Losing Alice Review: The End (Season 1 Episode 8)
Losing Alice Season 1, Episode 8, “The End,” does what it promises — it brings the story of Sophie, David, Alice, and the film Room 209 to a close. But whether it’s a satisfying ending…that’s a different question, one that’s much harder to answer.
One of the most frustrating aspects of Losing Alice is that the show seems to want to have it both ways in almost every situation, but most particularly when it comes to the relationship between Alice and Sophie.
Over the course of the series two women have been positioned as everything from uneasy friends to deliberate enemies, their interactions peppered with paranoia and a strange sexual tension that the show has never bothered to really do anything with, but seems to like referencing whenever it wants to seem “shocking”.
“The End” opens with a scene in which Sophie is helping Alice get dressed for the Room 209 premiere, which turns out to be another strange fantasy sequence that I’m not entirely sure what to make of.
Losing Alice keeps implying that part of what’s happening between these two women is because they both want each other, in addition to wanting to be each other as well. But this is the kind of scene that feels like nothing so much as a bait and switch.
We’ve seen Alice sort of hook up with Sophie’s boyfriend, dream about being naked in a tub with her, and more, but there’s been little indication that a relationship with her is something she actually wants. And there are certainly as many moments in which she seems to be as afraid of her as anything else.
Much of this show is about the nature of truth – which version of herself Alice wants to believe she really is, which version of the truth viewers want to believe is real within the world of the show.
But at some point Losing Alice’s determination not to pick a lane robs the drama of anything meaningful that it might have to say.
Its refusal to truly commit to the nebulous sexual tension that sometimes crackles between its leads, its disinclination to come down on the side of whether Alice herself is a visionary or a monster, and its lack of clarity about Sophie’s motivations all result in an ending that feels largely pointless.
Did Alice realize that she’d gone too far? Did she feel bad about the way anything turned out? Was the movie really worth it for her in the end?
Though we see plenty of shots of Ayelet Zurer wandering around looking vaguely despondent even though she just took home the festival’s Best Director prize, Losing Alice somehow never provides much insight into her feelings.
Is she upset because Sophie got hurt? Because she sacrificed so much in her own life to make this movie? Was it worth it for her, in the end?
It’s difficult to say and after sitting through eight (overly) long episodes, that’s…well, it’s not great
To be fair, the sudden twist, that Nomi’s mentally unstable mom — yes, the homeless lady that lives under Alice’s office, truly the series’ most insane coincidence — is the one who tried to kill Sophie, believing that she had somehow harmed her daughter is pretty lame.
And hardly the dark mix of crime and attraction that the flash-forwards seemed to promise.
In the end, heck, even the show’s ending can’t commit to a lane. Sophie wakes up seconds before the credits roll, implying that there’s some way this story will keep going, and she and Alice will continue to battle. Which, can we just not?
The crux of Alice’s arc is (I think?) supposed to be about how far she was willing to go to make this movie, to give life to this art that she had inside her. But there’s no real moment of catharsis where she realizes that she went too far, that she did some bad things, that her moral compass is deeply broken.
And, as a result, while Zurer’s performance is fairly mesmerizing throughout the show, Losing Alice ultimately ends up feeling like a waste of time.
Additional Thoughts and Observations:
- By the time the real — not dead, apparently — Nomi shows up on Alice’s train, I honestly didn’t care anymore. Like, I could not tell you whether Sophie wrote her script or Nomi did, or whether either or both of them maybe murdered someone. Clearly, the show doesn’t think actually coming clean on this point matters, so why should I?
- Is there like only one train that runs in Tel Aviv?
- The one thing I feel like I can say with confidence is that David is a dirtbag who deserves nothing, and the fact that it seems like he’s just getting his life back after literally having sex with another woman on camera in front of his wife is appalling. Like…did he ever even apologize?
- Another weird plot thread that went nowhere: David’s bizarre overbearing mother. What was the point of that character?
What did you think of this episode of Losing Alice? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Critic Rating:
User Rating:
Losing Alice is available on AppleTV+.
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Lacy Baugher
Lacy is a pop culture enthusiast and television critic who loves period dramas, epic fantasy, space adventures, and the female characters everyone says you're supposed to hate. Ninth Doctor enthusiast, Aziraphale girlie, and cat lady, she's a member of the Television Critics Association and Rotten Tomatoes-approved. Find her at LacyMB on all platforms.
5 comments
I just finished watching the show. My conclusions about David:
He might be a dirtbag, but we see here a sort of a hidden metamorphosis of him. First he was serious and overcommitted in doing his job (all the story of his previous movie, the runs, the w*nk he took under the shower before doing wrongly the 1st take of the scene…)
Afterwards he takes orders from the only woman who should be in his life (his wife) at the point he even cheats on her. And here we are at the point of the character of his mum: she was practically still telling him what to do, how to behave even if he was a grown man, but definitely it won’t be the case after this movie.
That’s how I see it.
I hope you really enjoyed this meta-cinema the way I did.
The entire series was mildly interesting at best. I watched all the episodes hoping that in the end all the nonsensical filler would be explained, but alas it never was. We all continue to wonder about the rats and the workmen with big ears and big big eyes who hung around the place seemingly 24/4. A better writer and director could have done much better with this story in the form of a film and saved us these wasted hours.
The show had so much potential but I am totally confused with the ending. So many questions left unanswered. Who wrote the script – Naomi or Sophie.? Who was the actual daughter portrayed in the script – Naomi or Sophie. Did the initial director, who committed suicide, have any relationship with either of the characters. Alice did not seem devastated with the infidelity of David, instead happy that that act would produce the best movie.
Did Naomi’s Mother attempt to kill Sophie, but Sophie was in the closet………. I am never going to sleep tonight trying to figure out this show. Alice I am losing it…….
Very confusing and frustrating
Was Sophie a childhood friend of Naomi? Who’s Dana and was blowing brains out best friend who Sophie was having affair with her father? I found this completely confusing at very end.
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