Lazarus
Episode 8
by James Beckett,
How would you rate episode 8 of
Lazarus ?
Community score: 4.1
It's pretty ironic how much franchise so iconic: Tension. Don't get me wrong, the choreography, storyboarding, and actual animation of the fights in Lazarus have been excellent across the board, but if there is one thing that “Unforgettable Fire” demonstrates, it is that none of that ends up mattering very much at all if the audience can't be convinced to go along with the collective game of pretend we're all supposed to play when we watch an action program. Of course, ninety-nine percent of the time, the good guys are going to win and the bad guys are going to get their butts kicked. Still, good action manages to create tension that gets our hearts racing. It makes all the kicking, punching, and flipping around matter.
Take Stahelski's own John Wick movies, for instance. No matter how crazy and outlandish the set pieces of those films become as the franchise develops, Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves are smart enough to make sure we feel every hit John Wick takes, and to use small lingering moments in the action beats to emphasize John's fundamental vulnerability. A panicked reload here, a tumble down a staggeringly long flight of stairs there—whatever it takes to ensure that the audience never checks out or starts to yawn. This is where Lazarus has constantly come up short these last couple of months—which is especially bad for a show relying on action spectacle to carry its flimsy excuses for scripts every week.
On paper, “Unforgettable Fire” has all the ingredients that should have made for a stellar episode. Sure, pausing the hunt for Skinner to address Chris' sudden abduction at the hands of her former Russian comrades does nothing for the grander plot of the the show, but Lazarus has made it abundantly clear that we shouldn't be thinking too hard about that part of the story no matter the occasion. Do you that big reveal about Herche's connection to Skinner's old research project from last week? That gets dropped immediately with zero fanfare—and I will be shocked if it amounts to much more by the end of the series.
The problem, though, is that pesky lack of urgency that plagues the entire episode—no matter how much violence and pathos it tries to force down our throats with every scene. Christine's extended interrogation sequences are gorgeously animated and suitably painful to watch. Still, it's never quite so impactful that you'd think that the Lazarus crew could fail to bail her out. The team's extended assault on the Russian oil rig is a decent sequence, though the inexplicable soundtrack undercuts any tension there might otherwise have been; for all of the work the animators put into this entertaining caper, the end product is about as exciting as one of those Anime Girl Lo-Fi Beats channels on YouTube.
Lazarus can't even be bothered to pretend that Chris' storyline will be anything more complicated than “Her ex-girlfriend handler is pissed because Christine faked her death and fled to America” before said ex-girlfriend is unceremoniously killed a couple of minutes before the credits roll. Sure, it's sad for Chris, but the episode immediately pivots to a montage of everyone laughing and grinning like they just got away with a candy-store shopping spree, so we're not meant to waste too much energy on feeling bad for our poor heroine. We're not meant to feel much of anything really, which seems to be Lazarus' ultimate M.O. This is a shiny but empty bauble of an anime that is going to need to pull off a hell of a last-minute surprise to make up for all of its wasted potential.
Rating:
Lazarus is currently streaming on Max and Hulu on Sundays.
James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.
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