Death and Other Details Season 1 Episodes 9 and 10 Review: Impossible/Chilling

If your only criteria for a satisfying ending to a mystery is that it’s solved by the end, well then Death and Other Details clears that low bar. If you expect anything more than that, the finale gets a failing grade.

Death and Other Details Season 1 Episode 9, “Impossible,” actually delivers some thrilling action when Viktor Sams’s goon squad invades the boat. They evacuate the innocents and then run a sick bidding war between the remaining passengers to guarantee seats on a helicopter that will leave before the ship explodes.

It’s dark and twisted and the ticking time clock, as well as Rufus being taken away, does a great job of creating a tense episode. You want to root for Imogene as she’s under pressure to find out Sams’s identity once and for all.

Watching her con the guards to grab Danny’s notebook and then use her super brain to decode it is a better version of what the show has been trying to do with her character all season. Let Imogene be smart AND have cute outfits!

The rest of the characters don’t fare so well, as they’re all pretty much a mess being worried about dying or their loved ones being dead. This really is a dark, depressing season when you look at it as a whole. 

You can’t blame the actors who do their best to deliver emotionally authentic performances, but it’s just hard to connect with characters that feel paper-thin. The fact most of them are jerks doesn’t help.

What should be the best part of the episode, turns out to be the worst part (followed only by the fact it still insists on pushing the Jules-Imogene-Sunil love triangle). After figuring out who Danny saw using footage recorded the first day, Imogene confronts Agent Erikesen who is revealed to be Viktor Sams.

Except, Agent Eriksen is an alias too. She’s actually Kira Scott!

I wish I could say Episode 10, “Chilling,” makes this shocking reveal work in a clever full-circle way, but it doesn’t. Imogene’s mom just faked her death to save her life, ignored her kid for 20 years, and became an international criminal mastermind who thinks she’s Robin Hood when she’s really more like a Bond villain.

At least Imogene has a sense of morality, reminding her mother that Danny was innocent and she killed him anyway. But with little choice, Imogene goes with her because it’s her mom and Imogene didn’t get enough therapy as a child (don’t worry, the rest of the passengers aren’t killed in the explosion and end up rescued).

In case you were worried Death and Other Details couldn’t stretch out this wacky plotline any further, we get a six-month time jump in which Kira lies about stopping her work and hangs out with Imogene the rest of the time skiing.

At this point, you probably feel pretty bad about how things are ending, and then Imogene double-crosses her mother and reveals she used the rest of her Scooby gang to save the servers on the ship and get Kira arrested. Yay, I guess?

While not every show needs to have a happy ending, there isn’t much of a message on Death and Other Details finale to warrant all the death and destruction. Kira says rich people are bad, but Imogene says they’re not so bad that you’re allowed to kill them and innocent people, and that’s about as far as they take it.

Saying this series explores the gray area of morality and is a commentary on class warfare would maybe be giving it too much credit.

The finale ends on a cliffhanger revealing Anna is now working with Sams, and Imogene and the gang stumble across a dead body. Death and Other Details sets up the show for a second season with more mysteries to be solved. The glaring issue is who at this point wants to spend more time with these characters?

Imogene still needs a lifetime’s worth of therapy, Rufus is still not the world’s best detective, Anna is a drug-addicted mole… I could go on. I shudder to think what soap opera-like twists the show could deliver next.

What did you think of the season finale of Death and Other Details? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Death and Other Details Season 1 is streaming now on Hulu. 

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