For me the MIDNIGHT MASS completely locked in that moment in episode two where Riley and Paul have the AA scene. Up until that point the two had been on parallel tracks. They've both just come to the island. They both have strong points of view on God/church, opposing ones. But they're not really in each other's spheres too much at the start. And to the extent they interact, Paul seems to have the upper hand in a way. He's the guy positioning himself to be mentor or helper to Riley, as he is to everyone else.
But then we get to that AA scene. And it's just the two of them, facing each other, which in and of itself is a way of establishing that these two guys are equals and opposites. The camera work in that scene is fascinating, too--they are almost never in the shot together. It's Paul or it's Riley, but it's almost never the two of them after that initial "here they are, facing each other" opening moment. (Even the set design of them sitting before the stage, the chessboard pattern on the floor suggests their conflict and its significance to this story. This is THE SEVENTH SEAL, the Knight is playing chess against Death.)
The other thing I love about that scene is that Flanagan has an ace card he hasn't shown before now, and that is that Riley is just as articulate and capable of making a persuasive argument against God's will as Paul has already proven of arguing for it. That's the moment it all locks in, really, when Riley faces Paul down with a counter argument to everything Paul has so persuasively said in the first two episodes. That's when Flanagan tells us, these are our protagonist and antagonist, and their points of view--that God can turn our hardship into blessing, or that we do harm that cannot be washed away--are the poles of our story.
In a sense he gives Hassan and Bev a similar moment in the school. This time there are other people around, including Erin, who is trying to interrupt, but it's really this debate of two points of view between people literally staring at each other on separate ends of the room.
It's not exactly rocket science on paper but it's so damn effective as a way of teaching us what we are watching and how to watch it. And for me what makes Flanagan's work with all this really next level is that in the end Riley and Paul will both prove right. People are fucked up, and do bad that cannot be fixed or wiped away. AND God can use our brokenness and our pain: Riley's distrust of Paul's message and confrontation with our capacity for horrors in fact becomes a path of grace enabling him to choose to die rather than harm more people after he's been turned. Which becomes the thing everyone will choose to do in the end.
The classic good guy/bad guy has one of them right and one of them wrong, one of them good, one of them evil. Flanagan sets up like that, and so we move through the story wondering who will "win".
Knowing he's set us up that way, Flanagan is then able to surprise us. He kills Riley, but then also reveals he and Paul were both right and wrong, both bad and good, both winners and losers.
It's so great.
