![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneWax remembered the name of the book author and the fact that The Stranger, also starring Richard Armitage, was also by him, so we were fully prepared for how wack this was going to be going in. (As much as one can prepare for this sort of thing.)
It was bad. But in that way that silly Thriller/Suspense(Mystery) novels are silly, except a little more than average probably. But this guy is probably silly on purpose. I mean, the galaxy brain levels of silly twists in these stories are not the kind of thing you write in all solemnity.
I would say that The Stranger, which had an extra level of WTF in the final twist, was another degree or two wacker than this one, but in fairly fine degrees. The Stranger: Long-lost secret sister stalking you (2nd to last twist) but who SURPRISE is a benevolent stalker actually (last twist) and saves your life but is now going to just apparently stalk you from afar (epilogue twist)... vs Stay Close: A pair of over-the-top-insane musical-theater-themed teenaged assassin-hitmen on a rampage (who really feel like they fell into the book by mistake out of like a neighboring Doom Patrol or something, and accidentally got 500% stupider on the way due to an unintended reaction with the paper). On the one hand, everything about The Stranger's long-lost secret sibling thing is SO stupid and over-the-top that you're like "Oh, I thought I was watching a completely different (but with just as poor dialogue) genre of tv" when that reveal comes out; so it being central to the plot kind of makes the whole plot collapse. None of it would have happened (and there's like twenty other twists and many of them wind up being dead ends) without this laughable premise, which makes it feel more Completely Fake as you're watching the end credits roll. In contrast, Stay Close's teenaged assassins are so out of place that they pretty much switch the genre of the show back and forth in a whiplash-inducing manner every time they come on and off screen, and they appear evenly spaced throughout the show - but nothing else in it manages to match them for tone or register or mood or anything. As a result, the wtf moments start earlier in Stay Close, but ultimately they are just Weirdness Icing on top of the cake and pretty much entirely irrelevant to the plot, just there to get underfoot in a particularly dissonant manner. So when you lean back at the end, the main thrust of the story doesn't seem completely bananas, in spite of the banana garnish. Underneath the twists, Stay Close is ultimately about the works of a single not-that-unusual serial killer, and the connections of the protagonists' troubles to the serial killer are logical and plausible (even if many of the twists aren't).
There were some good performances in spite of this show's bad dialogue, and Eddie Izzard was there being an absolute joy. Cush Jumbo is very good as the female lead, which is necessary because she has to bear a lot of POV and objectively unwise decisions that are nail-biting to watch in a thriller, if understandable in context. James Nesbitt also appears as a pathetic divorced One of the Good Cops, and has a couple of scenes with Richard Armitage that are a nice little dwarf reunion for them - one where Richard Armitage inexplicably (well, enragedly/stupidly?) rushes straight into his arms as soon as he sees him show up because he's just SO eager for a fight. The weakest point, aside from the dialogue and the plot I mean, is definitely that the character Armitage is playing is clearly supposed to be a great deal sadder and more gaunt, dirty, sleazy, and disreputable than Armitage could be without going on a very unhealthy diet for a while first. They also don't go so far as to artificially dirty his hair and clothes. They still use lines that must be from the book of other characters talking about how skeezy and grimy he looks, and like... at no point does he look like he couldn't be in a clothing catalog. (And also he's supposedly like, a sad sack washed-up loser, but there's totally an Eames chair in his apartment, which like... why doesn't he just sell it then?)
It was bad. But in that way that silly Thriller/Suspense(Mystery) novels are silly, except a little more than average probably. But this guy is probably silly on purpose. I mean, the galaxy brain levels of silly twists in these stories are not the kind of thing you write in all solemnity.
I would say that The Stranger, which had an extra level of WTF in the final twist, was another degree or two wacker than this one, but in fairly fine degrees. The Stranger: Long-lost secret sister stalking you (2nd to last twist) but who SURPRISE is a benevolent stalker actually (last twist) and saves your life but is now going to just apparently stalk you from afar (epilogue twist)... vs Stay Close: A pair of over-the-top-insane musical-theater-themed teenaged assassin-hitmen on a rampage (who really feel like they fell into the book by mistake out of like a neighboring Doom Patrol or something, and accidentally got 500% stupider on the way due to an unintended reaction with the paper). On the one hand, everything about The Stranger's long-lost secret sibling thing is SO stupid and over-the-top that you're like "Oh, I thought I was watching a completely different (but with just as poor dialogue) genre of tv" when that reveal comes out; so it being central to the plot kind of makes the whole plot collapse. None of it would have happened (and there's like twenty other twists and many of them wind up being dead ends) without this laughable premise, which makes it feel more Completely Fake as you're watching the end credits roll. In contrast, Stay Close's teenaged assassins are so out of place that they pretty much switch the genre of the show back and forth in a whiplash-inducing manner every time they come on and off screen, and they appear evenly spaced throughout the show - but nothing else in it manages to match them for tone or register or mood or anything. As a result, the wtf moments start earlier in Stay Close, but ultimately they are just Weirdness Icing on top of the cake and pretty much entirely irrelevant to the plot, just there to get underfoot in a particularly dissonant manner. So when you lean back at the end, the main thrust of the story doesn't seem completely bananas, in spite of the banana garnish. Underneath the twists, Stay Close is ultimately about the works of a single not-that-unusual serial killer, and the connections of the protagonists' troubles to the serial killer are logical and plausible (even if many of the twists aren't).
There were some good performances in spite of this show's bad dialogue, and Eddie Izzard was there being an absolute joy. Cush Jumbo is very good as the female lead, which is necessary because she has to bear a lot of POV and objectively unwise decisions that are nail-biting to watch in a thriller, if understandable in context. James Nesbitt also appears as a pathetic divorced One of the Good Cops, and has a couple of scenes with Richard Armitage that are a nice little dwarf reunion for them - one where Richard Armitage inexplicably (well, enragedly/stupidly?) rushes straight into his arms as soon as he sees him show up because he's just SO eager for a fight. The weakest point, aside from the dialogue and the plot I mean, is definitely that the character Armitage is playing is clearly supposed to be a great deal sadder and more gaunt, dirty, sleazy, and disreputable than Armitage could be without going on a very unhealthy diet for a while first. They also don't go so far as to artificially dirty his hair and clothes. They still use lines that must be from the book of other characters talking about how skeezy and grimy he looks, and like... at no point does he look like he couldn't be in a clothing catalog. (And also he's supposedly like, a sad sack washed-up loser, but there's totally an Eames chair in his apartment, which like... why doesn't he just sell it then?)
