'Baby' Season 3: Why more episodes could have helped the series do justice to the many themes it deals with
Spoilers for Netflix's 'Baby' Season 3
While the first two seasons of 'Baby' had six episodes each, we assumed that the final season would benefit from the same amount of episodes. However, after binge-watching the Italian drama's final season, we feel that the series needed more than six episodes to chronicle the unfolding of the consequences that followed after Chiara Altieri (Benedetta Porcaroli) and Ludovica Storti's (Alice Pagani) life of underage prostitution was exposed.
The trailer/teaser that had released before the final season dropped alluded to the fact that there would be an investigation and a trial. But, we have to say that the season touched on many other things such as women's rights, feminism, the LGTBQIA+ community, grooming and objectification of underage girls, homophobia, drug addiction, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, gaslighting, among many other things. It seemed as though the last episodes of the season were speeding though these themes instead of giving each of them the screen time they deserved in the narrative.
Even though Chiara and Ludo were the strong protagonists in the series, Ludo seemed to have been the main focus when it came to Fiore (Giuseppe Maggio), the dangerous pimp that both the girls were working with. Fiore was in a relationship with Ludo and was obsessed with her even after they had ended it. In fact, he had hired a man named Martino to stalk Ludo when she strayed away from him so that she would come running back to him for protection. On the other hand, the last two episodes introduced a lawyer who took up Chiara's case and educated her on how Fiore was taking advantage of the vulnerability of young women and that he should be punished.
With so many social themes to explore, we feel that the six episodes squeezed too much too fast resulting in a final season that fell short. Each character in the series did come to their natural ending in the bigger picture or plotline, which was the unraveling of the prostitution scandal. But, it was unable to focus on the finer aspects such as the teenagers' relationships with their parents, their unhealthy ways of coping with stress, and their inability to deal with emotion in a healthy way. This was disappointing since most of the themes are not only extremely relatable to the target audience but also deeply affected the characters.
We feel that more time should have been taken to explore the relationship between Fabio Fedeli (Brando Pacitto) and Brando De Santis (Mirko Trovato), the abuse that Ludo faced with Fiore, women's rights in court when the prosecution accused three teenagers of exploiting a pimp, Ludo's acceptance that she was in fact manipulated and gaslighted by Fiore, Brando's father's involvement with underage girls and many more. Each of these scenarios spoke a lot about what the series was trying to portray. While the final season's ending was justified, we feel that it was robbed of being impeccable because of how it lacked in its delivery.
'Baby' Season 3 is now available to stream on Netflix.