SF8: Spaceman Joanne (2020)

A sweet short about living life to the fullest

Scifi has been relatively dark genre lately so it's nice to see a sweeter story for once. Joan's Galaxy poses the question of how knowledge of your lifespan may affect your outlook on life and how you use your time. It's answer is a little sentimental but it's nice enough for a special.

The real draw of this episode is the developing relationship between two women placed at the forefront. Genuinely cute, funny, and beautiful, I loved every minute they were on screen. It's not explicitly gay but about as subtle as bat to the face. I also loved the emphasis on doing little things that make you happy right now, like dancing in the rain or drinking coffee.

It is however, plagued with the issues that come with shoving several sci-fi concepts and world-building into a 50 minute special: infodumping and mildly pretentious moments. Worth noting that the discrimination aspect between N's and C's is relatively background and remained subtle, but effective enough.



Regarding the ending (SPOILERS AHEAD):

Scifi always poses a question and usually tries to answer it to some extent. The thesis here lies somewhere between "Live life to your fullest because you don't know how long you've got" and "It's best not to know how long you've got so you can live your life to the fullest". It's muddled and sentimental but it works well enough. In context though, it does gloss over one's right to know their own medical history a bit.

While it's foreshadowed several times their time together will be fleeting (and should be appreciated all the more for it), it was also mildly disappointing to have Jo-an and Yi-oh cut off contact completely.

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