Yep same view as Kestla. It wasn’t the is he isn’t he. It just wasn’t very good. Perhaps another Covid-19 issue.

I'm glad Ted didn't have a stroke at the end. The way he was sort of winking at Carmichael made me start to worry he'd drop to the floor on the way out.

yourfavouriteuncle wrote:

Fwiw. I’m thinking this all may end badly, teeing it up
for one final triumphant season. Steve put on gardening leave, Kate getting demoted, the guy in Spain being not really dead, Hastings having to retire. That kinda ending.

I still think this will kinda happen

Yep. Got sent a load of memes last night including that one.

The biggest problem with the last two seasons is that the show started to be written and made for the fans, the chat rooms and the podcasts.  Everything had to have a link back to a previous season or previous character.  
The early seasons weren’t troubled by this, obviously, but even the mid-seasons kinda only allowed little links to creep in - things that, when you saw them or spotted them, made you feel even more invested in the whole thing.  These last two series have basically felt like massive ARG’s for the REAL FANS and it’s lost its whole soul because of it.  The end started with that shitty chase and Dot lying there, moments from death, clicking away morse code with his one working arm and, once they’d decided to end that great series with that shit, (“By God, he’s using his one useful arm to send us a message about a man called H”) i kinda worried they’d go down the fandom route.  As discussed by Brooks elsewhere, fans of anything can’t be trusted with shit, so to start building your whole show about teasing them, giving them more of what you think they want, listening to people even stupider than me, is just an ever diminishing dead end filled with discarded story arcs, implausible character developments, actors believing the hype and becoming pastiches of their earlier work, and a tangle of shit even you, the inventor of the whole thing, can’t keep a film handle on anymore. 

Saying all that I liked the very very end of the show - it seemed to me to grasp a little of the exaggerated reality that was so good about most of the show.  It left things hanging and unfinished with enough worry and hope there.  The ending may also work as a nice clean down before passing over to some new blood?  Dunbar is loveable but if ever there’s a long term jobbing actor leaning into his characters persona too heavily then i guess, unfortunately, that’s him.  Likewise with Mercurio, who stumbled onto bottled lightening and then followed that spark down so many wonky paths i doubt even he fully understands what he’s written any more.

So yeah, an alright end to a section of the overall show that has felt creatively compromised since it became apparent the head was chomping down on the tail far too fucking fast. Mother Mary of God!

Anyway there's only one H round here.

I quite liked the ‘banality of evil’ route it went down.

I seem to be alone in that, if social media is to be believed.

People want dramatic escapism and who can blame them.

I like the ending they went for because the online reaction has been glorious. The show lost its way in recent years and an earth shattering wrap up wouldn't have dragged it back to the toppest of tiers for me. Enjoyed the rollercoaster but laughing at other people's grimacing faces afterwards has probably been the best bit. So many people are LIVID about this.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

The show lost its way in recent years and 

Im up to S5 now.

Binging the lot close together I can confirm the show goes fully mental in comparison to the start. S1 is fairly grounded, there are a few bits of S2 that become a bit OTT like throwing someone out the window.

I think the jump the shark moment for me was Dot hanging Will Mellor midway through S3. After that it just goes nutso.

Bah, didn't want to spoiler all that. Spoilers on desktop don't seem to work properly at all.

Buckles has featured in, IIRC, 3 of the 6 series. He’s always presented as incompetent at his job, so the twist that he was 1 of 4 disparate leaders was a decent one for me. When he was interviewed earlier in s6, I said to my wife that he’s not rotten, but just an idiot. Mercurio did a good job there in my view. I was fooled.

I really don’t know what people wanted from the end? It was either going to be a Big Bang, or a more subtle finale. They went with subtle, because the writer has been trying to say that corruption is isn’t always glamorous or coordinated, and it’s everywhere.

Like I said before, I thought it was very smart.

No-one wanted the last bad guy standing to be Buttons.

Kow wrote:

Because the series has always ramped up tension, presented H as some big name, mastermind, manipulating boss, narrowly evading escape, and ended each season on some big note, we expected something bigger. This was a damp squib ending. My reaction was basically a nonplussed so that's it? They seemed to just throw together some quick way of tying up loose ends too that was all pretty unsatisfying.

Yeah, what Kow said.

I can appreciate the subtle message of corruption coming in many forms etc, but it just seems out of keeping with the direction of the show. It's gained in popularity with every season, to a point that this one almost became a national event, discussed across many platforms and demographics. To build it up to such an extent and then to seemingly cram things into the last episode just feels anticlimactic.

It's not who H was that I necessarily have an issue with, it's just the way it was revealed.

This sounds shit, you lot should just watch The Shield instead.