1899 (Netflix) - Season Review: Watching TV Episodically vs. Binging

A show that seems primed for episodic viewing and engagement rubs up against Netflix's binge model in frustrating ways. Also, I absolutely adored 1899.

By the third episode of Netflix’s Multilingual Psychological Horror Period Drama 1899—a show by the creators of Dark (Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, a writer-director duo and relationship goals)—patterns of episodic storytelling began to emerge. Each episode starts with a character having a horrific nightmare / flashback / something else, only to be told to “wake up” as the camera closes in on their eyes filled with strange pyramidal symbols. The connections to my favourite ever drama, LOST, are plentiful: eyes, closeups of eyes, flashbacks, a focus on a specific character each episode, diverse multilingual castmembers, puzzle-box mysteries including literal hatches, etc etc etc. As a Broadcast drama, LOST pioneered a kind of serialized storytelling that still worked within the confines of episodic television. With character-centric episodes and flashbacks, LOST told stories that connected themes and development across time and space to a broader Serialized Plot. In the era of Binging, a Netflix drama like 1899 loses some of the contours (and Discourse) enabled by an episodic approach.

We are, of course, also in the era of the backlash to the backlash; where once I loved binging content, more and more, I hear from friends and critics that they long for the days of episodic engagement, where we could sit with and discuss a show with others ‘round the watercooler or live on Twitter.¹ Some even argue that the binge model may be bad for TV storytelling, since binging rarely leads to the engagement that weekly content can generate (unless your name is Squid Game or Stranger Things), and buzz wears off between seasons (as does the ability to remember basically anything about what happened). A show like 1899, filled with complex twists and turns, cliffhangers, and mysteries, is the kind of show that works really well to get people to binge, but that could have, storywise, benefited from a more distinctive episodic release schedule.

Don’t get me wrong - I absolutely adored 1899. It’s thrilling, weird, affecting, and it throws every genre trope at the wall in strange and interesting ways. I’m really looking forward to a second season (should the Netflix Gods smile on viewers); I honestly have no idea where the show will take us from here, which is exhilarating!

Character-Centric Storytelling: Mild Spoilers Ahead

Unsurprisingly, Episodes 1 & 2 open on our main duo: Maura Franklin (neuroscientist, likely the key to unpacking the mysteries of the ship and this world)² and Eyk Larsen (Captain of the Kerberos), respectively—see how they’re positioned in the above promo photo!? Episode 3 cements that pattern by shifting to a secondary character, Ling Yi (a Chinese woman dressed as a Japanese woman being exploited by an English woman). If it wasn’t clear before—this narrative device could have ended with just the two principal protagonists—choosing to focus on a character somewhat apart from the central drama helped turn this into a pattern for longer-term storytelling. And, of course, this is how LOST helped deepen its large ensemble. Episodes 4 and 6 focus on Jérome (featuring Lucien) and Tove (featuring her family), respectively, while Episode 5 returns to Maura for more adventures in a psychiatric ward.³ Again, this mirrors how LOST treated its extended cast, with more flashbacks given to central figures like Jack and Kate (again, and again, and again, and sometimes too often again).

Character-centric episodes, even in a show dropped season by season, lend themselves well to thinking about the themes and context of each chapter alone. However, moving through each episode this quickly can make it hard to remember what each episode, on its own merits, has to offer. 1899 may be a show that owes a lot to LOST,⁴ but its streaming-era length (8 episodes instead of a traditional 20-25) and all-at-once release schedule mean consuming and engaging with these shows very differently. The season length also means we can’t actually get a ‘flashback’ for every character, even as the fast-paced plot driving forward the whole series continues to perhaps over-emphasize characters like Eyk and Maura in someone else’s episode.

It also impacts how I write about a show like 1899; while I could try publishing weekly writeups, most viewers will have binged way before I finish. It means I’m writing this overall reflection on TV storytelling, rather than taking time to make the thematic connections I mentioned above that are such a strength of episodic releases. It also means I’m struggling to balance spoilers against unspecific analysis. With binge-viewing, audiences don’t necessarily watch content at the same pace, making it harder to casually chat about a show unless everyone has watched the whole season.

And so, with that, follow Maura down to SPOILERS FOR THE END OF THE SEASON

Welcome to Spoiler Corner, a space for people who’ve both finished 1899 (or don’t mind me saying things about the ending) and who read this far into a lengthy essay mostly on how television airs and is analyzed and stuff. But what about theories, you ask!? Or characters!? GREAT questions, dear readers, subscribers, friends, and those of you reverse googling images featured in this article. What about theories and character!?

What is even happening!? As the season evolved, so many sci-fi tropes were offered up as solutions to the mysteries. Bermuda Triangles! Brainwashing! Time Travel! Aliens! Elaborate Experiments! Egypt? Simulations in Virtual Reality! Colony Ships!⁵ It's a lot to take in, and raises so many more questions about what might come next.

1. How much characterization was real as opposed to imposed by the simulation?⁶

2. Who controls the simulation, for what purpose, and what are their motivations?

3. Now that Maura is ‘free,’ does she have her memories back? Is she the baddie!?

It’s the first question that interests me most. If this scenario is a fiction constructed via false or excised memories, what does that mean for who they are, fundamentally? For example, 1) is Eyk a substance user; 2) does the experiment demonstrate that he’s the kind of person who—given the circumstances—would turn to drinking; or 3) is his alcohol consumption a product of a programmed personality? Which story elements are rooted in truths (maybe Eyk’s family really did die, just not in a Haunted German Forest Home; maybe Lucien really is sick; maybe Olek and Ling Yi really are in love), and which are likely constructed (since we’re not actually stuck in the 19th century, I have to imagine that homophobic characters, like Iben, aren’t actually homophobic—right? But does Iben truly have a problem with her son [if they are even related at all] outside of the simulation)? What about simulation-informed characters (e.g., Daniel, Henry)—are they also ‘modified’? And is the spaceship another layer of simulation?

Characters & Theories

Iben: So, the show suggests Iben hears voices, right? In ways that cause her to do Murders of Children for God. What if she does hear voices, but it has nothing to do with mental illness or divine intervention, and everything to do with the people who programmed or control this reality. Maybe she was tasked with killing The Boy because she’s being directed by Forces and Factions (Maura’s brother?) and stuff?

Virginia: It seemed, early on, like Virginia might be a power-player—someone with far more knowledge than the other characters. As it turns out, nope! However, we leave her having been ‘infected’ by some kind of virus, one that Daniel (seemingly our most ‘in-the-know’ character) took great pains to avoid. I suspect that she may, next season, become part of the simulation in a sense, perhaps acting as a vessel for some kind of AI / ‘the virus’ / new faction, making her something more than just ‘evil pimp lady.’

Tove: There has to be something to the whole ‘god / devil’s child’ situation. While it’s not great to foist such a horrible set of memories on someone (and I’m not sure how to feel about this story choice; we’ll have to see what happens), part of me wonders if the child is real in some way. Either because Tove previously had a child IRL, or because she is currently pregnant outside the simulation. If a person doesn’t age in cryosleep (assuming they are truly in cryosleep), then presumably a pregnancy would also not advance. I also wonder if she has some kind of relationship with Fritz… if Fritz exists outside the simulation (I don’t think we saw him as one of the bodies in the pods).

Krester: Krester’s death was, for me, one of the first hard clues that probably no one had died here. You don’t kill a character with such an unfinished arc without a plan. Sure, it might have been a time travel/loop plan or a flashback plan or a Krester as a hallucination for Angel plan, but I figured that Krester was likely not gone for good.

Anker: No theories, just one of the best and most moving arcs of the season. As we begin to learn about his lack of faith, which he (ironically) decides to share with not-priest Ramiro, who cannot understand him, we understand his devotion to his wife.

Olek: ???? I don’t even know. He was just a nice boy who fell in love and now he’s an oil-covered automaton who has escaped into the Tubes and Wires and Hatches.

Languages: I’m curious about if these characters can understand each other on the spaceship, with their memory of some languages blocked in the simulation. Is there a Star-Trek-like universal translator they can rely on, on the colony ship, or are they unable to communicate even in that environment? Language is such an important part of this show (including secret pyramid languages) that I have to imagine the showrunners plan to play around more with the theme of (mis)communication.

I wish I had more space or time or memory to unpack more specifics, but that’s a wrap for this review! Thanks for reading; looking forward to a far-away/not-yet-confirmed S2!

1. It seems to be, in part, why TV Critic Myles McNutt began his blog titled Episodic Medium.

2. Spoilers for S1 in full: I wrote this sentence after having only seen up to the end of Episode 6. I hadn’t expected how literal this key-based prediction would turn out to be...

3. I won’t talk about Episode 7 and 8 to avoid spoilers, but the trend continues.

4. There are symbols and even entire arcs that mirror LOST (spoilers for LOST): Shades of Charlie in Lucien, Jin and Sun in Anker and Iben, the Pearl Dharma station and its many 70s-era TV sets, questions about the provenance of radio messagestelegrams—the tag line is literally “what is lost will be found” evoking both literal and metaphorical lost-ness.

5. In a lot of ways, the show’s approach to these different tropes reminded me of Vanillaware’s 2019 video game, 13 Sentinals: Aegis Rim, which took great pleasure in unfolding a non-linear narrative hinting at everything mentioned here and more (Mechs!).

6. In a 2012 review I co-wrote of Joss Whedon’s (sorry) Dollhouse, I reflected on the challenge of presenting characters who, at the end of an episode, receive memory wipes. And there I was, over a decade ago, complaining about the opposite problem: How episodic storytelling worked against Dollhouse: “Still, at the beginning and end of many episodes, we were given glimpses into why Echo was supposedly the protagonist. Unlike many of the other dolls, she appeared semi-aware. Furthermore, Echo learned and grew despite consistently having her memory wiped. From nothing came something. Sadly, season one’s overly episodic structure denied us this development... [In the pilot], Echo was blissfully unaware of her episode-long struggle. It’s hard to sit through dramatic situation after dramatic situation when there’s nothing emotional at stake for the central character. Echo didn’t even take home a clichéd life lesson from her ordeal because SHE COULD NOT REMEMBER SAID ORDEAL!”