I really enjoyed this last viewing session of the Chernobyl series even if it was on a Friday night again… A good portion of part 4 was offscreen getting rid of the animals in the exclusion zone which was really sad. It also brought back into mind the Our Planet section about how ultimately it was animals that still managed to survive and live there. Having that in the back of my mind and then watching part 4 was a little upsetting.
Part 5 was a super riveting finale though! I liked how the will-he-won’t-he-spill-out-the-truth got stretched out and then ultimately paid off. I thought it was really cool how they spliced the explanation in the courtroom with the reenactment of what was happening real-time. I also spent a lot of time super disliking all the higher officials who were all just, “science doesn’t matter” and “I did no wrong” etc etc. I think it was interesting that they chose to end the acted-portion of the episode at the end of the trial and spend the final minutes using real footage as an epilogue of sorts.
Overall the series (I caught 3/5 of the episodes) was scary at parts, consistently sad, and very enjoyable.
I totally agree and admire the way the last episode was structured. I thought it was super interesting how the show sort of went “full circle”, showing parts of the reenactment we saw in the first episode, but now in full and with more context. I think this aspect really added to the strength of the episode because while watching the first episode you have no emotional attachment to the characters, you just see them as engineers during a tragic night. This is not the case when you are watching episode 5, the viewers know Toptunov, and know that he was practically a kid and completely inexperienced for the job at hand, and you feel true sympathy.