NOS4A2 Review: The Hourglass (Season 2 Episode 6)
NOS4A2 is finally bringing the more interesting parts of itself to the forefront with Season 2 Episode 6, “The Hourglass.”
The overarching thing that ends up really working for this episode is the expansion of ideas that the show hasn’t capitalized on in quite some time. Perhaps this is how far the bar has been lowered for this show but the mere concept of it doing something interesting and taking advantage of the world it’s constructed is a tantalizing one.
In general, NOS4A2 lacks a lot of specificity and distinctiveness and, as a result, it theoretically needs to throw in other elements to distract from noticing that fact but it has rarely ever done that. It has merely just been about the conflict between Vic and Charlie — which still exists here — but it doesn’t rest on those laurels.
A generous outlook on this episode is that this the setup for a lot of different things that have been seeded in since the first season and are now coming to fruiting on “The Hourglass.”
The first, and most obvious, is the focus it has on Jonathan Beckett, another strong creative who uses an hourglass to force people to do whatever he wants. The larger world of creatives is one that is ripe for the taking but also something that the show has barely touched upon before.
Of course, we’ve been introduced to Maggie and Charlie, along with Jolene from the first season, but that’s been about it. NOS4A2, by and large, hasn’t been terribly interested in exploring that side of itself, clearly to its own determent. There’s so much fertile ground there and it’s not hard to imagine a more episodic series going in that direction.
What we get from him throughout this episode is very compelling, even if he is a garbage person, and allows us more of an in-depth look into the psyche of a creative who has been at this for a while. His quest for immortality is an intriguing one but it doesn’t quite fully track.
He wants to become immortal because he’s heard that Charlie has achieved it, but Beckett makes it sound like this is a recent development, which doesn’t make a lot of sense given what we know. We know that Charlie has been around for a long time and that he has a reputation, so it feels a bit off with the timeline there.
Another fascinating thing that gets explored during this episode is what happens to people inside of Charlie’s wraith. It does this in a couple of ways. The first is showing how children get transformed into the husks that we see in Christmasland. In the past, it’s always gone from a normal kid to one with fangs and there’s not a lot of nuance to contain there.
Instead, we get to slow that process down here to see how a kid is corrupted. It has some really good details here like losing his normal teeth or stroking a butterfly one second and ripping off its wings the next. It helps to complicate something that is much too simple.
Along with that, we also get to see Craig again to give us a sense that his spirit, for whatever reason, has stuck around with the car. It lends to this idea — complimented previously this season by Millie the mutilated ghost of her mother — that there is an actual cost to dying in the wraith. You’re not just let off scot-free.
All of these things help to make the series a much more complex and interesting one than it was before and that’s always the direction a show should be trying to move in.
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.