Although I had enjoyed this series, I didn’t expect it would have a satisfying ending. And I was right. It’s never a good sign when the writers have to bring in a brand new character in the last episode to help tie up all the loose ends and be the bad guy. Except he wasn’t that bad, just misguided.
The crimes in this series had never been particularly clever or devious, but it seemed like the crime in the final episode was particularly feeble, and it was solved with only a little investigation. But by now that wasn’t important. By now the series had a number of storylines that it needed to finish off. Some worked better than others: Odagiri’s admission of her fakery on TV was quite touching, and I was fairly interested by Taniguchi Ichirou’s turn to the dark side, but the issues around her brother and her missing parents were both solved in barely a few lines of dialogue.
While watching this, my heart sank when some characters from past episodes turned up to give Kyoko some moral support (even wearing the same clothes from all those weeks ago) but then this was saved by the manager admitting she’d set up that scene to help Kyoko overcome her doubts about continuing in her work.
This sums up the series pretty well: it often got very close to cliche and tired, predictable ideas but it always seemed to have a spring in its step and a wink in its eye, so that they could be forgiven. And never mind the weak final episode, I enjoyed the ones leading up to it and it’s the journey, not the destination that’s important. Right?
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