NOS4A2 Review: Scissors for the Drifter (Season 1 Episode 7)
NOS4A2 Season 1 Episode 7, “Scissors for the Drifter,” feels like a stall in every way that matters.
The problem with the kind of serialized storytelling that NOS4A2 is trying to do is that there are only so many places that you can take it and not get to the endpoint before it starts to seem like you are spinning your wheels. Having an ending is only half the battle; taking the steps to get there is the difficult part.
That’s the issue that “Scissors for the Drifter” runs into. The series at large has often struggled with filling the time before it gets to what it perceives as the end point of the season. But that is just what this episode is: filler.
It is an episode that you don’t truly need in otfrt to reach the plot beats that this show is envisioning. It’s hard to make this determination without having seen the way that the rest of this season will shake out, but so much of this episode feels utterly superfluous and unnecessary.
A great example of this is Linda (Vic’s mom, as far as the series and its characterization of her is concerned), selling Vic’s bike while she was in the hospital. This is a plot that only exists because the show needs that obstacle between Vic and accessing her bridge.
It’s a plotline that you know doesn’t matter because she will simply find another way to get to the bridge. Its entire purpose is a stalling tactic that won’t amount to anything at all, beyond letting the audience know that Linda isn’t a terribly great parent. And that is not new information.
“Scissors for the Drifter” very often feels like an exercise in futility, particularly in the bigger story that it isn’t telling. The other plotlines aren’t much better off, but they at least serve some form of narrative function. It’s mainly in the utilization that has it seeming a bit wonky.
Bing and Charlie Manx going off to fix The Wraith while the latter is on a death knell is a necessary carryover from the previous episode, but it doesn’t ultimately lead to anything substantive. If anything, it muddles our understanding of how Charlie’s powers work and of his vampire qualities as it relates to The Wraith.
On the other side of the board, Maggie is just a plotline to nowhere. We have gained nothing by going down this path of refusal for her, and it only ends with the sheriff being killed to motivate her back into action. This especially feels like something that only happened because the plot demanded it instead of it actually making any kind of sense.
Ultimately, “Scissors for the Drifter” feels like a waste of everyone’s time and an argument could certainly be made that the season could have lost this episode entirely.
What did you think of this episode of NOS4A2? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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NOS4A2 airs Sundays at 10/9c on AMC.
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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.
2 comments
While I hate needless exposition as much as anyone, this show needs a little more explanation about Manx’s powers! Like, how did he abduct an armed Sherriff Bly and make him so loopy? And most importantly, WHY was the Wraith suddenly invisible to the police? It was always plenty visible to humans before…why not this time? Was it because it was running? Can Charlie turn it on and off at will? Tell us!
Manx told Bing that it wasn’t that the police couldn’t see the car, but that they just ignored it.
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