Fifth Avenue Forum

It's getting proper good accolades, but it just feels so amateurish. Like the people making it don't understand their medium. Stories are intercut aimlessly. Ad breaks are abrupt, coming on unnatural story beats. The characters are a collection of generally unlikable dopes who take in all the information available to them and make the worst decision possible. Drama is undercut by rich plot armor. Consecutive scenes work against each other.They are weaving multiple budding romance narratives into the story which is at best incongruous. The music (at least the theme) is a poor knock off of Schindler's List. It's all just a bit.............. awkward.

Full credit to Mrs Tif if this proves true, she offered it up as a hot take today.

What if it wasn't Ishido who sent word to Yabu to dispatch the shinobi to kidnap Mariko. There was no written note of alliance from Ishido, after all. Just the report from Yabushige's busho.

Well, what if it was a ruse. And Yabu is the proverbial lazy falcon broken to the fist and taking the lure. What if the busho is Toranaga's spy, and the order actually came from Toranaga under the guise of maneuvering to aid Ishido, and the put upon busho was only too happy to assist. Yabu has served his purpose and can be made to answer for his treachery.

I don't think that's how if will play out, but I don't don't think it, either. lol

The only reason I don't think it's the case is because the shinobi were clearly trying to kill Blackthorne. And I don't believe Toranaga is through with him just yet.

They stuck the landing.

Letting Yabu linger for those few extra moments was cold, but earned. I'm glad the showrunners held their bravery and refrained from the pointless spectacle of a giant battle sequence, and please do not do a Season 2. A flower is only a flower because it falls.
So goddamned good. More thoughts later.

Yes. Perfect finale, no notes and certainly no need for another season.
I would like to see Clavell's other Asian saga novels made into series, but I doubt that will happen.

So I've been going back over the episodes, not a full rewatch (I've already watched each episode except the finale 2x) but hitting some highlights. Seems others have noticed the same thing about Yabu's last scene.
Either Omi or the young busho (out of focus in behind Yabu) was the spy all along. If it was in fact Omi, then that casts all of Omi's personal needlings and cahooting with Nagakado in a completely different - and frankly sinister - light. Toranaga maybe didn't know that the kid would cannon-murder Jozen, or that he'd slip on a rock and smush his own skull trying to assassinate Saeki, but it's clear Toranaga expected - planned - for Nagakado to do something brash and provocative towards Ishido to demonstrate that perhaps Toranaga couldn't even control his own family much less organize a campaign against the Council which would further reinforce the Ishido's false impression of strength. If Omi was the spy, that means Toranaga actively encouraged his son's folly by proxy knowing he could be setting his own kid up as a sacrificial lamb.

That said, I still tend to think the spy was the busho. I haven't gotten to looking at Ep9 again, but I believe he is sitting in the Council room when Yabu and Anjin and Mariko spoke in Ep9, and so heard Ishido derisively note "he has others (sons)" when Mariko said Toranaga was still grieving the loss of Nagakado. That gives color to the notion of Toranaga himself pointing out that he has other sons when he is reunited with his wife/consorts/infant baby-son. And Toranaga already had a spy in Izu in the form or Muraji, what he needed was a spy in Yabu's camp.

The more I go through this, the more it seems like the show was one giant recall joke.