NOS4A2 Review: Parnassus (Season 1 Episode 8)
NOS4A2 Season 1 Episode 8, “Parnassus,” begins to add texture to some of the secondary characters, but a lot of it feels too little, too late. Whatever good “Parnassus” has mostly comes from the slightly more elevated writing for the characters and the individual performances throughout the episode.
“Parnassus,” while not being an altogether good episode, is at least enjoyable on a certain level that the show doesn’t always necessarily achieve.
One of NOS4A2‘s biggest problems is its deficiency in having a solid read on the characters that aren’t Vic or Charlie Manx — and even the latter feels shaky at times. Maggie wasn’t a real character, but rather a plot device in the vein of Bran Stark to explain the world of the show and the plot.
The same could be said of Vic’s parents, who most of the time felt more like narrative roadblocks and generic nonentities rather than actual people in Vic’s life. This was a result of the show’s tendency to pare a character down to its basic components, all the while taking any kind of nuance out of them.
With “Parnassus,” however, there is at least a modicum of an attempt to flesh out some more of these characters. In particular, Vic’s mom, Linda.
Throughout the episode, we see more and more of the tug-of-war that she’s engaging in with Vic over going to college, and this is really essential for the series… if not emotionally manipulative, depending on the direction the show takes with her after this. The desperate, flailing moves that Linda makes feel lived in and real to anyone that has a mother like this.
The conclusion that Vic comes to (that Linda needs to have her daughter around so she still has some control and doesn’t have to be alone) is a bit too pat and tidy for her to make, especially at the convenient time that she needs to make it. But it works rather well in increasing our understanding of Linda.
“Parnassus” also makes an attempt to texturize Maggie a bit beyond a narrative device. But some of her choices don’t actuallly make a lot of sense or, at the very least, don’t seem altogether consistent with her character. Up to this point, Maggie has never seemed like a person that might slip down into drug abuse and nearly overdose. It feels like a misstep for her.
The fact that that doesn’t seem an awful lot like her might be part of the larger problem in that we still don’t have a sense of who she is and what makes her tick. She, and others on the show, have been drawn so broadly that any action both does and doesn’t feel out of character.
That also extends to Charlie Manx, to a certain extent, as we’re finally given an answer why he won’t just get it over with and kill Vic. The show has had to stall over the last couple episodes to avoid explaining why that hasn’t happened and, in the end, the answer isn’t great or satisfactory.
Wanting Vic to be the mother of the children at Christmasland feels like a gross misreading of her character and, quite honestly, makes Manx seem a bit dumber as a result.
Overall, “Parnassus” is a fine episode of a show that unfortunately continues to not impress very much.
What did you think of this episode of NOS4A2? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Critic Rating:
User Rating:
NOS4A2 airs Sundays at 10/9c on AMC.
Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!
Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.