Dispatches from Elsewhere Changed the Game with a Very Meta Finale

Jason Segel’s quirky AMC drama series Dispatches from Elsewhere has been a rare gem amid the recent TV landscape. It’s earnestly sincere and sweet, following four broken people who are thrown together to play a strange game about two warring creative factions, the Jejune Institute and the Elsewhere Society. Like its spiritual cousin Lodge 49, Dispatches was never about the mystery so much as the connections (and occasional bust-ups) among its four leads. Taking place in a warm, vibrant Philadelphia, it has been a journey that—as one character says in the final episode—has been “strange, hopeful, and a little sad.”

In this final episode, “The Boy,” Dispatches really set itself apart in a very meta hour that felt at times like an entirely different show. It tells, initially, the story of the clown-face boy, a strange figure who has occasionally appeared to Peter (Segel) throughout the season like some kind of Lynchian spectre. In the finale, we discover his story, and that he is Peter, who is actually Jason Segel … as Jason Segel. We meet Jason in recovery from alcohol addiction, where he meets Simone (Eve Lindley), who is also a different version of her character from the rest of the season. Simone gives him a postcard that will take him on a short journey to self-discovery, one that she also experienced, as part of the journey’s “pass it forward” philosophy. A truncated version of the game played throughout the season, Jason follows a whimsical set of clues and ends up talking with Janice (Sally Field), who assures him that “your pain, whatever it is, is 0% unique.”

That, of course, ties back in to the series’ first episode where Octavio (Richard E. Grant) tells us that Peter is us, and that later, Simone, Janice, and Fredwynn are also us. There are some caveats to each, but essentially, the understanding is that there are universal aspects to every character that will somehow resonate with us. When Octavio tells Peter, in a pre-recorded message, that he’s “special,” it makes him cry. Yes it’s something specific from his character’s childhood where he’s told—before all of the burnout and sadness—that he is special, but isn’t it also what each of us is desperate to hear? That we are somehow different from everyone else?

Here, and elsewhere, are flickers of inspiration that lead character-Jason to spend four months writing Dispatches from Elsewhere, which Simone reads and gives notes on—including the need for him to take responsibility. His clown-faced-boy past says the same: “You’re 40 years old, and this manchild victim shit has to end!” There is a lot of catharsis here, and so much that Segal seems to have personally poured into the character, the episode, and the series overall (“if you need to write another Muppets movie, I’ll be back,” the boy tells him—one of a number of specific references to Segal’s real life). And yet, it’s entirely relatable. It’s another view of the Lee/Clara story, one that manifests itself in the game. The series reminds us to reclaim childlike wonder, to not give up on that part of ourselves that we may have packed away. We have to grow up, we have to take responsibility and own our shit and be adults to function in the world, yes. But we also don’t have to lose that former part of ourselves, one that was perhaps more able to access joy. We are all of it.