Aspect Analysis – High Card and Connecting With The Characters

So, despite what I'll be saying here, I do enjoy High Card and recommend it. I already did my review of it, but this is a topic that is going to dive heavily into season one spoilers.

One of the leading characters is Chris Redgrave, and he is central to the final story of High Cards' first season. It turns out he has secretly collected cards marked with a five. You learned in one of his flashbacks by activating the X Hand using a four-of-a-kind with fives, his father saved his life and prevented him from dying. With a dying sister, he is planning to use the cards to save her. I get 100% why he would do this, it feels like what any older brother would do for a younger sister he cares about if it was within his power to do so.

The problem with the finale of High Card is... nobody seems to feel the same way. There appears to be little to no empathy toward Chris and the position he is in. Even at the end, ignoring the questions about how this world works, when Finn knocks one card out of the hand, reducing it to a three-card hand and lowering the effectiveness, you see both of their lives saved... kind of. While not currently terminal, the younger sister still suffers from some incurable illness that put her in this position, to begin with. Yet... Chris just seems to let it go at this point.

This becomes the biggest disconnect with me in regards to this show, I just don't see how Chris seemingly lets go at this point. I understand that X Hand is forbidden, and on that front, I understand wanting to stop him from doing it on that grounds, but outside of the one guy running this group no one seems to be trying to stop Chris because of this, they are trying to stop him purely because they don't want their friend to die.

And this I understand as well, but there seems to be no hangup on their part at all about the fact his sister is going to die. It's not even a hurdle for them to want to try to stop him, not even trying to put themselves in his shoes. I'm just sitting here feeling like any one of them would do the same thing in his position.

At the end of the whole thing, it feels like they were saying that everyone was entirely in the right for stopping him, and even then I could understand if I at all felt like they even attempted to make a point to justify themselves, but they just didn't. It left me feeling a bit odd and unsettled that all of the supposed good guys didn't even pause and consider if they were right or not in this situation. Even Chris himself at least seemed to feel bad he was going to be leaving his partner behind doing what he was doing.

It creates a huge disconnect between me and the cast, and is ultimately one of the things keeping me from really loving High Card, and just thinking it's an overall really good show worth watching.