Queen Skadi wrote: ↑Sun Apr 26, 2026 7:44 am
All very valid questions, pretty sure they sacrificed believable continuity in favour of a fun end scene without really putting much thought into how those elements fit together or the events that lead to those things happening, but I don't mind it, it was fun. Perhaps it was because I never really went into the show with high expectations so it wasn't too hard for the show to meet those expectations but I enjoyed it, sure I could nitpick the hell out of the show but in the end I suppose I was just happy to see some form of shrinking content in mainstream media and hope we see more of it.
Initially I did not really care much for Richard when he was simping for Lindy but eventually he started to grow on me, not saying I like the character but I did not hate him as much as people here did. As for the last scene I am pretty sure it is mostly all to be chalked up to coincidence that all those people were in the same place and Vivienne just happened to find him. I think we are somehow supposed to believe that the journalist somehow escaped during the lab explosion or escaped in the trash and had been living on the street until he was found (best not to think too hard about it, I am sure the writers themselves didn't) but eh if it leads to giantess Vivienne shrinking and abducting more people I can forgive a few plot holes.
Lets be realistic, we were never going to get the Citizen Kane of shrinking shows here, in the end I am pretty sure it was supposed to be little more than a fun light comedy/drama about shrinking and in the end that is what it delivered. Nothing amazing but still welcome nonetheless.
Richard grew on me as well. If anything, I commend O-T Fagbenle for really committing to his lovesick earnestness throughout, and I wish his character all the best for a future with Janet, who I also enjoyed as a character.
Truth be told, I enjoyed all the performances in the show, with Vivienne being the standout surprise. I knew going in that Elizabeth Banks and Matthew Macfadyen were going to crush it, which they did, but Zoe Lister-Jones gave such an enjoyable enigmatic controlled yet unhinged performance. I also thoroughly loved Sian Clifford as Lindy's editor/agent Terry, especially in the flashback episode, where it was nice to see Aasif Mandvi do more than complain about money and contracts. I only wish they hadn't saddled Terry with the plagiarism side plot.
As for the cliffhanger with Nils the journalist, I'm just as confused as some of you. I can accept that he escaped the lab explosion. After all, Les and the others removed Vivienne from the lab before it exploded, assuming everyone else would have evacuated. Nils had last been seen in a terrarium, and Les and the rest of the team had no knowledge he was there, so they wouldn't have thought to go back for him. So yes, he could eventually squeeze through nooks and crannies in the rubble to escape. And I'm okay with him having to use a cheeseburger wrapper as a poncho because it's a silly image. I can even imagine Vivienne trying to track him down because it's clear that she's developed a fetish for shrunken things--the cat, Nils, and even Lindy, who she wanted to add to her "collection." I've already started predicting how this leads into a potential season 2, and it does somewhat hinge on Les and Lindy's friends (I believe their names are Gary and Meg) seeing tiny Nils. But we shall see.
Now that it's a couple weeks since the series dropped, I think I have clearer eyes for it. As an adaptation of the short story, I'm genuinely impressed with how much they retained/reimagined for the series. For all the tremendous visuals and situations, whether CGI or practically generated, I still think this is the best SW show/movie put to screen. The sheer amount of content alone warrants that. I also have to commend them for considering what the world of a tiny person would be like, especially the effects of sound. I also think this is the first SW content we've seen to realize capture the shock and fear of suddenly being grabbed by a normal-sized person--really effectively gripping (pun intended) when Les reaches into the dollhouse and takes Richard. Even though I expected it, it happened so abruptly that it was genuinely terrifying. But the reason it stands out for me more than every other live-action SW movie/show is because of how much Elizabeth Banks committed to the world. Though I didn't always agree with Lindy's choices (especially in the aforementioned plagiarism side plot), but I always believed that she was six inches tall, and I always believed her emotions. She nailed it.
That's not to say there weren't problems with the show. I've already twice mentioned the plagiarism subplot. I have several issues with the final episode, some of them plot holes and some of them character turns, which I'll put behind a spoiler wall:
1. I can understand the Hollywood-happy-ending of Les putting restoring Lindy over his Nobel Prize dreams, but the fact that they could blow up the lab seemed way too contrived. And there's going to be an investigation into that, especially since Vivienne knows Les and Lindy were on site and that Janet had something to do with the plot.
2. What are all the tiny tanks doing there? It makes absolutely no sense to me that Hilton and his military buyers would bring that many tanks to the lab where the shrinking spray is when it's so much easier to bring the shrinking spray to all the tanks. After all, Les brought the miniaturizing truck home, so why not do the same for the tanks? Considering how much effort was put into creating such a detailed miniature environment, why was this aspect of the story so obviously sloppy? Granted, it didn't go fully off the raiis like the shrink-the-world final act of
The Incredible Shrinking Woman, but sloppy writing is still sloppy writing.
3. I will accept that Lindy and Les went full-on
War of the Roses dark, as it's from the source material. No matter how badly they treated each other in their marriage before Lindy is shrunk, she has every right to be as pissed and vengeful after she's shrunk. I don't believe that Les brought the device home with the intent of shrinking Lindy, but I can see him doing it in the moment and later accepting it by saying he did it "on purpose," and I'm okay with whatever Lindy does to him after the confession. There are moments after that where Les goes too far, so it bothered me that they have the Hollywood ending and get back together. How can you make up after that? Lindy does the psychological torture with the phone and echo dots (which I absolutely LOVED!), then stabs him, has him slip on marbles, step on LEGOs, shoots a thumb tack at him, and tries to expose what he did to her. None of these acts came close to outright killing him. Meanwhile, Les dips Richard in bird food and leaves him in the bird cage, he squeezes Lindy and threatens to flush her down the toilet, he shoots at her with the garden hose when he's making his bedroom moat, he whacks her across the room with the umbrella (this one was too much for me), and he sets the cat on her (which is from the book and somewhat evadable, I guess). But unlike
The War of the Roses, the damage that Lindy and Les are capable of giving and potentially receiving is grossly unequal. Yes, Les makes this grand gesture at the end to shrink himself to help Lindy retrieve the restoration chemicals, which he then tests on himself in case it doesn't work. Both of those are indeed noble gestures, but they're far from enough to repair what he did to her while she was small, no matter what she did to him before she was small.
4. In my pre-release
big reference sheet, I predicted that Les would be shrunk at the end. I also predicted that she'd use the experience as inspiration for a novel, which indeed happened. In that moment, I remembered how episode 1 began with a voice over of Lindy, and I thought that maybe what we watched was Lindy's "fictionalized" account of what had happened, exaggerated to the extreme in order to sell books. Maybe in "reality," she was accidentally shrunk, still lied to (Les withholding details about restoration is believable to keep her from freaking out), but not outright physically abused. What she said to open the show could clearly work as an opening hook for a novel! For a split second, I was considering forgiving Les for everything in the event we were watching the series adaptation of Lindy's book. I thought that would have been extremely clever, but without closing narration to bookend that idea, it falls apart. However, I think her writing and publishing that book--since her Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel was a thinly veiled fictional memoir anyway, so why not do that again--is a crucial event for a potential season 2, where Vivienne is going to capture her, shrink her, and use that to blackmail Les into collaboration.
Whew. I wrote a lot there. Still processing this show, but again, in terms of SW content, as much as I hope I'm wrong, I doubt we're going to get anything like this for a long time. For me anyway, it was well worth the wait and well worth the watch,
And because I'm still typing, here are a few scenes I wish we could've seen:
1. Les initially putting Lindy in the dollhouse in her pink pajamas. Okay, we weren't going to see him undress and redress her, but at least have her confront him about it. Or at least explain to us what happened there.
2. Lindy running from the Roomba. If you're gonna show in the trailer her plummeting toward it, at least give us a scene where she runs from it. She wouldn't be in any danger of getting sucked into it as she was too tall, but it could run her down. Well, likely not, as she looked faster.
3. A scene inside Les's bag when she hitches a ride to the lab. The pizza box in the finale was awesome and claustrophobic, but I would've liked this scene as well.
4. Her rowing the canoe made from the water bottle. Just one shot would've been awesome.
5. A size comparison between her and the wedding cake toppers. Because of how they're introduced in episode 1, I was waiting the whole series for it.
Thanks for reading and for putting up with all my posts throughout the whole experience. I'm just happy we were around to share it.
RIP Space Colon
