'The Forsytes' Season 1 Finale Steps on the Gas
A drama-filled finale leaves the family reeling from multiple scandals.
Well, at least no one can say the first season of The Forsytes was boring. The season finale, a car crash of an hour that sees at least a half-dozen major plot twists and relationship disasters, is...well, let’s just say it certainly opens up a lot of doors for where the show might go next. The only problem is that it’s left us with almost no one we can feel all that great about rooting for as it does so.
Jo leaves his wife for a life of adultery and poverty with Louisa and their children, quitting his job in the process and recommitting himself to life as an artist. Soames essentially decides that keeping Irene prisoner is romantic, just as his new bride forges a particularly dangerous connection with June’s fiancé, Phillip. Frances is (understandably) self-medicating to get through the day. Even family matriarch Ann doesn’t escape unscathed, secretly funneling money to a man — the Henry Falconer we heard so much about last week — that she suddenly reveals is secretly her grandson.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this family is a mess. And what’s worse, they’re not even messy in a fun way.
(Genuinely, I’m five minutes away from writing fanfic where all the women in the family move into a women-only commune, with Jolyn Sr. as a sort of male mascot. Everyone else can pretty much rot.)
