The Amazing Digital Circus comes to an end.
See previous discussion from the theatrical release ( The Last Act ) here!
This is my all time favorite show. It arrived in my life just when I needed it, and I’ll be forever grateful to Glitch and Gooseworx for making it. I’m glad the ending was a bit of a slow burn. It allowed me to grieve and say goodbye to this show which has given me something to look forward to every few months for the past year and a half since I started watching. My favorite media is often less popular and less polished. All that matters to me is that it helped me grow as a person and make good memories along the way.
imagine seeing THIS and having the worms in your brain make you ruin everything
So the last episode will have a different name from the theatrical release!
Also this actually goes all the way back to the observation I (and many others) made from the pilot: Pomni’s name is actually Russian for “remember.” What’s the significance of that?? (Probably not much, given that Goose revealed that was in fact a complete coincidence. But you never know! I asked a local unicorn jester about this, and she responded “well, it’s possible…”)
Damn, Ribbit got done dirty
Man, that was really good. Nap in peace, Jax. You deserve it.
That bus at the end was a coach bus, and I don’t think there is any public transit in the world that uses it because what public bus needs all that storage below? It was probably meant to convey that they were all living similar lives and just happened to be on the same bus together and they couldn’t use an actual bus used by public transit for probably good reasons; or if they’re all taking the same coach somewhere for some reason? Maybe they all just happened to sign up for the same day trip to a local national park sponsored by some government body. That’d be cool.
haha I knew some other transit nerd was having the exact same thoughts I did
You know what, no, I hated this. Spoilerific rant ensues. I’ve been on-board since a few days after the pilot and I think this was poorly constructed in several ways. Goose has said “there’s no coming back from that,” but you can give 'em a hug and say hello? They’re still in there! I expected Pomni to get yanked out with a fresh new Jax in tow. The trans thing is only a surprise because of the direction, which is going to ruin any wiki, since the grand reveal will be the first fucking thing a lot of people see. Ditto everyone’s actual names, which would’ve been better-off unknowable, because what do you fucking mean he’s not dead? Jax is gone forever but Caine gets a redemption arc? That shot of everyone on couches pulls back and holds, and you can feel the negative space, and I thought, here’s where a badly-written series would have him pop in anyway. And then he basically fucking does. So he can have a poorly-presented maybe-flashback, and reveal internet connectivity, and lay bare everyone’s whole deal in the most emotionally unsatisfying tell-don’t-show-- have you ever read a fake leaked script? I read one for the Matrix sequels, months before Reloaded. Jenny Nicholson humorously reads through one for Rise Of Skywalker. They’re always completely bonkers. This whole episode feels like Goose wrote one as a decoy, and then sent the wrong attachment. The perfect shocking end of the penultimate episode? Nah, doesn’t count. The AI so amoral and obsessive that it repeatedly breached containment? Turns out the other AI was the problem, somehow, so now he’s an apologetic wooby with playable-boss-character downgrades. Here’s everyone’s real names and faces and up-to-date socials, with zero angst but also Jax is still masc and apparently who gives a shit about the rest of Kinger’s coworkers. Did Gangle’s car accident play into why she got brain-scanned? Nope. Did Ragatha’s real estate thing relate to maintaining this abandoned building? Nope. Did Jax in particular have any special motivation to push that button? Nope. Nevermind goofy-shit theories like Pomni being an NPC or AI - these characters don’t have enough overlapping backstory to suggest Zooble met Jax before getting scanned. And there’s no mortality-salience dread over knowing their whole universe is one Pentium II running on borrowed time, despite apparently not using the internet to talk to anyone outside, or announce that AI immortality is real. You’re still stuck with these people, in these bodies, for-ev-errr. But we slapped God hard enough to teach him moral reasoning, and the world’s most toxic rabbit is dead-ish, so I guess we’re safe forever.
All the Ribbit stuff was good though.
The brain scan reveal also is a kinda shitty explanation, it was always played as not even cain knowing when someone new pops in. So now what even keeps him from just spawning in a new jax/ribbit/kaufmo? Why was the wifi in cains backflash getting weaker? Was he using up the internet? Was the server or the cafe moving?
And Kinger’s explanation was handled was like ‘oh yeah btw’ and then there’s not even an entire minute of people sour about the reveal. That should’ve been a whole damn episode, and it’s just sort of implicit, before a montage and Jax dying offscreen. I can only assume that landed better in theaters, with episode 8 immediately beforehand.
The wifi thing made it look like he did spawn another Scratch. On reflection that sequence is surely intended to equate spawning the characters in the first place, and breaking into some free wifi… and it just does not work. As you say, if instantiating humans was an active process, Caine can’t really be shocked when a new scan emerges. We’re left to assume he automated it. Did he delegate to Bubble? Was Bubble somehow always the blue AI… who somehow ruined things, somehow?
The wifi getting weaker feels like a hand-wave against ‘so they’re all online now, like being a dog on the internet.’ Nope: they’re still very trapped and alone, and making do with that… which is why it’s a bad writing decision to have Caine even aware of what the internet is, let alone to have him show these people their de facto ghosts livin’ it up in meatspace.
Oh god, is his redemption from figuring out the real world is real? Like that wouldn’t drive him bugfuck crazy, or obliterate his ego?
I’m tempted to make a 2D chart mapping the beats of this episode. Good idea / bad idea perpendicular to well-executed / poorly-executed. Caine seeing the internet and realizing he’s a petit tyrant goes in good-poor, because why the fuck would you spend so long showing him moving through the void, breaking barriers, and conjuring widgets? We are thoroughly aware he can do those things. What the audience wants to know is how he’s still alive.
And frankly Jax being an endless font of toxicity, at the drop of a hat, instead of developing it as a trauma response to losing people, does not go on the good side. Right on the line at best, no matter how well-executed all the Ribbit stuff was.
… the hell was that?
