals to be challenged and, ultimately, remade into something greater. And it seems like I’m about to get that. Because this week we see, for the first time, Shu snap and seem to give in to anger. And for a pretty good reason if you ask me, what with Soon’s death! The question becomes though: What will Shu do? Will he end up killing Nabuca, betraying his own ideals and falling to the same kind of evil that permeates the rest of the show? Will Lala Ru be proven right in her almost Nihilistic view of the word? I dunno. But I’m curious how it’s going to wrap up.
As for what I think? I’m pretty sure everyone is gonna die. Sara, Lala Ru, Hamdo, Abelia, Shu, Nabuca, Tabool, everyone. I don’t think that Now and Then will have a happy ending. Instead, everyone will die and it will be a sort of… “This is the end result of war” sort of thing. A cautionary tale rather than a hopeful one about overcoming humanities baser nature. I don’t know how exactly this will happen, maybe some kind of malfunction in Hellywood blowing it, and Zari Bars, sky high. Maybe Hamdo even wins completely and only our heroes die! Whatever happens, the main thing is that I don’t believe Now and Then will have anything close to a happy ending at this point. Doesn’t mean it can’t be good though.
So yeah, all in all another good episode of Now and Then. When its not pushing some icky anti-autonomy politics it remains a good, thought provoking series. Some may say that I’m letting my politics get in the way of enjoying that part of the show. But there are some things that I just can’t let go of, and this is one of them. Still, what’s important is that Now and Then is more than just a single off-color political stance. And this episode is a great example of the larger message that Now and Then is trying to convey. One of that disparages war because of its effects on the future. Because, in war, there truly are no winners. And the only thing awaits us is an early grave if we keep down it. That I can get behind.
Apologies for being a little rambly and out of it, busy day today. In good news though I got my 5k time down to sub-30 minutes, so theres hope for me to get back in shape yet. Onwards to the 10k dream!
War creates monsters on both sides.