Summary
An avalanche of reveals can’t save this series from being clichéd or mediocre. A convoluted installment that verges on the ridiculous as the secrets of the alien portal unfold.
This recap of the Amazon Prime Video series Night Sky season 1, episode 5, “Driving Lessons,” contains spoilers.
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It’s interesting to think that a generation brought up on Lost would go on to be making shows in a similar vein over ten, fifteen years later. With the likes of Night Sky and Outer Range, there is no denying the drastic influence that cult series had on budding filmmakers the world over. Amazon appears more than happy to indulge these creatives, pitching dramas that splice multiple genres together in the hopes of concocting the next big thing. Night Sky blends sci-fi ideas with family drama to attempt something fresh and innovative, now throwing in an added dash of the espionage thriller too, yet it doesn’t always work. Lost boasted some creative giants behind the scenes, those that have gone on to even greater things — just look at J.J. Abrams (the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises) and Damon Lindelof (Watchmen) for example. Maybe Night Sky isn’t quite up to filling these rather big shoes, but it makes a valiant effort.
Night Sky season 1, episode 5 recap
“Driving Lessons” starts with Jude still imprisoned and Irene giving him a motherly telling off. She acts like a disappointed parent lecturing her mischievous child, although in this case, the son hasn’t really done anything wrong. Irene uses this opportunity to try to pry any fragments of information out of her enigmatic caretaker and luckily it works. The stranger divulges many of his darkest secrets, although these reveals don’t actually feel that exciting, it’s rather quite the anti-climax instead. Jude explains how he was trapped on a compound, which also homed an alien portal, that there are lots of these chambers around the world and all these doorways are connected like a network. I suppose this is nothing new to its audience, but Irene is only just finding it out for the first time. That being said, with every revelation, the alien portals lose a little bit more of their mystery and the series shows its hand, baring all for better or worse.
Whilst the drifter discloses the mysteries of a galactic teleportation device, the Argentines hunt down their prey, with the help of the walking cliché named Nick. This subplot, which isn’t geographically a million miles away from the York household, seems like an entirely different show altogether, totally separate from the Illinois strand. Not just because of its different tone and aesthetic, the genre too doesn’t gel with the sci-fi drama it plays alongside. The filmmakers seem fixated on cramming an espionage thriller into the series in the hopes of upping the tension and expanding the narrative. But it doesn’t quite fit, although later in the episode, Nick manages to triangulate their target’s location (before being electrocuted, of course) to Illinois. Maybe these two opposing storylines are about to clash head-on?
A great deal transpires in episode five, with many adjacent storylines ready to entwine. Irene and Jude head to the kleptomaniac Chandra’s house to reclaim stolen items; Byron researches the portal further after receiving some shocking photographs from Franklin, and Denise re-evaluates her life. The series draws ever closer to the ridiculous with talk of 18th-century journals and a three-hundred-year-old mafia cult, but this is, after all, the same company that spawned Outer Range that we’re dealing with. All this absurdity can be overwhelming at times and has the habit of distracting from the overall production. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d imagine there is a lot more of this insanity to come. Night Sky continues to build its complex world and multifaceted characters, but it seems the more this series reveals, the more jarring it becomes.
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