Critic’s Rating: 4.8 / 5.0
4.8
Sometimes I’ve found myself wondering what makes a show bingeworthy.
Is it a digestible storyline that doesn’t require much thought, or is it constant cliffhangers that have you pressing next?
Star City Season 1 Episode 5, “Bite Your Elbow,” proves it’s something different. It’s the ability for a show to surprise you at every turn.
And this hour is plenty surprising.
After Star City Season 1 Episode 4, I gave up on trying to guess where the story could go with this show because there are so many moving pieces, and one can’t tell where they’ll fit.
Normally, I don’t like when a show has so much going on, but Star City gives storylines time to breathe before bringing them together.
Once the show found its cohesiveness, everything is now working well.
This is one of the tensest hours in this thriller as the fallout from Irina’s discovery is explored.
I expected that after discovering Valya’s secret, she would run to Ludymilla with it, but I underestimated Irina. She is always two steps ahead with everything.
She doesn’t quite know if Valya is the mole, so she manipulates Tanya into admitting the truth. It’s a masterful performance on her part that requires genuine humanity and deception.
After listening to every part of Tanya’s life, Irina has developed a soft spot for her. Here’s this woman who was promised everything, but now she spends her days wasting away in an apartment in Star City.
Meanwhile, she had found an object of her affection, but she couldn’t even do that because she had to be the dutiful wife.
And it’s not like Sasha is not occupied with his new bride and the Venera mission.
Sasha and Anastasi’s marriage represents millions of unions over the centuries in which people were pushed together and learned to love each other.
It makes one wonder what love really is.
Is it the consuming chemical reaction born out of attraction, or the decision to accept who the other person is, flaws and all?
The situation might not have been ideal, but I am rooting for them.
It’s stories like these that take down all the defenses that people have built up and touch the human part.
Irina has no obligation to save Tanya from whatever fate befalls Valya, but we humans don’t always act logically.
Sometimes we are aware of all facts, but we feel like acting differently.
Irina delivers a masterclass in being human while still being a cold spy in the Soviet apparatchik.
Like the comrade who runs to Ludymilla with her discovery, the show manages to surprise us, too.
That’s where Star City succeeds: it doesn’t reveal too much.
It uses the setting and the characters to keep us on our toes because in Valya’s apartment, Irina had me convinced that everyone already knew Valya was the mole.
But she uses that information to buy herself grace from Ludymilla, who, like me, continues to be impressed by Irina’s resourcefulness.
No wonder she survives every era in For All Mankind.
This episode goes all out on the paranoia as pressure builds in everyone’s lives, and you can feel it consuming them.
It is carefully distributed among the characters, but when it finds a new vessel, the pressure finds a new life of its own and grows.
And even when removed from the mole hunt, other characters feel some pressure of their own.
Chief Designer’s mission has so many points of failure that he remains in a perpetual state of panic.
Everything has to play out perfectly, or the mission will end before it has started.
The hour delivers another surprise — this one I don’t like so much — by revealing that no one is actually going to land on Venus.
They will enter its orbit, deploy an unmanned ship, and return to Earth. It’s an exciting endeavor since it’s never been attempted before, but it’s not as exciting as mankind conquering Venus.
It’s a less exciting mission that gets a boost from Valya’s decision to escape capture by embedding himself in the mission.
And so off to Venus we go. What will happen? No one knows. And that’s why Star City is bingeable because I can’t wait to find out.
Gut Check
“Bite Your Elbow,” is a masterclass in spy thrills. From the first scene, the episode does not relent. I’m obsessed.
Rarely do I lack two or three things wrong with an episode, but this one had me glued to the TV.
Intrusive Thoughts
- And this is why, children, you shouldn’t be a jealous snitch. You don’t want to be apologizing for being an infantile rat after the tables turn.
- Valya should have dropped the bomb on Tanya about why he was turned.
- Who is Irina’s baby daddy, who caused Tanya such fear?
- It must be utterly suffocating to live a life where you can’t trust anyone around you.
Over to you, Star City fanatics. What did you think of the story this hour? Do you have some theories about how things will play out?
I suspect Valya will volunteer to man the probe because returning to Star City is a suicide mission.
Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.
Say something in the comments, share if you’re moved to, and keep reading. Independent voices need readers like you.
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Star City Season 1 Episode 5 is what television is supposed to be — gripping, thrilling, and unpredictable. We do a deep dive into this perfect hour.
