Then first couple of weeks of a new season are always pretty frantic, so it’s been a bit of a hiatus for Great Pretender.  That always happens to me with Netflix shows – they get shuffled to the back of the deck behind the regular weekly releases, even if I like them more.  There was also just a bit of anxiety on my part about where this series was headed next, which was really the first hesitation I’ve felt about it during its entire run.

I’m happy to report that #21 represented a resounding return to form for Great Pretender.  It was certainly my favorite episode of “Wizard of Far East”, and while there are a number of reasons for that the return of Makoto is the most obvious one.  It’s not so much that Laurent isn’t a compelling character, but without Makoto’s presence he’s unchecked.  The narrative is out of balance, and that was the feeling of wrongness that underlay the past two episodes.  These two are the co-pillars that support Great Pretender, but Makoto is also its moral center.  Somehow, his comparatively sane perspective works like prescription lenses to bring everything into focus.

What does that clear vision show us?  The depth to which what Laurent is doing, he does for personal reasons.  He’s a slave to his past, and ultimately the ones he works with are tools to him and no more.  He enjoys the ability to manipulate, most especially Makoto.  It also shows us that Cynthia and Abby can see this, and are bothered by it.  Cynthia even tells Laurent that he should have trusted Makoto and let him in on the plan (as if), which Laurent laughs off without a pause.  Abby professes to be worried about Makoto going rogue and screwing up the operation, and she no doubt is.  But she’s also worried about “sensitive” Makoto because she cares about him – and she knows that ultimately Laurent does not.

That plan (Oz’ department) is to manipulate Suzaku and Shanghai trading into each bringing ¥100 billion to a meeting in Tokyo, then setting them at war with each other.  In order to make this work Laurent needs to be back in the saddle as Shanghai Trading’s interpreter, which is why Oz had to “die”.  There’s a very funny moment here when Liu tells Laurent to stop speaking Wu Chinese and slip into “English”, as he’s been learning it – and Laurent promptly starts speaking Japanese.  I can’t totally shake the feeling that Liu knows more than he’s letting on (if he can pick up English…), but for the moment, the plan seems to be going swimmingly.

That’s also possible because Oz has successfully convinced Makoto to play along as Suzaku’s interpreter.  And so he does, sticking to the script and even layering in some halfway-decent acting.  But Oz, like the ladies of Team Laurent, is worried about Makoto.  In his case there’s no paternal concern – he just shares Abby’s fear about whether Makoto will stay on the beam.  For him, the worrying part is the deepening connections one makes when being undercover for so long – “they become friends, no matter how evil they are.”

This is potentially a very interesting element of the final arc.  Because if we’re honest, Ishigami and Akemi have treated Makoto better than Laurent has.  Are they evil?  Yes, I don’t think that can be argued – they kill, they engage in human trafficking of children.  That’s pretty fucking evil.  But they’re human beings, and capable of warmth – even the ice queen Akemi, who has clearly come to love Makoto (she even gifts him her wayward son’s necktie).  Makoto has lost his mother and has seen enough of his father to want no part of him emotionally.  Ishigami and Akemi have become surrogate parents for him, in a sense.  How easy will it be for him to turn on them?

I confess, there’s a part of me that’s always hoped Great Pretender would come down to a showdown between Laurent and Makoto in the end, former allies turned foes.  And that’s a possibility that’s still on the board, in my view, though I have some concerns about what the perspective of the series is in terms of what’s right and wrong.  And that would be just desserts for Laurent, who’s ruthlessly controlled Makoto’s life for years in service of the vainglorious view that he knows what’s best for him (and everyone).  And given that Laurent probably still blames Oz for Dorothy’s death, can we even stipulate to the purity of Lauren’t intentions towards Makoto, even if we hate the methods?  I’m not so sure.