Is the consensus on this show that it started good and did nothing but go downhill? I never really read much about the how it's perceived. Also super anticlimactic ending
I liked last season more than 2. Mostly cause of Ben to be fair. Just finished this. Hated the ending. Just a stupid last season. Stupid stupid. Ugh.
I thought final season part 1 felt like more of a continuation of season 3. It was stupid, sure. But it was fun. Part II was just meandering, aimless, and a bit of a drag. That didn't need to be seven episodes. So much unnecessary bloat (cartel shuffling, Marty going to Mexico, the mental rehabilitation subplot (What!?), the van flip) and I felt like major events that should've been fleshed out were one and done (Marty finally losing his shit). Really disappointing. I wasn't expecting a Mad Men-esque landing but surely something better than this.
Judging by the conversation immediately after, I'm pretty sure it was a quite literal way of telling the audience "lol do not expect the Byrdes to NOT have plot armor". I was already pretty critical of this show and felt puzzled by all of the praise and awards it got, but wow was that final season and finale way worse than I expected. 0 point to any of it. Their two biggest and most annoying tropes they always reverted to in this show were 1) having a character show up solo and unarmed to dangerous territory and getting killed while having them conveniently not tell anyone where they were going so that there's no way to track what happened and 2) having a character literally announce their plan out loud to an enemy character. They literally used both of these tropes in the final scene of the show. Just absolutely terrible writing with no finesse whatsoever.
Those final 7 episodes were such a fucking slog, just incredibly dumb. Just Wendy making horrible choice after horrible choice and fucking everything up. The car wreck was hilarious for how completely pointless it was. The slow motion bullet to kill Ruth, the cheesy as fuck cut to black and gunshot to end the series. I didn’t mind part 1, but they really meandered and fumbled at the end.
The foundation was also an overly convenient method (for the plot) for the Byrdes to never seriously have to worry about laundering enough money or any of that stuff. Any time they found themselves in a bind, someone could just say "oh, hey, [rich person] donated a bunch of money offscreen" and then they could move on. As far as getting out clean, I think that was just something they were telling themselves. The foundation and casino were supposed to launder enough money so that they could finally strike up a deal between the cartel and FBI (which they had been dragging out the entire season) and it would allow them to escape. But I think by the end, it was kind of just implied that they would keep going on because they liked the lifestyle and also the car wreck proved to them that they could never die? Or something.
My whole thing is so what they have this foundation and deal with the FBI? All it takes is a shift in the relationship and the Cartel or Claire and instantly the Byrdes could be killed anyway
Yeah, the show needed to end with them cleanly out or suffering the consequences of their actions (at least one of the family dying). it just ends without a real resolution