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| Imagine me and you, I do; I think about you day and night, it's only right... So happy together! |
It has concluded. The mystery solved, the last twitching body laid to rest.
It's okay. I'll be okay! Don't cry for me, Argentina! Or Israel. Or Croatia or Norway! I will be okay. (Because USA Network, until they say Yay or Nay definitively, will be receiving occasional, overly familiar, harassing tweets from me about green lighting a 2nd Season for DIG...and they can just go ahead and ask Jason Isaacs all about what it's like to get my occasional, overly familiar, harassing tweets. He knows all about these, because he gets them from me about every 3rd-4th time he tweets.)
Alright, diggers/digglers/diggees, let's just rip the band aid off. Let's talk about the last episode.
Here's the mystery, solved (and if you haven't watched it yet, or even seen the series at all: (A) Why are you here? We are NOT friends...and (B) look away!! Look away now!!! I'm about to tell you THE WHOLE THING.):
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| In real life, Emma/Rebecca is a beautiful songwriter/singer/actress named Alison, whose songs my daughter & I both love |
And she fell in love with Peter in the process of orchestrating the biggest antiquities/revenge heist of all time. She was in cahoots with greedy Margrove but not really--she just wanted to use him to avenge her father's death which Margrove caused by betraying his colleague, who just so happened to be Emma/Rebecca's dad. She lost her whole family because of Margrove's greed. And so, like a spider, she wove a web and trapped him, mated with him, and then ate him. And Margrove, who I was certain was a goner after, like, episode 3, ended up being the last of the dead guys, making it (almost) to the end.
*The Order of Moriah? That was Ruth Riddell and Tad Billingham, and they got theirs. (Tad choked to death on some nuts...as he WENT nuts at the same time. No, seriously--he was eating nuts while talking nutty. Dearest, amazing DIG writers: I. LOVED. THIS. SO. MUCH.)
*Josh was a twin, and Fay was their mother. That means Fay killed one of her own children back in episode 1. 'Cause that's what crazy people do, y'all! Kill their kids. Google it--it's in the news all the time.
*Josh turned out to be the very psycho Tad B. (who I THINK maybe was his dad?!?) was. (Parenting rule #1: model the behavior you want to see in your children.) And Josh turned on Tad, because Josh was taught that he's God's right hand boy/high priest, and so you know: he thinks he really is. Turns out, raising kids to believe they are God's gift to the world gives them an Entitlement Complex. (This is also called Extreme Spoiling, and I actually watched it happen, live, at my local supermarket about 2 weeks ago.)
So basically, evil Rabbi Lev and the Order of Moriah wanted to blow up Dome of the Rock. Rabbi Lev so he could rebuild the Temple and welcome the Messiah; Tad so he could start the Rapture and bring four horsemen down to scourge the Earth and bring the Messiah (and then Tad and Lev would get into a big fist fight about whether that was the First or Second Messiah).
To do that, they brought in thousands of pounds of explosives disguised as books written by Tad Billingham. Then they rigged them all up to a dam that, when exploded, would flood the underground tunnels beneath Jerusalem and when the water made its way to the Temple Mount, BAM! Good-bye, Dome of the Rock; hello a lot of angry religious guys starting World War 3.
*Ruth's goin' to federal prison! Where she'll teach women to scare the shit out of people just by looking pointedly at them. (I think she should have gotten blown up in the damn dam, or had her throat slit by Lynn with the sharp letter opener, but that's just me. Because Armageddon Protocol.)
But now for the happy endings:
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| Blood. Red blood. Blood moons. Sacrificial blood. Blood. |
*Peter made it! And he SAVED THE WORLD! And he's letting go of his past--he finally took off his wedding ring, and (I didn't see this but I BET) he deleted his ex-wife's phone number finally and he's going to see a plastic surgeon about that scar. He took Vicky's picture out of the drawer, and Lynn's going to send him far, far away (can it be to Atlanta, Georgia, Lynn? We have lots and lots of religious crazies for Peter to fight here, too).
*Shem made it out alive! He's still out there somewhere, loving on Nature and saying prayers at strange moments while wearing white. He's counseling lost, fucked up people with gentle words of ancient wisdom. He's eating vegetables for dinner and dancing naked under the moon, and he's taking long, candlelit mikvehs. (I love the thought of a Shem out there in the world doing this, being a guardian of the Light for our spot in the Milky Way.)
*And Avram. Dear, sweet Avram. Thank God he made it off the DIG writers' pages alive; he's out there still. And so is Red (I'm going to talk about them in a few more paragraphs, because if I do it now, this will make me cry like I did when I rewatched it this afternoon and I need to get through the rest of what I want to say in my write up).
Basically, what I'm saying is: this show was, in the end, about water and a cow.
....Did you know? Water has a very mystical meaning: it's used in purification rituals, to cleanse us. We are 50-65% water; without it we will die. And our planet will as well. Every bit of water we have on Earth today has been here since our planet was born; the water you bathe and shower in? Here since the dinosaurs. The water you wash your car with? Here before life began. All life began on Earth in water. Take care of it; it is precious. (Don't use it for nefarious purposes, either.)
I think it's really interesting that the DIG writers used water as a catalyst to either destroy or save in the end. (The dam's water was all diverted into an old archaeological bit of Jerusalem history: Warren's Shaft. Archaeologists who've studied it think it was first developed by the Canaanites; it is an ancient tunnel most likely used by ancient Jerusalemites as a water supply system. And it saved (in DIG) the world by diverting the exploded dam water away from the Temple Mount. Good job, ancient Canaanites!) In the beginning, I wrote about how I thought numbers mattered, that God was in the numbers. At the end, it turns out God was actually in the water.
And also I felt DIG was about darkness and light. Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light. An eternal, internal War of Soul. Maybe that's what Armageddon/Gog and Magog/the End of Days will boil down to: we'll all be fighting ourselves, inwardly...and only one of us will win. Let's all hope our Sons of Light come out on top. (Peter's did...he was tempted, at the end, by the Whore of Babylon, to come away with her and enjoy her spoils. Except Rebecca/Emma didn't realize she was dealing with a Son of Light. And so, in that way, Peter really was a Messiah. Of sorts.)
But mostly? DIG was about a cow. Not the cow herself so much, but Avram's devotion to her well-being--because DIG was about honor and loyalty and faith and loss and most important? Taking care of one another--Red saved Avram and Avram saved Red. Take care of each other, good people of Earth. Treat each other with kindness and care. Our animal friends, too.
And I think DIG was a good example of how to tell a good Hero's Journey story. Do you know about this? Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist, developed the concept--every story in every culture in every language in every corner of the planet even the farthest removed tells mythologies, and they all center around a Hero who must embark upon a Journey. One day, he wakes up and realizes: I have to go on a journey. Sometimes the journey is to rescue a maiden, or slay a dragon, or defeat a giant; it varies depending on the story and the culture. And so the Hero sets out--he leaves everything he knows behind and takes a journey. Along the way, he meets friends who are enemies, enemies who are friends, he has to overcome obstacles, pass tests, he fights battles and is wounded...until finally he reaches a Dark Night of the Soul, in which he must make the decision to either give up and die, or go on. But choosing to go on means the Hero must change, and change will involve doing the hardest thing(s) he can ever possibly imagine doing. But if the Hero does it, in the end he wins and goes back to his village to accolades and adoration. But if the Hero does it, he is changed forever, and Life as he knows it will never be the same again. (Not necessarily a bad thing.)
I think Campbell's The Hero's Journey could be applied to Lynn, Peter, and Avram. They all were woken up one day, realized they had to go on a journey to fight something terrible, and met enemies who were friends and friends who were enemies and suffered through Dark Nights of the Soul along the way.
Particularly Avram: in the end, he is forever changed; I'm not sure if he lost his faith or just his faith in the people of his faith. But he has left the Orthodox community for the world because of Rabbi Lev's evil, and he will be forever changed now.
Red is free. Home on the range. The last moments we see of her are a sweet, happy calf surrounded by her "people," running off to enjoy the world...no sacrificial knives or weird kids in breastplates anywhere. And the real Red is also free, along with all the other baby cows who worked the show with her. They are all free, running around in the world right now, and will never ever be a source of food for anyone reading this. They are safe, safe at last.
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| Since Golan got killed (sob!!) Shem and Peter could save the world in DIG 2. (Shem will use prayer to catch bad guys, and Peter will make sarcastic asides.) |
Three Stars and a Wish
A wish:
That the final episode had been longer. I realize Jason, Ori, Anne, Alison, etc. would have had to stay in Croatia like 1-2 more weeks eating pizza while missing their loved ones and USA would've had to cough up more cash, but I felt like there needed to be about 30 more minutes, maybe 40; this show felt slightly rushed to wrap it up. A big show to start the story; one big one to finish it. And I wish the Armageddon Protocol stuff had been a bit bigger in scope and nature. More water, more explosions. I mean, Tad and friends were trying to start The End.
3 Stars:
1. Clearly, I am in love with the writers (still! we are STILL on our perpetual honeymoon, DIG writers! Til death do us part). So I thought the writing was superb and stunning, stunningly superb. Throughout. There were a lot of moments I watched and re-watched and went: holy crap, those are amazing storytellers. How does one learn to do that? I would like to just sit and pretend to darn their socks while they work on their stories. So I can learn from them.
2. The final episode had some amazingly awesome writing in it, and words that sat with me most from this episode were from Peter:
"Maybe it should all end. Let everybody wipe each other out in the name of God." (JUST last Friday, I thought the SAME thing, Peter Connelly!)
and what an awesome exit line: when Emma/Rebecca tells Peter she'll see him in Hell, he says, "Not if I see you first." (Oh my god. I am SO using this in the next argument I'm in that person tells me to go to Hell.)
3.There were some loose ends. But this is actually a positive for me, and here's why: I have read things on the Internet from people complaining about these loose ends. There are questions about why certain things happened or didn't happen, or what was the point of that character. Just some things I've seen around town: what was Ridell's motivation? What was Billingham's? How'd the file get put on Peter's desk/who put it there? How'd the Essene know where to go? How'd the bombs get there? How'd Emma/Rebecca even know about Peter? How'd she find out so much about his daughter?
These questions are why I think the finale needed to be longer...and yet, I'm okay with not having ALL the loose questions answered. You out there reading this may not be, and the questions have been really chapping your buns (my suggestion: stop reading imdb.com's message boards; lunacy lies within). But I am okay with loose ends. And I'm okay with the unanswered questions because I think that's just how Life works--sometimes there's an ending and you can't figure out why somebody did that thing, or didn't do that other thing they were supposed to do. Sometimes you don't get to say good-bye; sometimes there isn't any closure; sometimes you just aren't supposed to know.
I'm also okay with lingering questions about some of the characters because I know about building characters--when I write stories, every single character I put in it has a background and a motivation; I know what these are. Every detail, every motivation doesn't always make it into the story; but I don't build them into my characters for that reason. I build them into my characters to give a story movement and life. Sometimes it's to make a character more real, or to make another character more real. I am totally fine if that's what the DIG writers were doing with this.
But this freaks some people out--I once took a writing class with a lady who got really annoyed with me because I wouldn't write a complete ending to any of my stories. And I hated reading her stories because they were always ended on such pretty, wrapped up, here-you-go presentations. C'est la vie; to each his own.
All in all, I hearted DIG tremendously. Its creators, Gideon Raff and Tim Kring, wrote it on spec and I'm not sure necessarily wrote it with the intention it would go on and on. From what I understand, they simply wanted to tell a whole story, for us to watch on our TVs (or iPads or wherever you watch your TV shows now). But the writing was so tremendous, and the acting was so stellar, and it is just human nature to want stellar, tremendous things we are enjoying to continue. Orgasms SHOULD last days and weeks, it is not fair they only last a few seconds. So I think there should be a Season 2, so we can all meet back online and orgasm together, with a new adventure. But if there is NOT a Season 2, then I am happy this story is out there in the ethos now. When my child is old enough, I will share it with her. And she can share it with her child(ren) and so on and so forth, as is the connective nature of storytelling.
It was a wild, roller coaster ride every Thursday night, thank you, DIG writers and cast and crew! But man. I will confess: I have an extremely addictive personality, and so I'm going to have to go to DIG rehab now. But first, you know what I'm going to do this Thursday night? Start over with Episode 1. I have them all in my DVR, and I'm going to start over with Episode 1 this Thursday, and recreate the whole thing!
Also, I'm going to harass Jason Isaacs on Twitter to see if he'll wake up at 3 AM on Thursday (aka Friday for him) in London for the next 10 weeks to re-live tweet them again, for me, personally.
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| What is Peter looking at??? (scroll down to solve the mystery) |
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| It's Debbie! Come to avenge Golan!! |
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| And it's Golan! It's his ghost! (Shem brought them both back via prayer) (Yes, yes. I KNOW THEY'RE DEAD FOREVER. But I'm a magical thinker. Stop judging me.) |
I think it was Riddell's aide who intercepted the Donaldson file and put it on Peter's desk.
ReplyDeleteAh, ok. Good call! :-)
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