MIDNIGHT REVIEWS Kaos Episode 3 & 4 Review
Where Zeus steals everyone’s thunder.
Kaos Episodes 3 & 4
Series created by: Charlie Covell
Featuring: Jeff Goldblum, Janet McTeer, Stephen Dillane
Synopsis: Riddy (Aurora Perrineau) learns more about her new role, sentenced to two hundred years in the Underworld. Orpheus (Killian Scott) gets closer to finding her after getting help from Dionysus (Nabhaan Rizwan). And in much more terrifying news, Zeus (Goldblum) wants his watch back.
Review: There is a light motif (though not a leitmotif) used throughout Kaos, with circles and time popping up occasionally to remind us of or get us thinking about particular subjects. How any particular viewers interprets it might be singular to them. This is the same for anyone deciding to reinterpret any ancient myths. In theory, anyone’s interpretation and adaptation of the same story will be different.
The use of circles suggests a repetition of sorts, in the sense that the same ideas will come round and round, in and out of fashion on a constantly running carousel, perhaps a Chaos God slapping new names on each of these ideas as they creep out of sight.
Whether the ideas are on a rotation of one every few months, every few years or even decades, depends on the context. The Gods dethroning the Titans, only to be dethroned themselves by humans, who perhaps beget the Titans’ resurgence and so on for all of time. “Time is a flat circle,” so says Nietzsche.
Which begs the question: has the Pina Colada song been used enough times now?
These two episodes bare a more gruesome interior than previous.
One of the problems Kaos has, at first a seemingly nice problem to have, is that despite how well the rest of episodes three and four go, any time Jeff Goldblum’s terrible, paranoid Zeus isn’t on screen, it feels like the show is missing out. The fact such Earth-shaking events can occur simply due to a pricked ego and a missing watch shows the pettiness of the God in question. Can he avoid the boundless repetition of the circle? Perhaps he can, as after all his watch isn’t analogue, it’s digital.
As stated in the previous review, Goldblum is tremendous. His Zeus is sparky, he’s pernicious, he’s malicious and wounded and most importantly he knows his power is on the wane.
Now the wheels of the plot have started turning and are seemingly unable to stop, these two episodes bare a more gruesome interior than previous, in true Ancient Greek myth style. Before, any of the violence was slapstick (Dionysus getting his head banged on the table; the same God getting shot by a startled Orpheus). Episode three is bookended with examples of stark violence. The opening has some nice visual touches, cluing us in on what has to happen with red flourishes to the set design.
[Certain choices are] lacking imagination.
Unfortunately for the show as a whole, the violence loses its impact somewhat as it happens in a world where even the settings that are supposed to be grim and dank (to mind, the mini-Gladiator fight in episode three) look clean. This haze, this sheen that clouds everything is not limited to Kaos but is a regrettable trend linked to both modern colour correction and creative inclinations. And it creates a distance; despite this sheen being only the thinnest of layers, everything feels a world away.
Where Kaos does have its own specific issues is that, despite some great comedic moments (Zeus’ notes on his white board about creating flooding and drought at the same time; the same God’s introduction to a cat) the show lacks claws. Like the young feline, it feels like a kitten’s attempt at scratching at the world around us. Where satire attempts to raise its head, plot rudely and clumsily grabs us and averts our gaze.
In a similar way, Gods simply disappearing and appearing, popping into view in front of us, isn’t played for the shock that it would be, but instead comes across as lacking imagination.
However, where Kaos gets it so right is in other important areas that save the day. The show has a great timelessness that helps the setting be a stand-in for any place, at any time. One character complains about their broken fax machine, whilst one of the Gods has a phone with an aerial. If these clues were gathered and examined, there could be a decade or even a year where it’d be clear Kaos is set. But the fun of being immersed in the show is in letting time wash over you. After all, this also helps acclimatise us for the idea of characters being in a never-changing Underworld for centuries, smoking cigarettes and eating bland food just to feel normal. Themes of repetition repeat themselves.
The introduction of Poseidon is a delight.
Despite Goldblum’s greatness, his Zeus would be nothing without a script. His discourse on keeping people scared is both amusing and alarming. Within moments of Ariadne’s (Leila Farzad) introduction, it’s clear this isn’t just a simple retelling of her and Theseus and that Minotaur. And the introduction of Poseidon (Cliff Curtis) is a delight, showing us just another example of how the Gods can be nasty pieces of work, but here it’s in his own imitable fashion.
We end, as so many shows and episodes have ended, on a cliffhanger. The circle is eternal, the carousel spins, we are given yet another of the same. But where we think the Chaos God slaps a new coat of paint on each horse, it turns out it is just us, making small, slight changes with enough left of what came before so that the carousel feels familiar and new at the same time. The circle is eternal, and yet it is constantly being adapted.
Whether Kaos does anything with the classic end-of-episode cliffhanger is up to the makers, and us the viewers. Which is the God? Is it the ones who dispense judgment, or the ones who create? Which is the human? The ones who do not create, merely consume, or the ones who await said judgment to pass?
Anyway, it probably is time to retire the Pina Colada song.
Kaos is currently available to stream on Netflix.
Matthew D. Smith likes to overshare his views on movies and TV shows whenever and wherever he can. Indulge him, and follow him on Twitter or listen to the podcast he co-hosts with Leslie Wai.
