The Man in the High Castle (TV Series) The New Normal (2015) User Reviews

Worlds Apart

[injury-65447 · 8/10 · 3 July 2020]

I don't know why this episode is lower rated on imdb. I enjoyed it and I appreciated the intrigue that the show is building. It actually felt like interesting things are starting to happen. We get a ritual suicide & a potential sexual assault.

I like that the "main" characters are split up for now and back in their respective worlds. I thought it was nicely done to show their parallel interviews / interrogations taking place. We get a sense of the "bad" guys and the "good" guys in each state.

I feel like I'm more invested in the subplot with the science minister than before. We also see those minor characters becoming woven finally into the larger story, with the moment at the end of the episode with that heart necklace.

I actually feel more excited now to see where this show goes from here. I'm hoping the faster pace and tone of this episode is indicative of what's to come. I'm hoping that will be the show's "new normal" as the title of the episode suggests.

Getting deeper into the intricacies of the Japanese world

[zahorskyakos-97981 · 8/10 · 6 August 2020]

Our protagonists have returned to their habitat, we are shown that the German and Japanese are very different indeed. It is great to explore the world in depth, and the meandering plot gives just enough momentum to the series

Hits the Reset Button

[mbloyd · 13 August 2017]

The fifth episode is a little early for a reboot, but the show feels like it's starting over. The first four episodes formed a neo-Western mini-arc that had run its course, but as the title of this episode indicates, Joe and Juliana are back in their own world. The theme hammered home over and over is that these worlds will never be the same. For all the possibilities the show's premise still holds, The Man in the High Castle so far is generally content with standard-issue intrigue. The Tagomi/Wegener arc is a case in point: it's full of generic, boring spy tropes that could play out the exact same way in any context. The most intriguing elements of the pilot (the Grasshopper films and the titular character) have receded into the background. New threads with potential to up the intrigue are presented toward the end of the episode. Here's hoping that a chance encounter between two characters in this episode is the spark that ignites the second half of the season, because that's exactly what the show needs right now.

This episode was a little slower

[jesse-08427 · 6/10 · 7 July 2018]

This episode was much slower than the previous four, highlighting the theme that 'everything is going back to normal' even though it likely isn't. This Episode showed viewers what life is like in the state that this Country is lead under; being the norms and way of life outside of the drama seen in the earlier episodes.