Halfway through the first season of The Man in the High Castle and we’re already out of steam—long past that point, in fact. Limping along on fumes only, the series has developed a habit for setting up spectacle and then blowing the landing, struggling to alloy 1940s pulp sensibilities with high-art prestige filmmaking, more alluding to both than embracing either.
Which wouldn’t be such an obstacle were the series not a goddamn bore. Screeching to a halt after last episode’s comparatively enthralling cliffhanger, the story continues exactly as you’d expect: trauma-addled, bullet-riddled Frank (Rupert Evans) realizes that, even though he clearly didn’t shoot the Japanese prince, he’s holding a gun (and is pretty much the only white person in the crowd), so he should probably hightail it back home before anyone sees him. In the kerfuffle, he of course drops Juliana’s necklace—which falls off of his person for no other reason than: PLOT!—which Trade Minister Tagomi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), long after everyone has left the area in which the attempted assassination occurred, finds it and, drawn to its metaphysical allure, pockets it. You may be wondering why the Kempeitai weren’t combing the area for any shred of a clue, what with their prince just probably-murdered in broad daylight, but you might as well pocket that thought just like Tagomi pocketed a magical locket, because that would complicate an already untenable plot.
Later, Juliana (Alexa Davalos) finally makes it home from Canon City, but not without an ice-cold greeting from boyfriend Frank, who’s still nursing the shoulder where the walking manifestation of schmaltz, best friend Ed McCarthy (DJ Qualls), shot him, trying to keep him from going to try to kill the Japanese prince in the first place. Juliana can’t get much out of Frank, including the fact that his sister and her children were killed, though she fills him in on what’s been happening on her end (minus, probably, talking about how much time she spent gazing into the perfect eyes of American Adonis Joe Blake [Luke Kleintrank]). It’s only after she goes to visit her mom (Macall Gordon) that she learns of Frank’s loss. To which she responds by running home to give Frank a real doozy of a hug.
This dynamic—Frank’s refusal to tell Juliana the role she vicariously played in getting his sister killed, and Juliana’s incessant guilt, not to mention Juliana refusing to tell her mom that her half-sister Trudy is dead—takes up a huge chunk of this episode, and, like so much on this show, confuses moody emotional meandering for genuine dramatic development. Why is no one saying anything? Because Frank’s mad? Because it’s hard? The stalling feels exactly like that: killing time while disparate storylines lock into place for what—God willing—will be a wonderful finale.
Meanwhile, Tagomi’s ally, fake-Swede Rudolph Wegener (Carsten Norgaard), is detained by the Kempeitai post-assassination-attempt because he’s supposed to a foreign national, and that’s apparently just standard operating procedure. The detainment in due time stretches out to worrying lengths, so much so that Tagomi knows he’ll need to step in to make sure Wegener is freed and their plans (whatever they may be) aren’t hindered. This leads to Tagomi attempting to appeal to Inspector Kido’s sense of reason (Joel de la Fuente), which of course goes nowhere, which of course means that Tagomi orchestrates an actually pretty simple escape. Again: more tedious floundering, as characters navigate each other’s shark-infested waters with little actual development—neither character- nor narrative-wise.