Alice In Borderlands “Episode 8”

I was thinking I would take a break between seasons to cover the last batch of episodes of Doom Patrol, but that series isn’t back for another week, so either I do nothing for this Friday slot, or I save Doom Patrol for later.

I more or less did the later thing for Succession‘s final season, so I think I’ll do that.  Might as well finish this show and…wait, why does Netflix say there’s another season coming?

OK, who is the witch?

You know what?  I don’t think it matters much.  What matters is that, aside from one or two outright psychos, none of the security people are really happy about killing everyone else to find Momoko’s killer.  Is it Aguni, the former Yakuza soldier?  The guy who killed the Hatter?

Um, no.

OK, while the plot developments here on who is running the game, complete with in-game players whose job is to be “dealers” and make life difficult for other players, is cool and all, the thing that has been making this show what it is is the psychological distress the show has been putting its characters through.  Aguni did kill Hatter, but it was self-defense, and now he hates himself.  He didn’t kill that Momoko girl.  She actually killed herself because she and her friend were “dealers,” and revealing that gets the friend killed by one of those sky lasers.

No, the thing is no one is really doing well in this game.  Arisu recognizes what’s going on with Aguni because he went through the same thing when another Hearts game left him the sole survivor of one of his games.  Aguni was set up as something of a villain within the game, but he, well, isn’t.  He’s damaged as much as the others.  He just looks scarier.  He’ll be the one to tackle one of his psycho ex-followers when the guy starts shooting anyone who tries to toss Momoko’s real killer (Momoko herself) into the fire and win the game.

Of course, this action only appears to reveal who is behind the game as the videos Momoko and her friend made showed a control room, but the people in there are also all dead.  More players.  And since there was this playing card thing going on, and one woman, Mira,  from the Beach apparently is a gamemaster, and that playing card thing is over…but now the face cards are here, represented by blimps from the looks of things.

So…this was the easy part right?

I don’t know.  It’s amazing these people aren’t all curled up in balls crying all the time.  When Usagi wants to punish the survivors from Aguni’s group, Arisu stops her in time to see one of the armed men try to kill himself, failing only because his gun was out of ammunition.  The fantastic, dangerous setting is mostly here to show the psychological mettle of the various players, and it isn’t the sort of game people can just breeze through unless they’re a psycho or something.  The games brought me in.  The psychological realness kept me here.

Bring on the face cards.