[Genera+ion Review with Joe Jipsett] Mid Season Finale "The Last Shall Be First" Left Us Wanting More

Each week Joe and Terry discuss the most recent episodes of HBO Max’s Genera+ion, alternating between our respective sites. 

Spoilers follow for Episode 8, “The Last Shall Be First”: As Chester recovers from his misfire with Sam, his modest new look causes a scene at school. While Delilah enlists the help of all of her friends to make the most difficult decision of her life, Naomi inadvertently shares a private video with her entire family.

Miss a review? Episodes 1-3 / 4-5 / 6-7

TERRY

Throughout this season (or first part of the season, since I think technically they’ve split it in two chunks), each episode of Genera+ion began with a cold open set in an incrementally closer future. 

Now we’re at episode 8, “The Last Shall Be First,” and the final episode attempts to bring the story together for some catharsis and resolution. And I’m not completely sure it works, Joe. I’m glad that this is technically the midpoint of the season because while it was a nice episode, it doesn’t really pack the punch I was expecting. 

The bus trip is over. The students are back in high school and Chester (Justice Smith)’s typically garish clothes are now muted and literally gray. Walking through the school grounds in an inverse to how we’ve first met him, Chester listens to “Bad Religion” by Frank Ocean and tries to melt into the background. His sojourn comes to a brief pause when he sees Sam (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), who has done the responsible thing of setting him up with a new counselor and making sure he has someone to talk to while dealing with Chester’s school suspension (for pulling the fire alarm in “Desert Island”).

When Riley (Chase Sui Wonders) rushes up to him to talk about her and Greta (Haley Sanchez), he brushes her off with a flippant, “not my job,” before steering clear. In typical Chester fashion, he retreats upward and ends up on the roof of the school, where he meets Bo (Marwan Salama), a gay kid who seems to be the antithesis of Chester’s typical personality. 

Bo thinks of people’s personalities as a Dungeons & Dragons alignment chart (for reference, Bo is Neutral Good and Chester is Chaotic Good) and is in the process of squibbling a paraphrased quote by Hanif Abdurraqib on the school’s air-conditioning unit when Chester stumbles upon him. 

The quote is “A person is a whole person when they are good sometimes but not always, and loved by someone regardless,” and it feels like the essence of Genera+ion as a whole; a reminder of how people see each other through a lens that focuses on the person as a doer of good. That we only see the whole person when they are at their absolute best and worst, but that when those trappings are stripped away, they are still a person. The passage from Hanif’s book of essays They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us continues this thought by saying, “I love the people where I'm from because they would fight to humanize me if I died violently on film. We would do this for each other, despite anything in our pasts, because no one else would do it for us.” 

I think this is an important addition to the paraphrased quote because “The Last Shall Be First” is about this group of teenagers coming together after a few episodes of grief and strife to take care of Delilah (Lukita Maxwell), J (Sydney Mae Diaz) and their newborn baby. “We would do this for each other,” Harif states, “despite anything in our pasts, because no one else would do it for us.” It’s a reminder that this group of friends, regardless of who’s been fucked over or whose heart has been broken by whom, are a tribe and they must come together, as the chosen family they are, to help a friend in need. 

This part of “The Last Shall Be First” really worked for me, even though the episode as a whole felt a bit one note. Maybe I was expecting more fallout from “Desert Island”, which was the emotional high point of the season. Instead, we get a resolution to the cold opens that have introduced each episode. 

Narratively it makes sense and is in keeping with the “Last” and “First” referenced in the title of episode 8. But those cold opens have felt so detached from the drama happening throughout these first set of episodes that this resolution didn’t have the kind of payoff I think writers Zelda Barnz, Daniel Barnz and Christina Nieves intended. 

What about you, Joe? Did you appreciate the way “The Last Shall Be First” tied off this initial set of episodes? What did you think of Nathan (Uly Schlesinger)’s awkward voice memo and the way the episode put him, Riley and Chester in the back of a truck, each waiting for a response? Did you like how Chester’s swim team rallied to him by taking off their shirts and pants? And what are your thoughts on Arianna (Nathanya Alexander), who’s turned out to be more nuanced than she initially seemed?

JOE

When I finished the episode, I definitely DM’d you to say how glad I was that we were getting more episodes of Genera+ion sooner rather than later.

As a mid-season finale, this is fine.
As a finale, though? This wouldn’t have cut it.

It’s not that “The Last Shall Be First” is a bad episode, per se. It’s just, as you said, that it feels more interested in paying off those cold opens with Delilah and the baby than it does with addressing the fallout of the GSA trip. The baby drama has never felt substantial to the rest of the plot; if anything, it’s always played more like a sensational storyline to generate some buzz (or maybe outrage) in order to goose the ratings.

Yes, seeing everyone come together to help keep the baby a secret and deliver it safely into the arms of that “fucking hot fireman” is enjoyable. This trial definitely brought out the best in the group, including rival siblings Nathan and Naomi (Chloe East), who turn the tables on Megan (Martha Plimpton), their overprotective narcissist mother, by using her own words against her. “We’ll get back in touch with you” indeed! 

There’s also a sweetness when each member of the group bequeaths a personal token to the unnamed babe, even if it means loading up that carrier with a minimum of five choking hazards that a newborn will 100% put in its mouth.

The issue is that while all of this is happening, the real drama is going down in text messages, voice mails and lingering looks. While I, too, wanted a few more details about the fall out from the trip, there is some delicious tension about having to catch-up with everyone in the aftermath and piece together what happened.

Confession: the stuff with Chester’s teammates is uncomfortable, but the show only partially acknowledges it. One of the elements we lauded in the pilot was how openly supportive Chester’s water polo colleagues are and while their impromptu “Shirts off for Chester” striptease is comical and amusing, it quickly becomes icky when they swap shirts for pants because Delilah (assumedly?) yells that he doesn’t like tits. 

There’s a bizarre “no homo” vibe to these proceedings that Chester never corrects; instead he submits to the proceedings, doffing his top and voguing to the adulation of both the crowd and the low-angle framing of the camera. Sure, this is immediately followed by Chester’s subdued and out of character conversation with Bo on the rooftop, but on the whole, this interaction with the rest of the school doesn’t sit entirely well.

The introduction of a brand new character - and foil for Nathan - is another unusual choice. Bo is an intriguing character and a welcome one at that (we love a queer nerd!), but the timing is ill-suited for a mid-season finale. Why introduce the third member in a future love triangle before a lengthy hiatus?

To be clear: there is some good here. Nathan’s voicemail is a journey: it goes from rambling awkwardness to something approaching heartfelt as the love-smitten boy confesses how he’d like to reciprocate the support he received from Chester back in the pilot. It’s sweet; the kind of desperate yearning that accompanies first loves and it’s palpable in Schlesinger’s performance. The pay-off is in his watery eyes as Nathan stares at Chester during the car ride, desperately trying to get the distracted boy to notice him (Chester, naturally, is completely oblivious as he waits for Bo’s text response).

The same can be said of Riley and Greta, though there’s significantly less time dedicated to them. Greta barely says three lines in the finale, which leaves Riley to simply stare at her for the duration. I did, however, appreciate that the Barnzs and Nieves leave it unclear whether Riley hit send on her message “I miss us”. This is the kind of narrative tease that the show excels at.

Truly, one thing Genera+ion that is particularly good at is denying its audience pleasure. In that capacity, the finale succeeds by delaying any kind of gratification about these longstanding romantic relationships. While “The Last Shall Be First” isn’t the strongest episode of the season, it doesn’t ease the wait for new episodes and it does helpfully confirm for me how fully invested I am in Chester, Nathan, Riley and Greta’s respective journeys. 

Which leaves Arianna. 

Can we say that we’ve come around to her, Terry? Admittedly, I can’t in full confidence say that I’m fully onboard with the show’s most polarizing character. Though Alexander is great in the role and moments like Arianna’s confession to Delilah about her own adoption goes a long way, Genera+ion would do well to privilege characters like Arianna, Delilah, Naomi and even J in the future by giving them the same screen time as Chester, Nathan, and Greta. 

The reality is that the series is primarily anchored by three core characters (plus Riley by virtue of her relationship to Greta) and the other supporting characters suffer a little as a result. As it moves ahead, I’m hopeful we’ll get the same kind of attention to these other characters because they don’t feel quite as fleshed out as our de facto leads. For now, Arianna is an asset when it comes to delivering quippy one-liners, but I’m still on the fence about how she’s being used. 

We’ll see what - if anything - changes when Genera+ion returns later this year for the back half of season one.