Over the past seven episodes of The Boroughs, we’ve come to meet a gang of mature heroes who have shown us that age is only a state of mind and that advancing years shouldn’t mean someone should be written off like a wrecked car when they still have so much more to give. It’s a timely message, but regardless of this, the end will eventually come to us all and it’s certainly come to Netflix’s latest show.
But how does The Boroughs go out after a season of sci-fi hijinks? Is it a spirited affair that goes out while still full of life and vigor, or does it run out of steam and just slowly grind to an exhausted stop?
While I’m not expecting anything like a massive cliffhanger to hint at future seasons, a good, solid ending would probably do everyone a world of good; I mean, all the Stranger Things kids had to worry about was not looking like they were in their twenties in the long stretches between adventures, I’m not sure you’re gonna get five seasons in ten years out of these guys…
The mission to free the alien Mother and end the murderous conspiracy of the Boroughs is well under way. Despite breaking Sam out of the Manor, the gang’s escape is put on pause when Renee gets a call from Wally who demands they all turn back and re-enter the retirement home that’s trying to kill them. It seems that Wally’s burst of conscience has caused him to remove the ailing alien matriarch from her lab and get her to a place where she won’t be poked and prodded by opportunistic, wannabe immortals.
However, after getting Mother to his friends, we discover that Wally’s ultimate plan is also to have Mother poked and prodded, but in the name of good to explore all the vaccines and cures her miracle biology could provide. But the cancer suffering doctor is dismayed to discover from her mental link with Sam that all she wants to do now, is die.
Trapped in the Boroughs, the gang split once more to facilitate the alien’s wishes. Sam, Wally and Claire attempt to get Mother to the peach located in the tunnels located under their very feet while Renee and Paz break back in to the main facility to release Mother’s captive children. But after Judy and Art’s job to stall a desperate Blaine Shaw and his equally worried staff end with the former reporter fatally stabbed by Anneliese Shaw, time becomes a much more intense factor.
Can Sam get Mother to her final resting place? Can those TV set he rigged up ages ago finally do some good? Or will the sheer fear of death that the Shaws feel lead them to ultimately triumph, continue to go on living forever and feeding off the elderly? The Boroughs may be celebrating its 75 year anniversary, but it, and a whole lot more, could end on this very night.
So I have to say that, despite thoroughly enjoying The Burroughs for the lion’s share of its run, “Triple Audible” ends up being something of a weak ending for a season that’s done exemplary work differentiating itself from the tonally and narratively similar Stranger Things. While I wasn’t expecting giant monsters, worlds hanging in the balance and a twinge of excited dread in my belly that believes anything could happen, the finale ends up being predictable and even a fairly bit sloppy in it’s execution. To be fair, if you were even a remotely bit savvy to the influences The Boroughs wore proudly on its sleeve, there was a chance that you also were about two steps ahead of the show as it barrelled along – in fact, the familiarity it brought only added to the fun ambience the show has cultivated. However, it’s ultimately meant that not only do we get a closing episode that’s disappointingly predictable, but it’s also one that trades into some worryingly lazy plotting.
Maybe back in the 80s, we were cool with bad guys managing to get to locations they had no way of reaching just to provide a shock return that isn’t even that shocking, or just having random stuff happen that isn’t explained or set up just to facilitate a neatly happy ending, but for some reason it just doesn’t scan particularly well here. While the show already made it clear that Shaw’s dastardly plot wasn’t born from the mind of a super capable secret society, but a clutch of people just trying to cling onto immortality, the bad guys in this episode are dangerously unprepared. Yes, it all stems from the fact that they’re made so vulnerable precisely because Blaine and Anneliese have overlooked the potential of anyone over retirement age, but even judged by those standards, the Shaws proves to be fairly easy to vanquish. They blunder into obvious traps, keep unnecessary hostages when they should be killing their foes and are strangely unable to physically overpower their elderly enemies when they’re supposed to be charged with alien super-juice and it all feels like the show is drastically cutting corners in order to drag the story to where the writers want it to go without getting caught up too much in the details.
If the episode featured some tighter writing, maybe we wouldn’t notice, or even care that it’s playing fast and loose with movie logic, but when you find yourself openly wondering how a weakened Blaine can get to the mine on foot and fight Sam the same time he got there by van (not even a shortcut through the tunnels would properly account for it), something has gone wrong. Even the attempts at building drama an tension feel a little half-hearted – why would mortally wounding Judy make us scared for her when we already know there’s a character with healing powers in the same room and furthermore, why would the show allow Judy to give a touching farewell speech to Art and just leave Mother to patiently wait for her cue when she could have given her medical attention immediately?
However, that’s not go say that the show, at its roots, is still as charming as ever and while some of the writing let’s the series down in the final lap, there’s still plenty of things that work just fine. For example, I really could have done with more of the double act of Wally fussing and caring for the misshapen Mother as he wheels her to freedom and the reveal that a charred and twisted Hank was actually a fan of Paz’s band is kind of an amusing send off for the ailling henchman. The fact that the Shaws actually profess their love for one another while finally facing death is a nice touch and Mother wanting to finally die surrounded by her children is actually quite poignant too and fits in nicely within the overall message of the show and the moments where Sam is given a vision of his wife as a parting gift guarantees a quivering bottom lip at the very least, but when the final moments of the show end up being almost a shot for shot retread of the twist at the end of Stanger Things’ first season (both Will and Sam are both standing in a bathroom looking at themselves in the mirror when we get the sizable hint that things may not be over), you realise that The Boroughs’ last moments find it stumbling rather than skipping.
Despite a rather flat, predictable, finale, it would genuinely nice if we got to visit The Boroughs at least one more time just to iron out a few questions (who’s actually running the place now) and spend more time with this motley crew while we still can (the cast aren’t exactly spring chickens, you know). But while that Spielbergian vibe is as strong as ever, it’s a shame that the show attempted to stick the landing on legs that were far too wobbly to take the strain. Age is but a number, I’m told – but in this case, the number ends up being a mere three stars out of five…
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