interregnum

This show is boring and weird and utterly unconcerned with pulling you in…and it’s actually kind of wonderful.

A quick look at some reviews will make it pretty clear that Glasslip isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and I don’t blame them. I mean, it’s not exactly inviting: the show has no buildup, gives no context, and just assumes you’re so adamant about watching it that you’re happy to put in the effort to desperately pour over the characters’ facial expressions to extrapolate what would typically be dumped on us through protagonist narration at the start of the first episode. And it also has this odd…let’s say supernatural element that runs through the “main plot” for no other reason, I have to assume, than the writer’s inability to come up with a more grounded, emotion-based way to spark the action that drives this series.

And yet…I can’t help but sort of love it.

See, Glasslip is very much a slice of life—in that it takes a very specific chunk of the lives of the characters and presents it to us otherwise untouched: there’s no beginning or end, in the traditional sense, because the real story started long before we showed up and it continues on without us long after we move on. There’s a lot missing, which is unsettling, at first, but it becomes clear that it’s also one of the show’s strengths: you get just as much out of what isn’t there as what is. Very much following the old “show, don’t tell” mantra, the show focuses on making the characters’ actions or body language give us the important details as things go on, just as though we were trying to get the lay of the land in any real-life scenario. And, unconventional as it may seem, it works. Splendidly. So splendidly, in fact, that most of the information you need is made apparent by, essentially, who’s sitting and who’s standing at the table at the end of the first episode.

If, y’know, you can make it to the end of the first episode. Which I didn’t, initially. Because the show is boring and weird and utterly unconcerned with pulling you in.

So, be ready for that. Walk away and come back later to re-watch the first episode more prepared for what you’re getting yourself into. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll end up falling just a little bit in love with it, too.