OK. I started learning photography about a year ago. It was only a few days, after I finally learned how to hold the camera steadily enough, when I took the shortcut towards artiness and started desaturating my photos in the editing software. You know, all of a sudden a normal photo of one of my cats looked like a piece of art simply because it was incredibly sharp and in black and white. Needless to say, this is way too easy - that's why I called it a shortcut. My black and white photos didn't take any more effort or skill than the photos I did in color. They weren't any more arty. Hell, they were easier to do, as I didn't need to be as careful when taking them as I did when taking photos in color. And choosing the black and white palette didn't really serve any purpose, other than artificially making my photos look more arty than they were.
It's the same with this episode - the black and white cinematography serves no purpose whatsoever. It's just there, and it's so obvious that the picture was desaturated in post-production that it will make your eyes hurt as soon as you notice this. Yes, it was filmed in color, without any thought about how something actually filmed in black and white would look. I don't know why and I honestly don't see any reason to do this, other than forcing the viewers to feel something that simply isn't there, while, at the same time, the director and the cinematographer don't need to be as careful with composing the frames as they'd need to be, if they worked with color. I see reviews mentioning excellent cinematography... Well, where is it? The episode is, of course, competently filmed, but that's a given for any high profile TV show.
And it's not only the cinematography that is a problem. The whole thing is done is some self-congratulating way, as if the writers wanted to tell the viewers, "Look how smart we are!" Well, you're not. The episode is filled with "Wizard of Oz" references that serve no purpose whatsoever, Coen brothers movies references that, again, serve no purpose whatsoever, pseudo-poetic and pseudo-meaningful dialogues that, again, serve no purpose whatsoever, quirky characters that... You know what I'll say about them, do you? Most of the things that you'll see serve no purpose. They are just there to stroke someone's ego - be it the ego of the people who'd get the references or the ego of the people who thought they were oh, so smart for putting these references in the episode. To top it all, there is a prolonged conversation about a certain fairy tale, where the moral is simply said to us absolutely directly, and we are left scratching our heads, not understanding whether this show is for the supposedly smart people who'd get all the references and all the symbolism, or for stupid people who'd need everything to be spoon-fed to them. But, since we are, in fact, smart enough to see through all of this, we can understand one simple fact - that most of this episode serves no purpose whatsoever. Events that are relevant to the overall plot of an otherwise good season here take less than five minutes. But hey, there is an awesome visual effects sequence near the ending. That's why I'm giving the episode an overall positive mark.
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