Something happens to great tv series in their last season. Things become rushed. Plot-lines get dropped or lost. Panic seems to set in and a new character is often introduced when time is already short to deal with current story lines. Perhaps the pressure of winding up with a dynamic ending is all too much.
Something certainly happened to "Call my Agent" in this supposedly final lap. (There is talk of a new run. How will that work in the Paris of today? Masks everywhere, and you can't get into a bar without a vax-pass?)
Anyway, the show plummeted, going out with a dead dog and a whimper. The clever format of running a light, frivolous story about a movie star over the top of agency intrigues and relationship dramas , started suddenly to pall. The celeb plots, which had often verged on slapstick, now often seemed silly and trite. That might be because the audience now knew the agents so well that their characters' conflicts and heartbreaks were demanding more and more time. And time, in a final series, is something a story-teller does not have.
Yes, it is fun to see Sigourney Weaver speaking French and doing the Lindy Hop but maybe, just maybe, we had a little too much of that when disaster was looming over ASK. And that disaster was not averted. Arlette's dog died and so did the agency. Hicham turned out the lights and everyone went home.
The character of Hicham is a perfect example of plots that got lost, things that just petered out. We were introduced to this strutting, preening alpha male in series 2 when Andrea returned to her home town where we saw how ordinary and provincial this powerhouse of a woman's origins were. The one person who knew this was her old school pal, Hicham. "You've still got the same nose," is one of his first remarks to her. When he bails out the agency and replaces the cosy, avuncular boss of whom we had just a glimpse, well things were going to get interesting.
We could not know how interesting until he and Andrea indulged in some, apparently, very hot sex during a failed menage a trois - and Andrea found herself pregnant. And here is where plot-lines started to get depressingly lost, and opportunites for drama and probably some humour were thrown out the window.
The story moved between series 2 & 3. We left Andrea with a positive pregnancy test and rejoined her as heavily pregnant as it is possible to be without giving birth to an elephant. And, in the agency, there is no mention of who the father is. Not once. There is barely any curiousity. In a hospital corridor just after the birth, she admits to senior-citizen agent, Arlette, that the new baby is the result of a menage a trois but does not want to pursue it, and Arlette accepts that. Nothing more is said in the office. Their aggressively lesbian colleague was waddling around the office - and everyone seemed to assume turkey baster . Perhaps it doesn't matter because tough driven Andrea & winsome girlfriend Colette are signed up to be the 2 mothers. All very sweet and touching - and very much in line with Netflix's view of the world....
I would argue that it did matter. Apart from anything else, some powerful scenes could have been written around the tight-knit agents' discovery that the two most macho characters in the office have produced a baby together! Did I miss something? Was I in the bathroom or was this never even mentioned? What a waste of some potentially great dialogue and drama.
The writing in the earlier seasons seems to indicate that someone on the writing team saw this going somewhere. After Andrea gives birth on the office floor and is whisked off to hospital, a closing scene shows an empty office and a sobbing Hicham, frantically washing the carpet where the birth took place. That was a sad and troubling moment but it was barely followed up. A lonely Hicham comes to Andrea's flat one evening to see his daughter. He takes her in his arms with great tenderness, then lies down on the floor with Andrea while they play with her. Hicham later shows his human side by renouncing his claims to fatherhood of the child, and leaving her to be raised by her 2 mothers - all very sweet but it makes for a rather insipid conclusion to that plot-line.
Knowing Hicham's scheming, ruthless character, I had suspected that he was playing a long game and would strike again with some devious plan to gain some element of control. But in the mad rush of a final season there was no time for that. All he really got to do in the finale was get in an elevator to go out and try for help from the banks, fail, apparently though the result is never mentioned, then turn out those lights.
Something went wrong with the tone of the last series. Somehow the wit and originality faded and got replaced by a more trite and predictable feel. It seems the series creator left leading to changes in the writing team. It showed.
Something certainly happened to "Call my Agent" in this supposedly final lap. (There is talk of a new run. How will that work in the Paris of today? Masks everywhere, and you can't get into a bar without a vax-pass?)
Anyway, the show plummeted, going out with a dead dog and a whimper. The clever format of running a light, frivolous story about a movie star over the top of agency intrigues and relationship dramas , started suddenly to pall. The celeb plots, which had often verged on slapstick, now often seemed silly and trite. That might be because the audience now knew the agents so well that their characters' conflicts and heartbreaks were demanding more and more time. And time, in a final series, is something a story-teller does not have.
Yes, it is fun to see Sigourney Weaver speaking French and doing the Lindy Hop but maybe, just maybe, we had a little too much of that when disaster was looming over ASK. And that disaster was not averted. Arlette's dog died and so did the agency. Hicham turned out the lights and everyone went home.
The character of Hicham is a perfect example of plots that got lost, things that just petered out. We were introduced to this strutting, preening alpha male in series 2 when Andrea returned to her home town where we saw how ordinary and provincial this powerhouse of a woman's origins were. The one person who knew this was her old school pal, Hicham. "You've still got the same nose," is one of his first remarks to her. When he bails out the agency and replaces the cosy, avuncular boss of whom we had just a glimpse, well things were going to get interesting.
We could not know how interesting until he and Andrea indulged in some, apparently, very hot sex during a failed menage a trois - and Andrea found herself pregnant. And here is where plot-lines started to get depressingly lost, and opportunites for drama and probably some humour were thrown out the window.
The story moved between series 2 & 3. We left Andrea with a positive pregnancy test and rejoined her as heavily pregnant as it is possible to be without giving birth to an elephant. And, in the agency, there is no mention of who the father is. Not once. There is barely any curiousity. In a hospital corridor just after the birth, she admits to senior-citizen agent, Arlette, that the new baby is the result of a menage a trois but does not want to pursue it, and Arlette accepts that. Nothing more is said in the office. Their aggressively lesbian colleague was waddling around the office - and everyone seemed to assume turkey baster . Perhaps it doesn't matter because tough driven Andrea & winsome girlfriend Colette are signed up to be the 2 mothers. All very sweet and touching - and very much in line with Netflix's view of the world....
I would argue that it did matter. Apart from anything else, some powerful scenes could have been written around the tight-knit agents' discovery that the two most macho characters in the office have produced a baby together! Did I miss something? Was I in the bathroom or was this never even mentioned? What a waste of some potentially great dialogue and drama.
The writing in the earlier seasons seems to indicate that someone on the writing team saw this going somewhere. After Andrea gives birth on the office floor and is whisked off to hospital, a closing scene shows an empty office and a sobbing Hicham, frantically washing the carpet where the birth took place. That was a sad and troubling moment but it was barely followed up. A lonely Hicham comes to Andrea's flat one evening to see his daughter. He takes her in his arms with great tenderness, then lies down on the floor with Andrea while they play with her. Hicham later shows his human side by renouncing his claims to fatherhood of the child, and leaving her to be raised by her 2 mothers - all very sweet but it makes for a rather insipid conclusion to that plot-line.
Knowing Hicham's scheming, ruthless character, I had suspected that he was playing a long game and would strike again with some devious plan to gain some element of control. But in the mad rush of a final season there was no time for that. All he really got to do in the finale was get in an elevator to go out and try for help from the banks, fail, apparently though the result is never mentioned, then turn out those lights.
Something went wrong with the tone of the last series. Somehow the wit and originality faded and got replaced by a more trite and predictable feel. It seems the series creator left leading to changes in the writing team. It showed.
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