Counterpart

When I was reading The Ghost by Robert Harris, I checked out the Wikipedia page for its film, Ghost Writer, and the page on Olivia Williams said she recently starred in the series Counterpart. Thought I would check it out, since both seasons are on Amazon Prime.

It was OK. Started strong with the first episode, dipped a little in episodes two and three, things picked up for the rest of the first season, but the second seasons had numerous missteps.

One cool thing is that it reminded me of my Berlin vacation, and it looks like they used the STASI museum as the exterior for the government building where most of the series centers around. And I got a kick out of a couple Babylon Berlin actresses being cast, Liv Lisa Fries and Leonie Benesch; they were even in one scene together.

J.K. Simmons was great. I dunno, the show kinda lost me in the second season. I didn't buy how the alternate reality was created. From what I've read about East Germany, James Cromwell's character never would have been given the freedom to shut down the institute. Another thing that irked me was the obvious Berlin metaphor — they should have set it in a different city (East and Germany = the Alpha and Prime worlds).

Best parts of the series were the suspenseful spy sections, especially how Peter Qualye kept slithering out of almost impossible situations because he was married to the spy from the other side, Shadow.

I'm still confused by Ian Shaw's backstory. Did Management kill his wife in the Alpha world because he told her about the two worlds? I dunno, seemed like forced plotting.

And I think if the show was real, the secret of two worlds would've gotten out. Ya can't keep a secret like that from billions of people.

I liked how the show wrapped most of the plot strands up. Of course, James Cromwell got infected with the flu, so you could say when he drops dead, even though he's around a bunch of kids, it doesn't turn into a pandemic.