Midnight Mass Broke The Penguin

Mike Flanagan might be the best writer/director on the planet at the moment. Here’s how he broke an old hack like me.

It’s not often I get wrong-footed when watching TV. A few lines in and I can often predict where a show is going to go, what the character is going to do and where their arc is going to take them. Sometimes I’m even able to predict particular lines because, hey… cliche.

One of my Un-CVable skills. Would look great on a resume but useless in the real world. Angry character comes in low and subdued to a room containing a lower status character?

‘Sit down. I SAID SIT DOWN!’

or

‘Shut up. I SAID SHUT UP!’.

Every. Damn. Time. You can try it too if you like. Dialogue bingo is an excellent game to play but often means you’ll be enjoying shows on your own in the near future. I am banned from telling people the endings of TV series after the first episode.

When a piece of TV surprises me, I sit up and take notice. The writer is doing something very interesting indeed. Mike Flannagan caught me off guard and made me cry. I can count on one hand the times that’s happened.

I cry a fair bit at films. Far more than my significant other Penguin who only weeps about dying or dead dogs. I know when I’m going to be emotionally moved. I can see the emotion truck as it careers down the highway towards my frail little chimp brain.

The music, the moment, the manipulation. I know I’m being manipulated but I fall for it anyway. I get the lump in the throat but I always know what’s coming. This isn’t that. This was a surprise cry… and that’s worth an article of its own.

So I’m going to analyse why the end of episode 5 in Midnight Mass is the best thing I’ve seen on TV for a long while. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the whole series on Netflix. It’s a horror-allegory about fanaticism and I’ll say no more than that — because I don’t want to give any spoilers.

If you’ve already seen it, or horror isn’t your bag. You can read on safe in the knowledge that there are spoilers ahead.

Some wider context *Spoiler alert*

Flannagan spends most of the first five episodes setting Riley up as the main character. He’s the character we’re led to believe is going to be taking us through the story. He’s our flawed hero. In the opening shot of the series we see his backstory- a drunk driver who killed a woman in an accident… we watch her getting CPR at the roadside.

So far so good. We know who to follow.

The story is about him returning back to his small island community and reconciling with his religious family. While he’s there things start to go south in the local community and he gets caught up in the chaos and Riley is haunted by the ghostly figure of the young woman he killed.

This is a horror story after all and so anytime he’s falling asleep we see him under the glare of blue lights. He’s a man oppressed by his own guilt and this is a redemption story.

Given that he’s our hero, we naturally expect a few things. I certainly did. We expect him to guide us through the narrative. We expect him to always be a force for good and we expect him to prevail.

We expect that, because that is what heroes do.

So imagine my horror when he was bitten by the head vampire in a relatively inauspicious moment in the story at the end of episode four. I had to recalculate the narrative in my head… see now he’d been infected.

That’s fine though. You can have tragic heroes. He wouldn’t be as infected as the others, he would simply become a tragic force for good.

He could and should still save the island.

And then at the end of episode 5, he takes his one-time partner Erin out in a rowing boat. Just the two of them. Her… out in the middle of the ocean with him. A newly turned vampire. I can see where this is going.

I have to readjust again. ‘Mike you bastard’, I said to myself… ‘you’ve only gone and given us a false protagonist’.

We should’ve been following Erin. This is her story and Riley is a bit player in the mix. So what we’re going to see is him attacking her and her escaping in the nick of time. We’ve swapped Riley for Erin and bish-bash-bosh, new lead character.

But nothing in the dialogue suggests this is going to happen.

Perhaps I’ve miscalculated AGAIN! Get it together Penguin. What we’re seeing here is a dark turn. A moment where he has to overcome the temptation of bloodlust and emerge triumphant.

He can be a vampire, but a good vampire… we’ve seen this trope since the days of Buffy.

The moment of realisation

Then Riley tells her (and by extension the rest of us) what he’s doing.

“I brought you out here so I’d have nowhere to go. I’m not as strong as you, I never was…What do I want? I want you to take this boat and row to the mainland and never look back… but I knew you wouldn’t do that. I knew you wouldn’t believe any of this unless you saw”

And so now I know what’s coming — and I know how it’s going to arrive as well. I’ve been prepared by earlier scenes, he’s waiting for the sun to come up. He’s going to burn to death when the sun rises in a very Anne Rice fashion.

But what does this mean for Riley…. This was all foreshadowed in a conversation a few episodes earlier.

Because really, this whole show isn’t a horror at all. It’s a contemplation of what it means to live and what it means to die. It’s philosophy wrapped up as entertainment — I’m all about that.

So I’ve emotionally steeled myself for a death scene, he’s told her that he loves her, he told her that he tried his best. So far so good, that’s par for the course for tragic love scenes. This is the emotion truck coming down the road and it wasn’t very good.

I can safely stand in front of this truck unmoved and emotion free… so imagine my surprise when the truck swerves.

The sun rises and hits him on the face and he doesn’t die or burst into flames. Another trope of horror writing, the fake-out. I feel cheated. I feel like he’s got a redemption he doesn’t deserve… there’s some sort of bullshit love magic going on.

That’s what Whedon would’ve done. Hell, I would’ve done it too.

But now, when he opens his eyes instead of Erin, there’s a different woman sitting at the other side of the boat. The woman he killed in the opening scene, no longer covered in blood. She smiles at him and takes his hand and the piano music continues to play.

And suddenly the storylines collapse into one singularity. It is a redemption story, It was a narrative fake out that seemed to be about romantic love but was always about death and forgiveness. I am wrong-footed, I am surprised, I am overwhelmed by the piano music playing abide with me… and my psychology collapses.

Bravo Mr Flannagan. Bravo.

Then, as the lump in my throat grows because I’ve decided this is now a peaceful resolution, I’m thrust back into the boat with my new protagonist. Erin is sitting opposite a combusting Riley… her screams carry us over to the credits.

And I’m shook. Genuinely shook. For the first time in a long while, TV has wrong-footed me, moved me way past what I presumed was my emotional limit and given me tears I didn’t expect to cry.

That’s the power of good storytelling.

That’s the power of writing which twists and turns away from an audience. That’s how you subvert expectation, build tension and create a cathartic release.

The scene is now etched into my brain. It has become my favourite scene across television for the last few years. The direction and misdirection evident in the writing and direction is excellent. It takes skill to fool this bird and Mike Flannagan did, with extra lashings of kudos for the actors involved.These are moments of gold for someone who often finds TV boring and predictable.

Good writing stays with you, I think I’m going to re-watch this whole show many times. Still can’t get through this scene though.

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