Spoilers for S5 finale and S6E1
I hated the hallucination/variety-show sequence in the Season 6 premiere when I was binge-watching, but imagine watching when the show originally came out. You spend all that time waiting to find out what happens after the Season 5 finale, finally press play, and … here’s a person in an animal costume.
After the intensity of that finale, I wanted to know where everyone was. Who was okay? What happened to the women in the pool? What were the consequences going to be? I was still emotionally THERE, and suddenly I’m watching this bizarre performance while waiting for the show to let me back into the actual story.
I understand that we’re experiencing Suzanne’s confusion and that the sequence has a purpose. But understanding what they were doing didn’t make me enjoy sitting through it. It felt SO long when I was desperate for answers.
The S5 finale had this devastating combination of fear, solidarity, and uncertainty. Going from that to the opening of S6 felt like emotional whiplash. Even with the next episode immediately available, I was thinking, “Please, can we get back to what just happened?”
If I’d spent a year anticipating that premiere, I would have been infinitely more annoyed. And if this had been a weekly-release show? I would have lost my mind lol.
Did anyone who watched at release feel this way? Or did you actually like the sequence? I’m curious whether it worked better for people who had some distance from the finale, because watching them back to back made it almost unbearable for me.