9 stars from me. I loved this series much more than the first episodes had me expecting.
Some people seem to be fairly confused as to what the point of this series was. Without saying too much, I'll say this, which might steer you in the right direction: if you were to force a label on me, I'd have to say I'm "agnostic", and yet this show was still great for me.
I was not prepared for this show to likely become the thing I'm most psyched about in this surrounding two years; and yet here I am, witnessing all signs pointing to the rest of the season living up to that honor.
This was soo much better than the poor trailer for it originally had me expecting. Yes, I later learned more information — that Damon Lindelof, of LOST and The Leftovers, was behind it — eventually getting me more interested; but I certainly wasn't confident, given the trailer.
This has me remembering how good the movie actually was... I kind of lost track of my memories of how intense it was and how involved it's last act was...
Anywho, on to the real reason I had to post something.. Timepoint 59 mins and 59 seconds in the episode is what finally gave me what I was truly waiting to validate: that there was no way that the soundtrack could be so NIN without actually being NIN / Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross.
10/10.
I believe this may be the first time I've..
1] talked to a television
2] threatened a television that if it does something with the plot, "*uck" it
3] repeatedly told a television "*uck you" o_o
Oh, Homeland.. I do still love you so.
Frustrating.
Hmm, I loved the first season, but so far (after only watching the first episode):
1) there's ~900% more Maria Sten~/Neagley~, who's dull and unconvincing in this role, and being tasked with delivering the majority of the annoyingly received retellings of the plot points via strings of exposition that would just be redundant and even stranger (than it is here) in real life, and
2) they haven’t introduced any interesting characters (like the white lady cop and the black male cop of the first season, or even some of the recurring dirty/corrupt folks of that season) to take the load off of Reacher who isn't supposed to say much via words, and
3) the poorly incorporated and delivered info-dumps I mentioned above leading to just a bunch annoyingly bad acting taking up too much a percentage of the watching time and very little moments of seeming realness to attach to (heck, the first of surely not much more actual highlights of character development, acting, or mere coolness was a mere ~90 second scene of Reacher interacting with two ephemeral characters during a merely incidental, passing carjacking).
…So, I'm hoping some of the positive commenters have similar taste to me and thus that their positive comments on the season means it gets better in the following two released episodes.
Wow. Surprisingly great (episode, cast, tasks, organization), considering that it's the very first season. Why've I been jumping around through all the other, later seasons looking/winnowing for more gold when it seems that the show had whinnied out the barn, first season, at full gallop!
Thank goodness, within even just the first 7 mins it was clear that the lameness of the season's opening episode was over with. Now we're back to that enjoyable formula that worked in the first season!
A ‘Westworld’ replacement with elements of ‘Ready Player One’, the ‘Reacher’ TV show season 1, and the ‘Tenet’ movie.
This show is asking for a lot of patience..
If you want to have the liberty to not strongly advance the understanding with each episode—well, I guess it did in this episode, but it doesn't feel that way—and want people to still think this is going to be worth it by the end, when there's only a scant total of 9 episodes in the production and you're already halfway through, having to wait 1 week in between each lump of non-progress is not ideal. (At the least, the episodes should come every two days, if you absolutely certain the show requires the pace your excreting it at.)
Note: I do indeed think that cool stuff are happening on the screen. I also think the above, though.
I liked the introduction of this Lady Trieu (sp?).
(Not actually a spoiling statement at all, BTW, so feel free to unmask it, but I'm pedantic.)
Har har. So he does like that meta-joke.
Timespace fun!
Hmm. I had had an after-worry that that great first episode of the season might start a path downhill for some reasons... But, at least these episodes aren't so far as being bad...
You have some episodes left. Prove my worry to have only been partially well-grounded, Damon, and I'll gift ya an autographed brick in return.
So they're really not gonna bother giving a motivation for Russia to want to release something it wouldn't have any control over anyway? This is a fictional fantasy series, obviously, but thankfully that has nothing to do with the responsibility not to make the entire driver behind the season empty. Is coming up with an excuse for the season to exist really that hard of an ask, when you have full liberty to invent any fictional technologies or powers you want in order for it to make sense?
Anyway, despite that frustratingly lazy bit about this season's writing, this was a surprisingly more enjoyable season than I was expecting, and was actually very good. They used this season to massively improve in their range of film entertainment skills, tackling a-- err, well, this comment has gotten long enough. Point is: good season... More greatly visceral depictions of the strength of El's psionic training (thus more "oh yeah!"-style excitement); more full "hey look, I have emotional depth" displays; etc...
..Some of these stuff can get mildly irritating (Hopper's character, in general, in my case) if you're not the right audience fit for either of their scattered, positive attempts to use this season's existence as a growth opportunity to broaden the coverage of the standard & emerging sets of movie enjoyment features/tropes (romantic anxieties, growing up, etc.) and trends (eg. homosexuality occurences likely just for the sake of earning inclusiveness praise).
(Ps. "they're the evil Russians" doesn't work as an excuse, as Russia is an actual real life government... there's a huge difference between sociopathic self-interest (believable) and literally suicidally stupid & pointless maniacal behavior (the approach apparently used in this season))
SEASON 2
The thankfully less important details of the plot were often rather confusing for me.
On a rather unrelated note, though, the verbiage used in this script is overtly fancy and often times the lines that the actors are given don't seem appropriate for the characters they play.
All in all, it was a good show that fell short of being great. It had several small-to-moderate flaws, and a larger cast to manage, but it can still at least be said that it was a good show.
One of the best episodes I've seen so far. Top tier (out of the maybe 4 or 5 seasons of episodes that I've watched).
Greatly aligns with reality (i.e., the various technological ideas, dilemmas, and conclusions I've cognized/conceived/realized over the last decade or so) and is also somehow infinitely more finely visually rendered than blockbuster releases (e.g., the The Last Of Us HBO Max TV show season 1) that I assumed would have had an advantage of more capital investment (i.e., more money to work with). Beautiful, depressingly reflective/realist, and yet not conclusively depressing as, overall, it allows for hope. (It yet again must be said that this film confusingly, greatly outperforms big-budget productions in its rich, finely rendered, realistic visual components).
Does it get good again? (Season 1 was great; season 2 was crap. Does it get better again?)
(BTW: There are no spoiler stuff here. Not unless you consider show quality changes to be spoilers.)
I finally committed time to trying the show. After having watched the first season, boy was I glad I did. I'd give that season an 8/10.
Then comes the second season.. where, amid some intermittent enjoyable elements (like some of the scenes with the lady Grail agent playing incognito roles, even those before we know of Grail; or, IIRC, the recruitment trials for Grail might have been amusing), it was very plainly a sludge (forced watching) forward to presumably-- hopefully-- get back to a part of the show that's worth watching. I figured that with a good first season under its belt, the runners of the show must have let some less included writers have a chance to guide a real TV show (resulting in a mish-mash of alternatively colored cow dung; not necessarily because the writers were objectively bad, but because they weren't melding their influences with what was already strong & expected from the show by way of its existing season)... But does whatever it is that went wrong with season 2 get undone in the seasons after?
I finally made it to the end of this bad season (2). There are two more available, meaning the show managed to stay on the air. Are they any better? Is it worth watching more, or did this show really only have one good season (1)?
Well-- I suppose that's one way to do a cameo.
(I thought this episode was going complete Bandersnatch on me for quite a while...)
Perfect episode. :ok_hand:
(Of special note in this episode: Such great camera direction & the actual execution of those maneuvers with that camera work, flawless.)
That blast at the end was pretty disorienting. Wasn't sure what I was looking at after that (mostly layout-wise), until re-watching that 30 seconds. So, it wasn't some explosion in front of the entrance.. that was, instead, how the show chose to depict David teleporting an entire cult hideout building away from the approaching attack?
What's up with the leftover tooth? :tooth: :)
Switch wasn't just rubbing her tooth before each travel as ritual for good luck like I was pondering at first, but instead had a loose tooth, and it got left behind as a visual hint that she was there first and was the cause behind the attack's failure?
(If so, I'm harboring some worrisome guesses about future issues! :detective:)
Awesome season.
I'm looking forward to more, so here's to hoping for a renewal!
And for those who haven't watched all of it yet, a choice on whether you want to watch the whole thing should not be made before finishing episode 5.
Damnit! I just /had/ to go and disobey my own rules. There's a reason I only watch this show just before bed: it has lasting effects and leaves you in an emotional state after watching..
Darnit; now I have to put my morning-ritual happy-happy-joy-joy playlist on again.
frustrating that, despite whatever rebuttal Merlin did deliver to Arthur in mild defense of the sorcerer's involvement, it's moot since Merlin does not also go so far as to correct Arthur's mischaracterization in which magic was stated as the CAUSE of Uther's death where in fact, UHH, HELL NO: the jester/dagger-entertainment-guy (because of Odin, because of Odin's son's death, because of Uther) is what CAUSED Uther's death; MAGIC, on the other hand, is what gave Arthur the only available HOPE/chance to perhaps AVOID that death that was caused by something ELSE :unamused:. annoying to hear misstatements of what happened go uncorrected, especially when their incorrectness makes all the difference in the world.
Wow. Surprisingly great (fun, cast, tasks, organization), considering that it's the very first season. Why've I been jumping around through all the other, later seasons looking/winnowing for more gold when it seems that the show had whinnied out the barn, first season, at full gallop!
Lesser than the British, Benedict Cumberbatch–led series ‘Sherlock’, of which each episode was movie-worthy, of course, but this is a great reservoir for one's regular roster of viewing entertainment, and is quite surprisingly good for such a high-volume production.
Note: the episodes start getting progressively more complex starting somewhere around season 4–5.
Does it get good again? (Season 1 was great; season 2 was crap. Does it get better again?)
(BTW: There are no spoiler stuff here. Not unless you consider show quality changes to be spoilers.)
I finally committed time to trying the show. After having watched the first season, boy was I glad I did. I'd give that season an 8/10.
Then comes the second season.. where, amid some intermittent enjoyable elements (like some of the scenes with the lady Grail agent playing incognito roles, even those before we know of Grail; or, IIRC, the recruitment trials for Grail might have been amusing), it was very plainly a sludge (forced watching) forward to presumably-- hopefully-- get back to a part of the show that's worth watching. I figured that with a good first season under its belt, the runners of the show must have let some less included writers have a chance to guide a real TV show (resulting in a mish-mash of alternatively colored cow dung; not necessarily because the writers were objectively bad, but because they weren't melding their influences with what was already strong & expected from the show by way of its existing season)... But does whatever it is that went wrong with season 2 get undone in the seasons after?
I finally made it to the end of this bad season (2). There are two more available, meaning the show managed to stay on the air. Are they any better? Is it worth watching more, or did this show really only have one good season (1)?
I was not prepared for this show to likely become the thing I'm most psyched about in this surrounding two years; and yet here I am, witnessing all signs pointing to the rest of the season living up to that honor.
This was soo much better than the poor trailer for it originally had me expecting. Yes, I later learned more information — that Damon Lindelof, of LOST and The Leftovers, was behind it — eventually getting me more interested; but I certainly wasn't confident, given the trailer.
This has me remembering how good the movie actually was... I kind of lost track of my memories of how intense it was and how involved it's last act was...
Anywho, on to the real reason I had to post something.. Timepoint 59 mins and 59 seconds in the episode is what finally gave me what I was truly waiting to validate: that there was no way that the soundtrack could be so NIN without actually being NIN / Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross.
My most beloved The Walking Dead character is now dead.
R.I.P. good fellow..
Much better than I was expecting (from the first episode). I have only yet watched through this 3rd episode, but so far my episode scores have escalated from 6 (ep. 1) to 8 (ep. 2) to now 10 (for ep. 3). 10 is a rarity.
Much better than I was expecting (from the first episode). I have only yet watched through the 3rd episode, but so far my episode scores have escalated from 6 (ep. 1) to 8 (ep. 2) to now 10 (for ep. 3). 10 is a rarity.
Unlike the impression left by the initial episode(s) of NZ version, this matches up to original and oftentimes it arguably even supersedes it. A really great cast (including the hosts) was netted for this season.
What an intentionally frustrating episode… ~_~
Hatd tkh lqdeo haqteip.
L>=2??
(why does this message keep failing to post? some overly presumptuous spam-detection heuristic?)
