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“The Man in the High Castle” Season 3: The Good, the Bad, and the Meh
The new season of “The Man in the High Castle” dropped on Friday and I finished it Tuesday night. I’d like to share my thoughts to hopefully encourage others to watch this season and the whole show if they haven’t seen it. I will stay vague to avoid spoilers but I’ll discuss themes and plot points that are shown in the trailer.
Quick primer on the series: it’s 1963 in an alternate universe where the Axis powers won WWII. America is has been divided basically along time-zone lines, where the Eastern and Central regions are controlled by the Nazis, the Pacific region is controlled by the Japanese, and the Rockies are a lawless Neutral Zone where both empires agree to not conduct operations. Our main characters are:
- Ubergruppenfuhrer John Smith, an all-American family man and a powerful member of the American Nazi government;
- Joe Blake, a young man of Nazi heritage;
- Trade Minister Tagomi, one of the highest-ranking Japanese officials in San Francisco;
- Inspector Kido, a Kempeitai agent (the Kempeitai being the Japanese equivalent of the SS);
- Juliana Crane, a young woman living in San Francisco galvanized into joining the Resistance;
- Frank Frink, Juliana’s fiance and a secret Jew.
At the end of season 2, John had performed a great service to the Reich, but at the same moment he was being honored, his son made a decision both in accordance with the Nazi ideology he had been taught and emotionally devastating to his parents. Trade Minister Tagomi broke some rules but averted a war. Frank set off a bomb that killed one of Inspector Kido’s loyal subordinates, and Juliana Crane had quite an emotional surprise. So with that basic scene set, here are my thoughts on the new season.
The Good
- So many characters have absolutely amazing actors and go through incredible emotional arcs as they face the consequences of what happened in the two prior seasons. John and Helen Smith, Kido, Tagomi, and Joe all do an amazing job making you believe in the dilemmas of these characters. Each is trapped in some way by their choices, their principles, and their roles in their world, and the tensions are writ on all their faces at different points.
- Part of John’s emotional state is shown through dream sequences, and I have to give major props to the show for making the sequences incredibly disturbing without relying on gore. The evil of the Nazi regime of which John has been a willing participant is shown by being casual, not bloodily graphic.
- The world has become more filled in, with more locations and more new but real characters. Edgar Hoover is one of Smith’s subordinates, and George Lincoln Rockwell is a powerful member of the Reich’s government in America. (This was hinted at in a previous season showing that JFK airport was named after him instead.) Moreover, we now have characters from Okinawa, Hawaii, and Ireland; Manchuria is mentioned as a punishment station for Japanese officials who have fallen out of favor. We even get to see Denver, Poconos, PA, and Cuba as settings.
- The end of episode 6 has an amazing montage of two thematically opposite ceremonies being juxtaposed. Anything more would spoil it, but you’ll know it when you see it.
- There has to be a closeted conservative or two on the writing staff. Previous seasons revolved around Mutually Assured Destruction via atomic weapons as a way of keeping the peace; this one doubles down by adding to that theme the ability of free trade to prevent war. Previous seasons had left-wing talking points about America’s genocide of the Indians and the Founding Fathers being nothing but hypocritical slave-owners in Nazi mouths; this season, the big Nazi push is the destruction of America’s historical monuments to make way for “Jahr Null” — Year Zero. And the Nazi youth raised on uncontested propaganda are to be looked to as the moral guides for this new age after the end of history — any of this sound familiar?
The Bad
- Despite the best efforts of the writing staff, Juliana Crane remains the least interesting character. This is primarily because every male character except for John Smith seems to fall in love — romantic or platonic — with her at first sight and despite how much pain and misery she brings into the lives of everyone around her. It’s not good when I’m watching her ask another character “Why are you helping me?” and I want to scream at the TV “Because the plot demands it!” Moreover, they try to push a “chosen one” aspect, that fate has given her a special role to play, combined with abilities no other character has.
- The stakes are upped rather gratuitously. One would think that overthrowing the fascist empires that murder people by the job lot would be a serious enough goal, but no, the Nazis have a secret plan that must be stopped at all costs! One that’s been done before, in fact. (Warning: the linked video will spoil the secret plan.)
- At the end of episode 4, there’s a bombshell bit of information. However, the person saying it has been severely tortured and can barely wheeze out the words, so you will completely miss it if you don’t have the subtitles on.
The Meh
- The homosexuality factor has been upped quite a bit, and it wasn’t really necessary. One male character is given a boyfriend who has the same function in the story as a girlfriend would in any other story; two female characters are made lovers for no apparent purpose other than to make a “Nazis hate gays” point. It could easily have been a “Nazis hate infidelity” subplot instead. That being said, while it’s unnecessary, it’s not graphic or particularly obnoxious — the same-sex couples exchange kisses, but it’s not like “Game of Thrones” which shows sex acts. In fact, the closest we get to gay sex is implied in a scene of the women covered by sheets and smoking in bed, and judging by the pure white sheets and flawless makeup on both of them, they couldn’t have been doing anything beforehand anyway.
- That being said, we do get a male/female pair of very hands-on dancers in nothing but g-strings in a rather gratuitous dance club scene, so don’t confuse “not graphically homosexual” with “appropriate for all ages.” And of course, there are lots of shootings, stabbings, bombs, torture, and foul language. We are dealing with two of the evilest political entities that ever existed, after all.
The show isn’t perfect, but if you find the premise intriguing and like solid drama, it’s a good place to spend some TV time.
Published in Entertainment
I’m one of the pain-in-the-rear originalists who liked the book better. The novel didn’t much resemble a show at so-called Peak Television of “dark, edgy” themes, and it wasn’t a story about a racist nation in a proto-Nazi readiness to go Hitler; it was a story about a defeated country that was more like Vichy France than anyone in Fifties America could imagine.
And then you finish it, and it’s none of those.
Fortunately, I read it long, long ago in highschool – and don’t remember that much of it. Guess it didn’t make much of an impact. Anyway, I’m enjoying the show. I started watching the third season this weekend, but haven’t finished. The only instance I can remember where the movie was better than the book is “The Godfather” – and the book was very good.
@amyschley – Excellent summary.
Carrie.
I’ll take your word for it. Never read, never seen it.
I hadn’t made the connection. You’re right. I appreciate it now.
The mandatory gay coupling — the simultaneous introduction of two gay couples for emphasis — greatly annoys me. In other series, it has been a deal-breaker that prompted me to immediately abandon the show (ex: Black Sails). But the theme seems fleeting and the characters involved are not core characters.
It’s amusing how quickly Hollywood transitioned from “born this way” to the sexual flexibility of the women. The Left has no principles; only opportunistic arguments.
Cary Tagawa is a gem.
And I can deal with it because like I said, the gay relationships serve the same role as straight ones would have. It’s not used to tittlilate or advocate, except possibly to highlight the contrasts among life in the conquered territories and the freedom of the neutral zone.
The show having made the choice to have homosexuality presented, I don’t think there was a better way they could have done it.
I’m incredibly impressed with Joel de la Fuente, who plays Kido. (And let’s take a second to appreciate how America’s melting pot means we can have a guy with an English via Jewish first name and a Spanish last name playing a Japanese character.)
He and Rufus Sewell’s John Smith are very similar characters. On the one hand, there’s no denying these men perform incredibly evil acts, torturing and murdering those under their authority. On the other hand, though, we see how these acts come from duty to country, love of family, and loyalty to trusted subordinates. In a better world, these virtues would make them the very best of men. And this season in particular makes both men examine their actions in new lights.
I would say the show depicts the same thing. The racism of the Americans is very clearly attributed to their Nazi run education, Nazi propaganda, and the creation of racist social norms. (E.g. “Of course I denounced her! Can you imagine, a Semite teaching children?!”) The characters who live outside the American Reich don’t have those attitudes. There are also characters like Robert Childan, who like his book counterpart, has completely internalized his inferiority to the Japanese, to the point of wanting his white callgirl in perfect geisha makeup and telling him in Japanese, “You are a man of great taste and intellectual distinction.”
I liked this season a lot. Its much better than the first two. Though two takes off once they get rid of Frank Spotnitz as show runner. You can really feel the difference. He was to much in love with exploring this terrible world to have this thing we like to call a plot.
I also liked the ending where they finally do what everyone should have done with the movie from day one. As the truck drove away I thought to myself. “Finally the adults are in charge.”
Definitely agree that this season is much more plot driven whereas previous seasons seemed to dwell more on the world itself.
I am not an amazon prime subscriber. I have seen one episode of this series, and it made me consider the subscription. Is there enough on the service to justify the subscription as in addition to Netflix?
There is getting to be so many of these streaming services, Crave, Crackle, Hulu, CBS, etc, are any of them a worthy addition to Netflix?
Their are some good shows on Prime like Bosch, Comrade Detective and Patriot. I find it has better original shows than Netflix. But the main reason to get a Prime account is the many products on Amazon that ship for free because of it. I pay like 70 a year for TV shows, and cheap shipping. Netflix doesnt have the latter.
The movie mix is a lot less than Netflix.
I read the book this was based on a while ago… and am somewhere close to the beginning of season 2… I avoided it because, I guess I didn’t really like the permise of Nazi’s and Japan taking over my country.
But, my husband and I decided to give it a try. I spent a lot of time thinking maybe I read a different book or there was a whole series of books and I just read one, in the middle or something… I looked it up and there’s just the one. The series is firmly based on this one book, but with many additions to the book. I didn’t realize the book was written in the 60s… but it’s a good enough show. I really want to watch it, even though Amazon has the worst platform for watching anything you really have to work to back up and the voices get off sync… etc. Anyway, I’m enjoying it.
However, my husband keeps falling asleep, and thus the need to back up… he is just not that excited. The episodes are long, so you can’t just decide to watch another at 11:00, because…
I’m creeped out by the whole idea, which I think is why they’ve brought in the science fiction plot they seem to be adding… it’s not part of the book (that I remember) but comforting to me to think I live in my better version of events.
We owe our parents and grandparents for saving us from that horrible life.
I
I freeload off my sister’prime.
I’m in love with Bosch, and right now I’m in the middle of nostalgia with The Waltons Season 2. I liked “man in the high castle,” I’ll get to watching the new season. I’ve watched a few other things on prime as well.
I started Mozart in the Jungle, but after a while the crazy sexualvescapades overran the musical content that drew me in. So I quit that.
I also have Netflix. Those two services are all I use on the tube.
I’m with Tory — I’d get Prime even without the video streaming service just to have the free shipping. It’s basically replaced Wal-Mart as my go-to for non-grocery shopping. A Prime account also comes with an ad-free music streaming service akin to Spotify or Pandora. Audible is now an Amazon company, so it’s very easy to buy a book on your Amazon account and then upgrade it to an audio book (often at a discount).
As for the streaming service, I’m pretty satisfied with the catalog, particularly when it also offers a selection of HBO original shows. What isn’t bundled with the subscription is often very easy to rent or buy, and the Fire stick provides a program to organize all your subscriptions, including Netflix, into one easy system. We don’t have Netflix, but we are subscribers to the Great Courses Plus, and we can pull up the Plus app to make navigation very simple.
Phillip K Dick had ideas for sequels, but in the end never wrote any of them because it was too depressing to research the actual Nazi activities to derive realistic actions for them in a world where they won. e.g. The Lebensborn program that involves Joe really existed.
I’m not wild about the idea of folks learning the true horrors of the Nazis and Japanese from a TV show instead of from studying actual history, but if it makes people curious about the real atrocities, I can’t complain too much. Particularly when it comes to the Pacific theater — the barbarity of the Imperial forces is glossed over in high school and college classes in order to make the nuclear bombing seem unjustified.
I binge watched The Man in the High Castle, once I started it, and I don’t binge watch a lot.
The show is fairly vague as to why the United States lost the war to the point that it was occupied. There are some hints that they lost the race for the atomic bomb. When you read The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won by Victor Davis Hanson, it seems unlikely that the U.S. would have lost that war, except by withdrawing.
Even then, I find it unlikely the United States would have been occupied. Still, the alternate history is kind of fun to watch. The show displays how structured and hierarchial both German and Japanese society were before our World War II ended, along with the formality that went with it.
The first episode had a lot of mumbling in it, so I turned on subtitles right away, and I picked up a lot that I wouldn’t have without them.
One thing the subtitles displayed was the lyrics of the introductory song, Edleweiss, and I looked it up. It was originally written for the Sound of Music, which is a loose play / movie about the von Trapp family in Nazi occupied Austria. Edleweiss, which refers to Austria’s national flower, is a patriotic song about the Austrian homeland. That being said, it’s not an Austrian song, but was written by Rogers and Hammerstein for the play.
The way it’s performed in The Sound of Music makes sense (you can find it in YouTube) and is even moving. Not so much in the High Castle intro. With that interpretation I didn’t understand what it’s about. Even with the subtitles on.
I also found the introduction of gay characters to be annoying. Gays make up an estimated 1%-3% of the population, and are over represented in our media.
This series bears little resemblence to Phillip K. Dicks’s novel. But then, any movie or television series of Dicks’s works is always going to be heavily modified, since Dicks’s writing style doesn’t emphasize plot all that much, and plot is always more important for visual mediums.
As I stated at the beginning, I was hooked from the start, and this is the best season they produced so far. I suspect that season 4 won’t be as good given the way they ended season 3 and what seems to be coming up.
One thing the book got right was the fact that nearly everyone ultimately reports to someone else or is reliant on the support of other people. The pitiful Jewish craftsman who wants his girlfriend back thinks the owner of the machine shop he works in has enviably total control of his life. Of course, his boss, envies both the shadowy men he gets financing and sales from, as well as his own employees, who he imagines live simple, carefree lives. That boss’s products are bought by a middleman who has considerable power over him, since he knows the antique reproductions are fake, but that middleman is nothing but a lackey to the real bosses, Japanese buyers of whatever trinkets of Americana show the country in its most folkloric and condescending light.
On every level, they think “my underlings have no responsibility, and my bosses are all powerful”.
That’s not always true in life, but it’s true often enough to note Philip K. Dick noticing it.
I may have to catch up. The lack of levity in the series is difficult, and with that a lack of dimension in the characters. The viewer doesn’t get much of an emotional break. That is based on season one and it may have changed, but your summary here raises doubts. Thanks for sharing this synopsis of what’s happening, I was curious and appreciate it.
The first season was by far the worst.
Though the second season has a great payoff for those who can put up with it.
I agree that the idea that either power had the resources or capability to occupy America is the most unrealistic part of the show. Though as you watch there are many ‘changepoints’ that significantly weaken the US.
Throughout the third season given the Nazis plan, I kept thinking to myself. “Bring it.”
It is, and it’s one of the few things I wish they would explore a bit more. I haven’t read the book, but what I gather from other reviews, FDR was assassinated in the 30s. The replacement president was more pacifist and Hitler was a little more cunning, so that while America did go to war against Japan after Pearl Harbor, we stayed completely out of the European theater until the Nazis dropped an atomic bomb on DC in 1945. The invasion of America took another two years.
Completely plausible? Maybe not, but not entirely ridiculous either.
My interpretation of the music is that just like the images in the credits, beloved elements of American culture are having the evil of the fascist empires projected on to them. We see video of paratroopers deploying projected on Mt. Rushmore so that Washington looks like he’s crying. We see Japanese planes projected onto the Golden Gate Bridge. We see the Nazi eagle icon projected on a carving of the bald eagle. And we hear one of the great American anti Nazi songs sung by a German (note how she says “schmall and white” not “small and white).
I think it also assumes cultural familiarity with the song’s context in “The Sound of Music.” There, it is a huge climactic moment when the oppressed Austrians rally together to say they will not be cowed; they love their country and don’t accept the Nazis as their legitimate rulers. Its use in the credits suggests that the Americans here are the Austrians in the musical, though they are solitary voices and not a massed crowd.
And lastly, I think it is a suggestion that this world is dependent on alternate histories for its redemption, as in its vision of history, there would be no song called Edelweiss, no Sound of Music, and no culture making Jews called Hammerstein.
My problem is that once you’ve heard Cave Johnson explain the plan (see my linked video) it’s impossible to treat it with the seriousness the writers want you to.
Not to be overly pedantic, the Kempeitai was the Japanese Army Military Police. Over the years the Japanese military came to dominate the government and in effect Japan was a form of military junta. As a reliable part of the army, the Kempeitai evolved into an organization with the powers and jurisdiction akin to the Gestapo.
I’m only into episode 2 and I’m finding it a bit of a muddle. Like the producers have lost their focus. Of course they’ve gone far beyond the source material. I’m just wondering if we are headed for a disconcerting ending like LOST.
Still, I persist.
Okay, that makes sense of why Kido sometimes trades in his outfit stolen from the SS Nazi in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” for a military uniform.
A recurring theme I’m finding in these prestige TV shows with only 10 episodes a season (Game of Thrones is another) is that the first couple episodes generally are a bit muddled and boring as we check in with all the characters and set up their plot arcs for the season.
Both the book and the show get at a seldom-spoken military consensus: neither Japan nor Germany ever had a plausible plan to conquer and occupy the USA. They didn’t think they needed to. Both of them made the same extremely common assumption that Americans are so soft, spoiled and lazy that merely raising the price in sunk shipping and dead sailors would be enough to get us to quit–not abjectly surrender, just withdraw from the war. This was obviously a colossal miscalculation.
The other problem I have with the show is that its written with the conceit of the 60’s and the far less knowledge available to the public about the war than we have now. The idea that the UK could be wiped out and the Soviets all conquered by 45 even without the support of America is quite ridiculous given our now modern understanding of the conditions during the war.
Yeah, but as noted a few weeks ago, the idea that humans could travel faster than light is equally ridiculous. So long as the show is internally consistent, I can suspend my disbelief.
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I really, really want to see how they explain the ending. Because Philip K. Dick didn’t.
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