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Bottom of the Barrel Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Series
Man in the High Castle, The
Based on all four seasons.
Created by Spotnitz of X-Files, produced by Ridley Scott, and based on a book by Philip K. Dick. One would not be blamed for having high expectations with these names.
The setting is an alternate history, a world where Nazi Germany and Japan won WWII and split the world up between them, including the USA, which is where most of the
series takes place. It also takes place about 17 years after the war, when most of the people in the occupied territories have already resigned themselves to being
part of the greater Third Reich or the Japanese empire, and the new generation can't remember anything else. Pockets of resistance become pre-occupied with mysterious
films that inspire other possibilities. The show explores several story lines: Some drama about people living under such a brutal fascistic rule, the story of the
resistance that slowly gains momentum while being hunted by the fascists, the story of many Americans that participate and even join the Nazis, the tension and politics
between the two fascist empires, and many betrayals and clashing agendas within the ranks of the Reich and the Empire of the Rising Sun. Both the book and the first season
will make you wonder why this is classified as sci-fi, but the sci-fi eventually does emerge, with the aforementioned mysterious films being the tip of the iceberg.
In complete opposition to the mass of reviews that list the first season as the best, I found it to be very weak and almost stopped watching there. The characters and story
take a long while to gather any momentum or interest, and the sacrificial actions of the resistance revolving around the mysterious films never make any sense, especially
since they never seem to be doing anything else of practical use, except being cruel to their own kind. But, curious as to where they will take this story, I kept watching.
Seasons 2, 3, and 4 gather momentum nicely, the characters and story and sci-fi elements all become more interesting, with many nice ironic touches and strong moments of
character drama, as well as lots of darkness. The story does develop enough to keep one watching, if only to see where it goes next. Although season endings are often flawed
in that they sometimes feel rushed, resolving huge problems all too easily and quickly. The resistance slowly becomes more practical and starts making more sense, although
they're still inhumanly cruel. This show, like Game of Thrones, has no problems with killing off main characters. But throughout the show I was always bothered by the fact
that, like GoT, there was almost no one to root for. Protagonists include mass-murderers, Nazis, people that betray their own, etc, and the resistance behave even worse,
killing their own for flimsy reasons and running their groups with fascistic brutality. There's one gentle Japanese minister with peace on his mind, except it's impossible
to root for him since he works for an occupying government that constantly mass murder and torture people. And yet, most of the series focuses on these people, their rivalries,
politics, betrayals, family dramas. But it's difficult to care when an American Nazi mass-murdering leader is having family troubles, or to care about who will win the political
games when the choice is between two fascist empires, or even to care about a resistance that seems less than human. Granted, there are a couple of simple folk at the center
of the show trying to be moralistic heroes and that try to do their best amidst all this darkness, but it's still very unbalanced in terms of humanity. Truthfully, this show
failed to live up to its potential by portraying so much cruelty in such advanced stages, because this way it portrays Nazis as monsters rather than humans, even if they are
American Nazis with families. The show could have been much more powerful by portraying at least a few average or basically good people that suddenly find themselves acting
like a Nazi or collaborating with them, rather than diving head first into rampant cruelty. So the show ends up being dark, rather than provocative.
All the above would make this a flawed, but basically still-watchable and somewhat entertaining show, if not for the final episode. The final episode is not just a bad ending,
but an insulting political one that suddenly makes you realize the agenda for the whole show, effectively not only ruining the series, but potentially making one hate the
whole thing. Note that most reviewers hated the last 5 minutes which featured a strange, seemingly illogical sci-fi twist that is open to interpretation. But this is not the
real problem. One could interpret that in a few ways or just leave it open-ended. The real problem is in the politically-correct content that happens before that. I'm going
to ruin the ending, but this is a show that deserves to be ruined, and it will save you the bother of watching it: A black resistance movement manages to overthrow the Japanese
government (way too easily) and do what the white people couldn't do. They give a speech of how they must rely only on themselves, and how ALL the white people had become Nazis.
In the meantime, any successes by the white resistance or within the Nazi empire are only achieved via female leaders. Then, a young girl confronts her Nazi mother and blames
her and her generation for causing all the evil in the world, and the white evil man shoots himself. Do I need to say more? Now I have no problem believing that many American
white people would become mass-murdering Nazis. But this show takes it way beyond that. It turns out that the reason why this show focused on so many evil white people, is
because it thinks that practically all white men are evil, and it wanted a white audience to identify with these people before making its multiple final speeches. There is no
good vs evil here, there is only identity politics and victims vs monsters. And the white males that aren't that bad need to be led by women in order to be good or effective
and avoid turning into cruel fighters. Even a Japanese working for a fascist government is better than white men. And the new generation gets to moralize and feel superior to
the old. We have all seen this self-hating ranking system many times before, and it reeks. Ironically, it is the liberals that are the biggest racists and sexists.
Devs
Sci-Fi mini-series by Garland about an ultimate quantum computer and the secret development division in a company led by a mysterious rich man with a past involving a family
tragedy. When a computer engineer disappears, his resourceful girlfriend investigates, and finds herself in over her head in not only physical dangers and espionage, but an
idea that challenges human existence. This makes the series sound like a thriller, but it is actually much more philosophical and existential with barely any action thrills.
Which is a good thing. Visually, this series is beautiful, and there are seemingly interesting ideas behind the series, but in order to explain why I found this to be a big
waste of time, I will have to write spoilers: First of all, this whole series relies on reductionism and determinism being true, viewpoints which even many secular scientists
today don't believe in. This alone made it impossible for me to tune in since its core premise was unapproachable. But an even more serious problem is that it suddenly breaks
its own premise in the final episode for one brief moment, not even realizing that this makes the computer, and everything we saw until then, impossible. Then there's the
deus-ex-machina ending which suddenly introduces consciousness transfer out of nowhere, and a very puzzlingly non-starter idea of a simulation equating with reality. Add to
this the fact that most of the actors here seem to be sleepwalking through their role as if they were...run by a machine? Garland continues to make films that get lost in
their own ideas with people that never remotely resemble humans.
Agent Carter (Marvel)
Based on the first season.
This show takes place in the 50s right after the events of the first Captain America movie, and features agent Peggy Carter from that movie as the protagonist and super-agent.
There are no super-powers, but, as with the movie, it features many sci-fi inventions, gadgets and dangerous chemicals, most of them invented by Howard Stark, the father of
Iron Man. Some of these inventions change humans (as it did Captain America) giving them special abilities, but mostly this is about vintage-style spies and action
and about reproducing the 50s with strong production values, only with a strong woman leading the fight. She is whip-smart, trained in combat, has a strong morality and
sense of justice, and constantly outdoes everyone around her. She teams up with the amusing Jarvis, Stark's timid butler, who assists her in her undercover work as she
has to fight in a world gone crazy due to Stark's super-dangerous inventions.
Unfortunately, this show has the same huge flaws and mistakes of Mad Men. It seems to have focused mostly on 50s sets and props but has no clue on what to do with their attitudes
and behaviour. For starters, it hates both men and women. It seems to think that just because the second wave of feminism didn't start and women didn't have the same rights,
that meant that all men are automatically pigs, and incompetent ones at that. At the same time, it has no confidence in women being shown as competent and strong without making
all the men around them idiots and incompetent. There are also inconsistencies with attitudes towards race and several other liberal anachronisms, yet at the same time it
pretends it is loyal to the time by portraying misogynist pigs everywhere. It is very confusing. It is also corny and condescending and feels like it only knows the 50s through
movies. The period never comes alive, and the characters are dressed impeccably and are given fun lines, but there is no depth to them. This includes Carter herself who is a
walking cliche of 'strong woman showing the silly men how to do things right' yet there is no depth and humanity behind her 'girl-power' character, making this a weak show indeed.
The spy-craft, action, sci-fi and production values are all good, but all of these problems hold the show back from becoming anything more than average cheesy eye-candy entertainment,
and the constant feminist preaching sinks it into something annoying and below-average. The rave reviews are obviously politically motivated.
Legends of Tomorrow (DC)
Based on the first season and some episodes from the second.
Another entry in the 'Arrow-verse', the DC-comics universe where superheroes and villains are a dime a dozen and everyone and his dog seems to have a power. These shows by now
include Arrow, Flash, Supergirl, and this one. This show features a gang of misfit superheroes who are led by a time-traveller that is a poor man's version of Doctor Who.
At least his background of renegade time-lord and stolen time machine is the same, but otherwise they are nothing alike, and this one is actually just another uninteresting
too-young action-man who knows stuff about time. The rest of the gang include a lesbian master fighter and assassin, a 'nice-guy' with a brain and an Iron-Man power-suit, two
thieves with special guns (it is never clear why they joined other than to provide more of a 'cool factor' and comic relief), a flying hawk-couple that have been reincarnating for
millennia, and an interesting duo of young black man and older professor that merge to become a Firestorm-man, only this one's powers are badly defined and can seemingly
do anything, so he is barely used. The gang join forces to fight powerful super-villains that usually have some kind of power over time, and this usually is stretched
out over a season while they encounter smaller episodic adventures and missions in different time periods. The tone is light and fun and all about the action, and any
drama or character development is completely ineffectual since problems are typically solved within each episode. Emotions flare, then they're gone.
The first season starts off like bubble-gum superhero action fun with a tone that isn't too far off from Power-Rangers since the characters are so superficial. Eventually
more drama is attempted, except that the characters feel like puppets for the writers rather then carefully developed three-dimensional people, with random emotions and personal
problems flaring up then brushed away easily just in time for the end of each episode. So it remains mere action-popcorn fun for most of its run. But then the writers start to
add time-travel twists for the last handful of episodes, twists that make no sense and which also contradict the rest of the season. So it all collapses due to sloppy commercial
writing that doesn't seem like it's even trying. In the second season, they throw in another dozen powers and villains instead of building on the world they built, because that's
all these writers can do it seems: Add more and more entertaining elements without actually thinking anything through, including the characters. On top of that, the approach
to historical periods is to embrace stereotypes and preach about its political incorrectness. At which time I had enough, and even the simple action entertainment got tiresome.
DC shows don't seem to understand that without some depth, proper story development and fleshy characters, the special effects and super-powers are just candy. And, like candy,
you can only eat one or two before you've had enough.
12 Monkeys
Based on the first season and some episodes from the second.
I wasn't expecting much from a TV series expansion of this time-travel story. There is simply no chance that it could capture even some of the magic of either the Chris Marker original
short or the endless inspiration of Gilliam's film. And indeed, this show is just an ordinary sci-fi time-travel thriller, and the protagonist, instead of being an ordinary broken
man from a broken future as in the film, is more of an action-hero type, only with dark, doomsday, end-game motivations. That said, the first few episodes are interesting nevertheless
and I tried to enjoy it on its own terms. Once again, we get a time-travelling man sent by a desperate scientist in a desperate future to try and undo a pandemic that wiped out almost
all of humanity. Being a series, however, the story is greatly expanded, uncovering more and more mystery behind the pandemic, and there are many more missions as he slowly collects
clues and befriends some people in the past. The time-travel timelines becomes increasingly convoluted and the missions take place in a variety of time periods. The future world
is also greatly expanded, with pockets of survivors led by fanatics trying to survive or fight each other.
Unfortunately, the writing doesn't impress and ultimately fails. The characters and their motivations are not well written and they frequently do nonsensical things just to drive
the plot forward or to add dark, fatalistic outcomes to their arcs. They make less and less sense as the writers twirl their characters arcs around without regard to consistency.
As a general example of poor writing, why would the military use a deadly virus that can kill all humanity as a weapon to kill a handful of people, if there is a slight risk
that it would spread and kill the whole world (this is not a spoiler)? Especially if there are many other obvious weapons available such as a simple bomb. Time-travel rules and
paradoxes are based on the 'Back to the Future' model, using this only as its base, which means it only makes sense if you don't think about it too much. But they make it much worse
by adding more complications that immediately make the inconsistencies glaring. For example, why would they need to wait in the future while their man in the past made changes? Why
does any time have to pass before they know the results of the mission? Why would a time paradox do so many weird supernatural things to suit the writer's needs? Why does one
person freeze his own timeline with a paradox but then another person can travel to the future without a future self knowing about how the past was changed? Etc. And why do wounds
change once the timeline is altered, but not memories? OK, that last one could be approached from a supernatural/soul angle, but the rest will just increasingly confuse and distract
a thinking audience. Then the writers start changing and contradicting their own rules about time-travel about who can travel and what it takes to travel so the nonsense increases
with every episode. The time-travel and sci-fi are not bad at first and are somewhat entertaining and interesting despite the flaws, but then the show adds cults, mystical visions
and whatnot, and once you add up all of these factors, it is not surprising that even the first season deteriorates with every episode until it becomes complete nonsense in the
last couple of episodes. By the start of the second season, I felt that I had completely lost a handle on any of the characters and their contradictory and constantly changing
motivations, so I stopped watching.
Odyssey, The
The word epic didn't even exist when this 3000-year-old classic was written, but I can see the word being invented just to describe this adventure. The tale takes decades,
involves one adventure after another, from the war with Troy, to a cyclops, a witch, sirens of the sea, huge monsters, a trip to hell, as well as betrayal and greed at home,
and romance in the form of a very dedicated married couple. So one can argue that even mentioning this epic tale in the same sentence as 'adapted for the small-screen', and
'mini-series', is simply wrong. To be fair, some of the special effects aren't bad for TV (like the sequence in hell, and the cyclops eating a man), but one simply expects
much more than this for The Odyssey. The fact that it was crammed into 3 hours doesn't help either. But this may be overlooked by some (assuming you can get over the cheesy
costumes as well). What can't be overlooked is the over-the-top acting by much of the cast, and the stiff, passionate Odysseus who isn't quite the wise man depicted in the
poem. Also, some memorable scenes from the book were skipped, like the one where Odysseus ties himself to the ship to get through the dangers of the sirens. The truth is,
I can't believe no one has adapted this into a big-budget modern movie yet (Peter Jackson?), and during the whole time that I watched this series I could only imagine how
it should have been done.
Sapphire and Steel
Based on the first season and some scattered episodes.
An old British sci-fi show that has gained a cult following, and ITV's answer to BBC's successful Dr. Who. Two mysterious inter-dimensional agents called Sapphire and Steel
appear mysteriously in various places when strange occurrences threaten to unravel the timeline. A boy's parents, dinner guests or ghosts disappear or get lost in time
anomalies and it's up to the agents to solve the mystery and the disruption with their arcane skills. A slightly more mysterious and challenging show than Dr. Who but also a
much less interesting one simply because the characters are flat and wooden, the plot sometimes moves too slowly, and the mysteries are solved without much logic, using
ad-hoc supernatural skills instead.
Umbrella Academy, The
Based on the first season and a bit of the second.
It starts as an interesting, quirky blend of superhero action, steampunk sci-fi, dysfunctional family drama and musical. An eccentric closed-book billionaire buys
seven babies born around the world from instant miracle pregnancies, and raises them with strict discipline to become trained superheroes with a hidden purpose.
There's also a talking monkey, and a robot caregiver. But it all falls apart year after year, personalities clash, the cold 'parenting' alienates the children, one
of them demonstrates no special abilities, etc. A momentous occasion and a possible apocalypse brings them all together again. The grown-up, angry, broken step-siblings
have to fight not only strange assassins and the end of the world, but also each other's baggage, emotions and broken personalities. I found it interesting and different
at first, but the tone was off. The show tries to make even dangerous assassins cute, and almost all of the children are obnoxious narcissists and drama-queens. And
the writers move the plot forward by cheating all of the time, by having the characters repeatedly not talk to each other, and the superheroes use their powers only
when it's convenient, their powers change from episode to episode with no rules, and they even abuse time-travel to reboot stories instead of developing them. This
keeps getting worse and worse, featuring a finale that simply left me head-scratchingly confused as to why they were all behaving in such ridiculously melodramatic
and narcissistic ways, every speck of emotional hurt resulting in vicious murders or literally world-ending tantrums. Superheroes for the new generation perhaps?
Which is why, it came as no surprise that the second season added a tiresome Woke revisionist storyline to the list of sins, and then the third season features an
infamous gender-change midway, and the way they awkwardly shoehorn that into the show as if it is nothing is hilarious. But the roots of all this are discernable
in the first semi-interesting but deeply flawed season.
Watchmen (DC)
Based on the single season.
HBO's take on the political, introspective, dark, anti-superhero DC comic is 'updated' for Woke audiences. I did not read the comic, so I can't compare the characters
and intention, but obviously the story and casting are yet another agenda-driven stunt, another in the long line of similarly tiresome productions lately. I didn't
like the movie, but that was mainly because of Snyder, and the fact that DC superheroes tend to be too powerful and badly defined. Here, the alternate-history world
of Watchmen is re-imagined as one where masked 'law-enforcement' officers do battle with rampant white-supremacist armies. Now, violent and criminal white supremacists
obviously exist, and there is nothing wrong with making them the villains for superheroes to fight. The fatal problem with this show is that it makes all white men racists.
Sure, there are two or three token white men fighting on the side of the black men and women, so I thought this wasn't a racist white-hating show for the first couple
of episodes. But even one of these turn out to be a closet KKK member and the other two are just tokens. The super-intelligent white male superhero, is of course, evil,
and must be taken down by a woman, after being outsmarted by another woman. Another problem is that the 'superheroes' here are mostly just angry vigilantes pretending to
be 'policemen' venting their rage violently on anyone they suspect. Other superheroes are either indifferent, or abuse their abilities. I suppose this was the general tone
of the comic (but I'm not sure), except this means that both sides are despicable here. This felt like the Antifa version of a superhero show, where almost every white man
is imagined to be evil or an extreme racist, and everyone else is justified in venting their violent rage on anyone they see fit. After two episodes I was ready to quit,
but there were strange mysteries and some eccentric characters (especially Jeremy Irons as Veidt) doing bizarre things which hooked me, making me want to see where they
were going with these intriguing story-lines. Truth is, the plotting is quite entertaining, albeit not as clever and tightly plotted as they think, and things that don't
make any sense at first, and which become increasingly bizarre and seemingly random for several episodes, very gradually reveal their secrets and generally cohere. So
there is unique entertainment to be had here with imaginative plot elements. But the ridiculously heavy-handed race politics overshadow everything.
Maniac
Based on the single season.
Clunky and confused fantasy sci-fi with a mish-mash of ideas, some of them potentially interesting, but lacking a coherent and believable vision. The first two episodes
are very confusing where it's often not clear if we're seeing a hallucination of a schizophrenic character, a sci-fi computer-simulated person, or a flashback. It also
takes place in a futuristic world as if it were imagined in the 80s, which is very odd. It's retro-sci-fi, whatever that is, and there seems to be no reason to do it
this way. It takes place in a world that looks like the 80s, except it has futuristic gadgets using an 80s look & feel, including super-AI computers, advertisements
that behave like regular people in the street, proxy-friends, etc. There are also things that make no sense like a legalized blackmail company. At the center of this
are two protagonists with mental health issues. They sign up for an experimental drug that is supposed to cure them, except the procedure is more like a Matrix reality
as handled by an AI computer with unstable unpredictable emotions (a trope I do not like). So from the third episode on, the show takes place mostly in fake simulations,
except, like Inception, they are 'dream' worlds with some dream-logic and loose connecting threads, all of which the computer fully controls, and also a world where the
patients become completely different people. A forced fake reality where people have different personalities has nothing to do with mental healing, if you ask me. Not to
mention that most of their simulated adventures as mafiosos, elves, period-cultists, secret agents, etc seem to have nothing to do with their issues and are just there
for them to act (badly) as a wide variety of fantasy characters. In short, I kept watching this one to see if it would go somewhere interesting, but it never pulled itself
together despite its quirky ideas.
Adventures of Brisco County Jr., The
Based on most of the single season.
Chalk this one up to disappointment due to a mis-marketed target audience and an overblown cult reputation. I expected a cult comedy sci-fi Western with Bruce Campbell
with fun adult-oriented humor, instead I got a juvenile TV show. Bruce acts as Brisco County Jr. a bounty hunter with a law degree, son of a famous marshal who got
killed by John Bly, an infamous criminal. He spends the whole season tracking Bly down, encountering his many gang members and fellow conspirators (who seem to populate
the entire USA), with John Bly managing to get away every time due to some illogical writing and coincidences. He also keeps crossing paths with a mysterious golden orb
possessing various sci-fi/magical abilities that can be passed on to humans and that seem to radically change with every episode. He is followed by a rival bounty hunter,
the loud-mouthed and very cartoonish Lord Bowler, he talks to his horse, he shoots so well that he can calculate ricochet trajectories, he develops psychic abilities, and he
wise-cracks. The silly humor isn't even at the low level of Army of Darkness, and many of the supporting actors over-act to cartoonish and campy effect. The world is one big
anachronism, with badly inappropriate speech, attitudes, technology, dress, and treatment of blacks and women, and although this is on purpose because the show doesn't take
itself seriously, it doesn't exactly help or add to the show either. In short, this is a campy, cheesy, illogical, silly, unrealistic show for kids and undemanding teenagers
that is, at best, a mildly fun time-waster. Just because it has Bruce in it, that doesn't make it cult, guys.
Chuck
Based on most of the first one and a half seasons.
Although not billed as such, this is a sci-fi spy-comedy series with the fantastic ability to store and retrieve knowledge in the brain via images, not to mention
the supernaturally indomitable ninja spies. One of the biggest problems with this show is that everything about it is ridiculously unrealistic to the point that
it is impossible to switch off your brain and enjoy the comedy. Chuck is a nerd working in gadget-support who is sent a complete database of everything the government
knows, which is promptly stored in his brain, and the original is somehow lost, instantly making him the most important person in the world as far as spies are concerned.
He is assigned two agents, one from the NSA and another from the CIA, to protect him, or to get rid of him if he ever becomes a threat. To keep his secret, they
go undercover and work with him at the Buy More store, and the CIA agent becomes his girlfriend. This premise is so ridiculous and full of technical and logical holes,
that it would take a whole page just to list the errors. Suffice it to say that even the little fact the most important database in the world didn't have three
off-site backups is impossible to ignore. But then we wouldn't have this show and the chance to show a nerd with a super-hot model in skimpy clothes that fights
ninjutsu style. And that's all this is about. Because, besides Chuck himself who kinda acts human, everyone else is cartoon and cardboard, including his caring sister,
her jock boyfriend, his cartoonishly silly co-worker nerds, and all of the spies. The constant fights are bad, and the actors obviously have no fighting talents,
but who notices that when you have a half-naked girl jumping around the room, right? In between the episodic 'spy-crises' that are quickly solved with a few action
scenes, the ridiculous story arcs keep bringing in more and more exs, friends, and relatives into the conspiracy and builds an evil and powerful spy organization
as the nemesis. Eventually I figured that this is a show that doesn't take itself seriously, and is just having fun with the setup, but the show's writing was
too dumb to allow enjoyment even at that level.
Love, Death & Robots
Based on the first season.
Most of the time, I don't enjoy animated shows, especially action-oriented or anime, but this anthology sounded potentially different. The first handful of episodes were extremely
poor and I almost stopped watching. Two of them were obnoxiously Woke, bashing men, or bashing humans for climate stuff. Another two featured mere over-the-top anime style
action with swarms of monsters. But then it started getting slightly more interesting with a wide variety of shorts. Each is between 6 to 20 minutes long, so the uninteresting
ones don't have time to really get on your nerves. The title of this show is not a good one, seeing as the shorts cover anything and everything, almost all featuring sci-fi,
fantasy or horror or all three, some of them gory and violent, others just childishly silly comedies. One of them was near-Hentai levels of dark violent perversion. Of the
eighteen episodes in season one, I think I enjoyed about four, so the hit ratio is very low. The problem is that too much focus is placed on the animation and visuals
rather than on the story. The animation styles are varied, many of them impressively detailed with amazingly realistic details in the textures, but there are also several
more old-school animation styles. The stories are mostly simplistic, however, with abrupt endings that leave you unsatisfied, without any kind of closed loop or ironic twist.
Many just do their violent intense-action thing and leave abruptly. A mere handful are moderately entertaining. As with many anthologies and shorts, there is some fun with
not knowing what the next snippet will be like, but with so many leaving you feeling empty, even this wears out its welcome. If you're into detailed animations though, you
may enjoy this one more than I did.
Knight Rider (2008)
Based on most of the single season.
What's funny about this show is that it isn't a re-imagination, only an upgrade. A lot of the cheese, the fantastical car super-powers, the bland acting with the car
out-acting the humans, the implausible action, and the minimally dressed sexy female technicians and damsels in distress are all here, except they have been upgraded
for the new millennium. This time, Michael Knight's army ranger son drives the new and improved car and fights the usual wide variety of criminals and terrorists, with
some government interference. It's all entertaining and action-packed, until the howlingly implausible solutions start popping up, neatly solving every crisis in a
single episode, and the car turns out to be ridiculously powerful. This show has more sci-fi than Transformers and Star Trek put together, and seeing as it takes place
in our world, this is ridiculously impossible to swallow. The car transforms into other cars with the help of 'nano-technology', it creates objects from nothing in a
3D generator, hacks into any system in milliseconds, even non-networked machines like locks, cars and cameras, it can scan anything anywhere in seconds, has a mini-surgery
compartment, and on and on, with more silly and impossible abilities popping up with every episode only to be forgotten in the next. A bit better than the original,
and at least it knows how silly it is, but this is still kids stuff.
Knight Rider
Based on most of the first season and scattered episodes.
An 80s mainstay with an all too 80s look and notoriously cheesy action, not to mention that it features Hasselhoff as the hero. Michael Knight is an ex-cop with a strong
drive for justice who gets shot while fighting crime. He gets rehabilitated by the Knight Foundation which provides him with a super-car for fighting crime. The car has
many weapons and gadgets, is indestructible, has surveillance capabilities, and an AI with a very human personality, programmed to serve and protect Michael. The show
features episodic thrills and campy action, usually featuring Knight saving a damsel in distress as she gets in over her head with a criminal element. All this may sound
like a terrible show, but this is somewhat campy and cheesy fun if you can stand the implausibilities and silliness, and it's mostly fun for the same reason we watched it as
children: The car is super cool. The bad guys are too easily defeated, their willpowers seem to fade away at the end of each episode after Michael Knight pulls a car
stunt on them, the car mechanic is a beautiful girl who never gets dirty, Hasselhoff is a dull actor who seems more interested in posing, it's all too easy to point
out that the car has more character than the hero, and the car is always way too human, making jokes, sporting insecurities and playing mind games. The car may be
irrepressibly cool, but its abilities frequently go way past plausibility into juvenile fantasy. Good for kids only.
Invisible Man, The
Based on half of the first season.
A thief is manipulated into volunteering in a scientific experiment where a gland is inserted into his brain that allows him to be invisible.
He is then forced to work for the government in miscellaneous jobs while playing cat and mouse games with his arch-nemesis who killed his brother
and who wants to reproduce the experiment. The show is mostly episodic, involving hi-tech FBI crime-solving thrills or spy action mixed with some light humor,
and feels often like a throwback to the cheesy 80s action shows. Somewhat entertaining but the writing is very weak and unoriginal, the science
fiction is inconsistent and unconvincing, and the actors are all uninteresting.
Titans (DC)
Based on almost all of the first season.
DC Comics have been gradually and increasingly converting many (not all) of their superheroes into something else: dark, dreary, heavy, humorless and now fun-less.
This show is based on the Teen Titans loose group of superheroes, some with, some without superpowers, but all are crime-fighters. Except that, in this show they
seem to be fighting themselves more than criminals. Robin has gone from a colorful, cheery, sidekick to a cruel, brutal action-junkie addicted to vicious violence.
There is now infighting, jealous relationships, grudges against other superheroes, superheroes hating their powers and acts of violence, and even two superheroes
that have been sexually abused (I kid you not). Even compared to The Punisher, this is problematic. The Punisher was also tortured and cruel, but at least he had
a non-muddled sense of purpose and a superheroic attitude. Add to this the fact that these actors barely have any personality or chemistry. Another problem with some
DC superheroes is the badly and very loosely defined super-powers. In this show, Raven seems to have two brand new powers in every episode. I watched a whole
season and still could not figure out what she is and what she can or can't do. Yet another problem with this show is that the writers just keep adding new
story-lines instead of developing old ones, distracting you with constantly new entertaining things, back-stories, bad guys, crises, etc. So this show felt
very episodic. All of this is why, despite the constant fantasy entertainment factor and with all the seemingly interesting things going on, after two thirds
of the season, I suddenly realized that I wasn't enjoying this one at all.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Based on the third season, most of the fourth, and some scattered episodes.
A stand-out in the wave of Star Trek spin-offs that attempted relatively more mature, realistic and complex writing involving a stationary space station, developing a
political and protectional relationship with a single abused race of beings while trying to maintain a power balance, or fighting with other aggressive neighbours
(Cardassians, Klingons). This is in contrast to all other Trek shows that were about exploring new worlds. And even this single-minded focus is often overshadowed by
an emphasis on character development and human drama. This approach is taken to such an extreme, that nothing really happens for two whole seasons except for some
ongoing, banal human dramas and episodic dangers. During season three, the ominous Dominion rear their heads, threats from shape-shifting aliens grow, some spiritual
themes develop, tensions rise with Klingons, etc. but it takes another two seasons to grow properly into a gripping story, the vast majority of episodes being a variety
of stand-alones ranging from dull sci-fi, to moderately watchable. The actors are not bad relative to other Star Trek shows but still stiff and still missing that color
and warmth from the originals. The occasional humor is mostly juvenile. In summary, this show has good elements in the form of more mature writing, actors and character,
but is still bogged down by stiffness and too much banality, its alleged story arcs are very overrated, and the show is very hard to get into due to its tiring slow pace
and lack of inspiration.
Emergence
Based on most of the single season.
A mysterious girl with amnesia is found at the site of an airplane crash and the local police chief adopts her. The problem is, her mystery past rapidly takes over their lives
in the form of an all-powerful organization and assassins that seem to be able to control many forms of technology. The girl herself seems to have super-powers, further bringing
chaos to her family. This show starts out quite well with a good mystery and fantasy/sci-fi elements, and I especially liked the sharp dialog and characters. To explain why
it rapidly deteriorated with every episode would require me to spoil a twist-reveal in episodes 3-4 (warning): I don't enjoy movies that treat A.I. robots as if they were
100% human complete with emotions and human behaviour, and this show, unlike, say, the movie A.I., blatantly commits this sin, instantly removing all plausibility. But the
problems don't stop there, and every episode dives deeper into wild implausible sci-fi, implausible characters and relationships, plot twists that are actually plot holes, etc.
Midnight, Texas
Based on the first season.
Glossy, superficially entertaining horror/fantasy series that thinks that throwing together everything and the kitchen sink will make it more entertaining. Take a town
in Texas that is the opening to Hell (stolen from Buffy), throw in a psychic, a witch, an angel, a vampire, a were-tiger, a super-fighter, neo-Nazis, demons, and every
magic spell, supernatural ability, and monster known to movies, and then add lots of new special effects and super-powers in every episode. It feels like a kiddie show
for adults. It's a pity they didn't steal the humor from Buffy as well. It also doesn't help that the directing and acting are superficial and minimally functional, and
every potentially big dramatic moment is glossed over quickly to make way for the next rushed special-effect and supernatural action sequence. There is a lot of story
here, but they rush through things very often, the pacing is wrong, and the structure is mostly episodic with some slow character-building and story-arcs going on in
the background. In other words, the writing and story could have been developed into something like Buffy, but this show seems to be more interested in rushing to the
next grand supernatural showdown and special-effect. There is also a weak imagination, the perfect example of this is the treatment of angels, reducing them to human
gay-angel and violent-angel characters. Very minimally entertaining at best.
10th Kingdom, The
7-hour fantasy mini-series that, like some outings from the Sci-Fi channel, re-imagines classic fairy-tales and throws some contemporary heroes into the story.
Virginia from New York and her father find themselves whisked away into a fairy tale of decrepit proportions through a magical mirror into the Nine Kingdoms where
Snow White, Cinderella, Little Bo Beep, and many others are all past their prime, and all in danger of being taken over by an evil queen and her alliance with the
Trolls. Prince Charming is turned into a dog, a half-wolf is after Virginia's grandmother, Cinderella is 200 years old and after much plastic surgery, and so on...
The production, sets, locations and costumes are all quite good. But the biggest problem with this one is the tone. On the one hand, it doesn't take itself seriously,
there are many cartoonishly silly scenes and unrealistic behaviour, and several of the actors (especially the trolls and the wolf) overact annoyingly to comical effect.
In addition, the comedy is too silly and dumb to appeal to adults that want a fantasy comedy, and it desperately needs more wit to be categorized as such. To top it all
off, the fantasy characters all behave like people from the modern world as if the lazy writers transported their own lives into a fantasy world instead of re-imagining
a new one. All this would normally mean that it is aimed at very small children, except that there is also the occasional sexual and violent/dark content. So what were
they thinking?
Cold Lazarus
Dennis Potter's follow-up series to Karaoke, exploring what it would be like for people to pick his brain, thoughts and writings after his death, necessitating the
use of sci-fi to explore such fantasies. It's several hundred years into the future in a dystopian society of ubiquitous commercialism with entertainment tycoons
running the world, and a population that lacks any meaning or real experiences, with the expected terrorists that demand 'reality or nothing'. A group of scientists
have managed to tap into the preserved brain of Daniel Feeld from Karaoke, extracting memories and thoughts as digestible entertainment and experiences. Two powerful,
arrogant and eccentric American moguls compete for what they see are huge commercial possibilities while the scientists and rebels grapple with the social
and personal consequences of using a human being in such a manner. The concepts and ideas make it sound interesting, but the actual product is mostly awkward and
inauthentic sci-fi and characters probably more let down by the production and direction than the writing, some tedious dialogue, endless scenes of watching another
person's memories as if they were movies (a ridiculous idea feebly justified in some of the dialogue), and many badly faked American accents, with the occasional
interesting scene or idea.
Dark Matter
Based on the first season.
Mildly entertaining but completely generic copy-n-paste sci-fi job featuring a setup used often since Blakes 7 of a group of renegades on a space-ship forced by circumstances to team
up and survive the galaxy and its many adventures. This one emphasizes action and combat, but it's old-school fake stuff. The renegades in this case have the additional challenge
of trying to regain their memories and figure out who they are, and the writers keep piling on the twists in that department. This one features some of the creators behind Stargate,
and the structure of the show, despite the ongoing plot arcs of their memories, is largely episodic. In fact, some details in several episodes are often forgotten or dropped later
on. Adventures include shady or criminal missions given to them by their shady contacts, or surviving attacks and crises created by corporations that are frequently on their backs
for one reason or another, or regular stops at space-stations turning into dangerous adventures, sometimes with a sci-fi or horror twist in the tradition of Star Trek. There are no
aliens in this universe, but there are robots. In fact, it makes no sense that they would send humans on any of these missions when they have vastly underused robots that can beat
any and all humans at anything, as clearly demonstrated in the first episode. The characters are as bland as the writing, being standard types and cliches without much personality.
And the casting is strictly of the modern PC type, giving all of the brains and leadership to the women, and the men are mostly dumb muscle that sometimes help but mostly get in
the way. Of course, the females always outdo and beat up men, even ones that are much bigger than them (unless it's a bad guy and it's the beginning of the episode). They even have
that ridiculous unrealistic fantasy of a teenage female hardware wizard that somehow knows everything about every machine or computer and how to fix or hack it better than everyone
else, even though she is still a teenager and never studies. The android also makes use of all the recycled story-lines of Data from Star Trek, including the fantasy cliche of a
robot having feelings. There isn't anything really bad here and it's kinda entertaining at times, but neither is there anything really good in this very bland and very uninspired show.
Project Blue Book
Based on most of the first season.
The X-Files instantly became the benchmark for series covering aliens and alien abductions, and rightfully so. This blatant attempt at copying that success doesn't even get close.
Copying is almost never successful, since it lacks inspiration and its own internal vision. Don't be fooled by the 'based on actual Blue Book files' tag. This is fantasy sci-fi.
It takes place in the 50s, but like many shows nowadays that attempt this, they focus all their attention on dress and props but get the attitudes completely wrong, resulting
in slick and very artificial Presentism. They even inject a useless side-plot about a sexy Russian spy and her lesbian advances towards a frustrated housewife. Regarding the main
plot elements, we get an awkward duo of overly stiff, artificially retro-macho air-force pilot whose job it is to be pragmatic and skeptical, while a scientist with a brilliant
multi-disciplined mind analyzes the evidence and bewildering conspiracies within conspiracies to try to find the truth that is out there. They are given the job of investigating
UFOs, illogically by people that don't want them to be successful, and it's never quite clear why they are working together. Of course, the show knows its source and takes
two steps back for every step forward, never revealing its secrets fully. In any case, none of this is ever convincing, unlike X-Files, the conspiracies, men in black, UFO
encounters, and spooky aliens all feel artificial, as do the characters.
Harsh Realm
Based on half of the single season.
A rapidly cancelled and very incomplete sci-fi series by Chris Carter of X-Files fame about a virtual reality world, with several amusing parallels to Matrix (which
came out in the same year). The military has invented a virtual world for training, but it has taken on a life of its own, and Santiago, a renegade soldier, has
taken over this world with brutal dictatorship and idealism, and even threatens to annihilate the real world to ensure that his own world becomes dominant. Soldiers
are sent into the Harsh Realm to attempt to bring Santiago down and they find they cannot go back until they complete their mission. Since this is a Carter show,
complex conspiracies, alliances and double-crosses start piling up. But the insurmountable problem with this series is that the concept is ridiculous and the writers
consistently demonstrate a lack of even basic understanding of computers. For starters, this takes place in our world and time, and the world is created by the military,
but somehow they have managed to invent super-computers that can recreate the whole world and all of its occupants in absolute detail, as well as recreate all humans
with their complex emotions and consciences intact. And why is this necessary for military training in the first place? And why can't they simply switch it off,
disconnect people, or simply fight a program with programmers from the outside? The Matrix and the Otherland novels explained the mechanics properly, but this show
never bothers. Then there are the constantly laughable details that make no sense: 'zipped files of testosterone' used for fighting, black 'unprogrammed' voids,
'glitches' that neatly allow people to walk through fences and nothing else, etc. And then there is the lead soldier, who is so bland and stupid that he risks real
lives for virtual people and dogs, and constantly makes bad decisions. The first few episodes start revealing aspects of this bad setup, the rest wander off into
more interesting stand-alone episodes, then the show ends abruptly.
Alice in Borderland
Based on the first season.
Japanese live-action series based on a manga about people that suddenly find themselves in a strange version of Tokyo where they have to win life-or-death games in order to survive.
The main protagonist is a young guy obsessed with and good at gaming, who suddenly finds that his skills are very important. But there are dozens of other characters, many of
which die unexpectedly. There are different types of games, some requiring physical or survival skills similar to Battle Royale, others requiring puzzle-solving skills, or
manipulative skills. All of the games involve death for any mistake or making a random wrong decision.
Right from the first episode I got 'Lost' vibes since this new alternate version of Tokyo could not be explained in any logical way so I saw no way to end this series on a satisfying
note. Spoilers follow. For example, when they transported, some people disappear but not others, no older people for some reason, and served food was still warm but cars that were
in a accident a minute before disappeared. These inconsistencies alone rule out many scenarios. The games are not fun to watch and figure out since the makers of the game often
don't play fair, provide unclear rules, or twist the rules til they don't make sense, and don't always give the players a proper chance to win. Obviously the game-makers are sadists
that are more interested in sadistic entertainment. Which brings me to my biggest problem with this series: Given this, why are the characters playing all the games by the rules and
never thinking out of the box, looking for loopholes or game hacks, figuring out the meta-mechanics of the game, or even trying to figure out how this world works? Even in cases
where they are doomed to die, they just cry and don't try desperate ways to cheat the system. They just play by the rules, cry and die. They don't even try to figure out how
the game masters are doing the impossible things they are doing, always somehow knowing where they are and what they are up to, using weapons that can seemingly penetrate anything,
etc. Either the game masters are omnipotent gods, or this is a VR world, which would make the show unsatisfying, or the game masters are humans with sci-fi weapons, which means
they could look for hacks and weaknesses, and yet they don't. These characters felt like unthinking NPCs, not humans. Also, there are overwrought emotional scenes that are overdone,
and motivations for doing the extreme things they do never ring true, especially in the ridiculous finale of the first season. For all these reasons, the show felt contrived and
therefore uninteresting.
Almighty Johnsons, The
Based on most of the first season.
The Norse gods are alive and well, kinda, in New Zealand, reincarnated, kinda, as a bunch of horny ordinary blokes and vindictive goddesses. This Kiwi comedy seems to be popular
but for a show about gods, it's kinda the opposite of almighty, which is perhaps the point. There are four brothers, all gods, except their powers have been extremely diminished.
There's the horny immoral playboy with a power to talk people into things, a clueless horny young guy without powers yet, a responsible adult in a marriage with a gift for luck
and games, and some guy who makes things cold. Their quest, get this, is to get Odin his destiny goddess wife, or at least get him laid with Norse-looking chicks until he finds
her. But the goddesses are having none of that and have plans of their own. So does Loki, a ruthless business-man manipulator. The problem with this show is that everyone behaves
just like ordinary, even obnoxious and dumb, folk, and their problems consist of mostly ordinary relationship stuff and lots of cheating. One would expect even reincarnated gods
to behave a little differently than banal humans. The actors are kinda fun but their characters are poor and uninteresting. Their romantic interests waver from one person to another
like the wind. It would be funny if it were witty, but there are only a couple of chuckles per episode.
Touch
Based on scattered episodes of the first season.
The first episode intrigues with an interesting idea of interconnected lives and events through math, patterns and numbers. Except it does it through the cliche of an autistic kid.
Martin (Kiefer) is a father of an autistic kid who is constantly seeing and drawing numbers and patterns, and one day Martin realizes that the kid is seeing the world differently
and communicating to him the pain he sees and the things that need to be done to connect the dots. People in trouble around the world suddenly become connected, each in turn affecting
the other, and when everything becomes aligned, their stories resolve themselves like dominoes. The structure is mostly episodic, setting up a new pattern of people and events,
and having Martin chase down clues given to him by his mute son to connect the dots and try to do good. This is the only way he finds he can communicate with his son. There is
also a longer story arc where dots from other episodes start aligning up for a larger story thread, this arc also involving various people and organizations that become interested
in his son and his abilities. This eventually becomes a conspiracy thriller and feels out of place, except it's the only story in this show with a meaning to it. See, during the
first episode the idea is intriguing, the second one already gets one's suspicions going that this is going nowhere and it's all random connections and lazy gimmicky writing, and
by the fourth episode or so, it has already worn out its welcome and stops making sense completely. Just because the same number appears in different places, that doesn't make the
connection meaningful in itself, nor does it make it interesting, and if the connection is already there, then why does it depend on Martin or his kid to tie the threads together
with so much desperate running? In summary, this has good acting, but only a half-baked premise merely used for yet another gimmicky supernatural series.
Luke Cage (Marvel)
Based on the first season and some episodes from the second.
Another in the series of Marvel-Netflix superhero shows that shares characters with the others in this TV universe. This one focuses on Luke Cage, an ex-con framed for a crime,
converted into a superhero in a freaky science experiment, giving him invulnerable skin and super-strength. He finds his way back to Harlem and has to use all of his powers just
to keep up with the dozens of urban crimes and crime-lords. Crooked politicians and policemen, rival crime-lords and escalating violence doesn't let him rest even though he
returned to Harlem to rest and avoid the superhero label and lifestyle.
There are many problems with this show. For starters, his powers make him so invulnerable, and seeing as he is mostly up against regular human criminals, there is almost never
any sense of danger. In fact, with his powers he should have been able to clean house in a short while, except the writers twist logic and extend their plots into sheer nonsense
to stretch the story out to a whole season. Ironically, logically he actually isn't invulnerable (what about poison, drugs, the need for oxygen, etc) and yet nobody seems to be
thinking of ways to get to him beyond fists and guns. As with other Netflix superhero shows, the writers come up with ridiculous reasons for the superhero to leave the evil crime-
lord alive even though innocent people are constantly getting killed. And criminals easily slip away from the law just to keep the stories going even though there is evidence that can
be used in court that somehow the writers chose to ignore. Luke's over-confident attitude and very bland personality only makes it all worse. Towards the end of the first season, the
writers have to come up with super-weapons that defy the laws of physics just to give him a vulnerability, and then in season two his powers both increase and decrease according
to the needs of the plot. In short, the writing is lazy and of poor quality, it almost never does anything interesting, and swims in ghetto-crime cliches and contrived shifting
allegiances and artificial motivations. It also doesn't help at all that most of the actors are interchangeable and lack personality, and the only thing they do is act 'tough'.
At best, this show is a bland way to waste time, providing very mediocre entertainment. Even the frequent music performances are limp.
Into The Badlands
Based on the first one and a half seasons.
Post-post-apocalyptic kung-fu action TV series. I.e. it takes place long after the catastrophe and features a 'wild-west' world that is slowly coming together, except it is based on
feudalism and slavery. There are no guns, so the wars and fighting are all done with fists and various sharp weapons, hence the intense amount of kung-fu. There are multiple power-hungry
barons, shaky alliances, trained killer armies and 'Clippers', wild violent nomads, cult religions, slavery mines, some lawless lands, and rumors of an ideal civilization somewhere unknown.
Every episode features at least a couple of elaborate kung-fu fight scenes. Although not listed as a fantasy/sci-fi series, some people have mysterious super-fighting-powers of unknown
origin which have both a sci-fi and fantasy aspect. The ongoing story involves a master warrior-Clipper with ideals that conflict with his evil Baron, a teenager with special fighting
powers that he can't control, fighting and politics between Barons, etc.
Although the above sounds like a dream come true for action fans, there are many issues with this show. The first is the fighting: Daniel Wu seems to be the only main actor with proper
training and skills (Wushu). Most of the others are obviously faked using fancy choreographed moves, wire-fu and slow-mo. This could still work if the characters and plots would be
otherwise compelling, but if you are expecting a high level of martial arts, you will only get it from one actor. Another issue is with the liberal/feminist/confused approach of having
a leather-clad, high-heel wearing woman slice up every male enemy she encounters using obvious wire-fu and agile dance moves (despite being in high-heels), all the while she is claiming
to fight for freedom from oppression from evil men. And finally, there are the characters: Almost none are interesting. Csokas chews the scenery with a strange accent as a typical b-movie
bad guy, Wu is a bland super-warrior hero, the dour teenager is instantly forgettable, etc. It all feels exactly like a forgettable action b-movie from the 80s padded out to be a long
series. For example, take 'Steel Dawn', except remove interesting elements like Swayze's character, the unusual farming technology & weapons, and the creatures in the desert, then add
some feminism, and you'd have this. It's mildly entertaining, for a short while only, and only during some scenes.
Undone
Based on the first season and a bit of the second.
At first this Amazon show seems to be using a chaotic time-travel mechanism towards self-improvement goals similar to It's a Wonderful Life or Groundhog Day, as our very unlikeable
protagonist learns to be a better person by getting stuck in a loop. But then the show veers towards helping others, mostly her own family and father who died in a car accident
early on, while she learns various tricks to deal with and control these chaotic time shifts and loops. This is all mildly entertaining and the visuals are fun as she keeps
shifting out of time like a character from a Vonnegut novel. The characters are fleshy and the tone is light, making this mildly fun. But there are several problems with this
show, some of them fatal: The first is the rotoscoping 'animation'. Once upon a time rotoscoping revolutionized animation by adding details and realism. Nowadays it makes no
sense and not only seems pointless since animations are created with great detail using computers, but it also reduces from the film and constantly distracts. It's like someone
applied a flattening and blurring filter to a movie with real actors. What's the point of getting real actors and then removing nuances and detail to create a lesser version
of real people? The short episodes and season also means that this is basically a film-length movie cut up into episodes. So this is an animated TV-show that is neither animated
nor a tv-show. It is a very blurry film cut up into pieces. Another general problem is with the characters. Unlikeable obnoxious characters are OK for character development and
color, but the writers here have a blatant double standard, judging the men harshly for every sin while allowing the women to do the same and much much worse while moralizing
to the men. It also doesn't help that the protagonist is obnoxiously and angrily Woke, and that the guys are basically useless and passive support-systems for the women. And
finally, the time-travel mechanism is sloppily written and the writers keep changing the rules, especially for the ending that resolves things with brand new rules that come
out of nowhere.
Friday the 13th: The Series
Based on most of the first season.
I avoided this show based on the assumption that it was an extended series based on the dumb slasher franchise. Adding 'The Series' to this show's name strengthened the assumption.
Except it has nothing to do with those movies, making one wonder what the marketing people were thinking about when they named it. The show is actually about two cousins and
an eccentric man who inherit an antique shop that has been cursed with demonic evil, making each and every item that was sold in the past into a bringer of murder, evil and general havoc.
Mirrors cause people to fall obsessively in love until death, dolls commit murder and make children into evil murderers, a camera brings to life evil doppelgängers, pens cause
grotesque deaths simply by writing about them, and so on. This show is actually an early template for so many of the Sci-Fi channel's shows that uses weekly gadgets or episodic
magical powers and objects. Perhaps my expectations have been ruined by so many clones, but, unfortunately it is even more formulaic and bland than those shows. The writing is
pedestrian and predictable and one knows the whole episode within the first five minutes, the structure is formulaic with a vengeance, there is no character development
or trace of story arcs, the horror is often hokey or contrived and the characters never feel real. There is still some minimum fun to be had from the weekly adventures and
variety of evil powers, but I spent most of the time just getting bored waiting for the next episode. Nothing really bad that one can point a finger to, but nothing good either.
Humans
Based on the first season and three episodes of the second.
As a stand-alone show, and one that is made quite well, this seems like it should get higher marks. But there are two huge problems: One is that it is yet another inferior pointless
remake. In this case the original show is the Swedish 'Real Humans' (see review). This British remake repeats most of the same story-lines, except it feels less subtle and complex,
and approaches the AI robots that are turning human in a much more blatant manner: They simply gain full human consciousness, personalities and even a morality thanks to a special
program which basically represents life in the form of a tree. I kid you not. This silly tree-hugging show then wants us to accept that robots can be 100% human and it goes on from
there to add social commentary and thrilling plots as the emerging conscious robots hide or fight with the scared human race. And that's the second huge problem with this show, which
has even worse conceptual problems than the Swedish show. Another lesser problem is a blatant despicable gender double-standard: It's ok for women to use male robots for sex, but when
men do it, it's disgusting. But back to the main issue: Most movies and TV shows dealing with this topic have similar problems, and it's the rare masterpieces like Blade Runner and
Spielberg's A.I. that get it right, and that give the robots only an exterior resemblance to humans with not-quite-human quirks in their behaviour. If you can accept this premise that
full human consciousness can be evoked via programming and that materialism contains the magical emerging property of consciousness and morality and an autonomous personality locked
away inside it somehow, then you may enjoy this much more than I did. But it doesn't stop there: The robots gain individual complex personalities thanks to their experience, their
technical problems are often described organically with code acting like psychology and chips behaving like body-parts, and reviving a robot suddenly looks very much like the treatment
of a human, all, of course, to manipulate us into accepting them as 100% human. Except that this is all nonsense. And this is a remake.
Defiance
Based on the first season.
Earth has been overrun by aliens that have wrecked the planet with attempts to terraform it to their needs. Now, years after the wars, aliens and humans are trying to live together.
Defiance is one such town built on the ruins of St. Louis with a tense relationship between its various species, and a new sheriff: a renegade bounty-hunter recently convinced
to work for them. Invading political and military organizations, as well as internal strife, tension and politics make life constantly difficult. In short, this is a Western with
sci-fi species and gadgets. And not a good or interesting one. SyFy produces yet another bland and uninspired series, making me think that their CEO is an AI program designed
to create as many commercial gimmicky shows it can generate. Most of the story in this show could have been told without any of the sci-fi, replacing the alien species with
Natives, Mexicans and Chinese, their quirky behaviour with their obviously cloned human equivalents, and their weapons and space-vehicles with plain guns and horses, and not
much would be lost. Which means two things: The sci-fi is wasted and merely a gimmick, and they have no imagination. And even the show as a Western is bland, uninspired, copied
from other recognizable movies, and cliched. Most of the aliens behave so much like humans, that they feel like geeks play-acting in costumes rather than aliens. Some even call
themselves 'aliens' in a really silly bit of writing. There is serviceable character development and a few story arcs, and it may distract you for a while, but that's all it is
at best: Serviceable.
True Blood
Based on the first season and scattered episodes of the second and third seasons.
HBO's popular vampire series is nothing but badly written pulp and soapy trash, albeit somewhat entertaining pulp. In this world, vampires have come out of the closet
and are trying to integrate with society, with a bill trying to pass equal rights for vampires, and humans splitting down the middle whether to treat vampires with respect.
Subtle metaphor eh? They don't really do anything interesting with this idea however and instead, inject new supernatural surprises and creatures every few episodes, killing
the realism. The setting is a town in Louisiana where every crazy and violent thing seems to happen for no particular reason and every other human has a secret or supernatural power.
Sookie is a telepathic barmaid whom everyone adores, worships or wants to protect for no good reason. She is over-confident way beyond her intelligence, constantly does and says
stupid things, and is not likeable. And almost every other character in the show has similar likability issues, and that is only when they aren't being unrealistic bundles
of whimsical emotions and lusts straight out of a soap opera. Their emotions and personalities swing from one extreme to the other from one episode to the next; they hop from
one fling, love or attachment to another; and loyalties, motivations, interests and beliefs are changed more frequently than underwear. One girl even has sex with a complete
stranger before her cherished boyfriend is even buried, and she is supposedly one of the good ones. And then there is the sex: It's everywhere. Every gender and vampire/creature
combination is displayed, and that's just for starters. Sex happens for any reason whatsoever, and when the quota starts to fall behind, they even bring in sex dreams. If two
people meet after not seeing each other for days, they have sex; If they hate each other, they have sex; If they are having yet another emotional outburst, they have sex;
And if they are bored, they have sex. And, for some reason, based on the fact that they all seem to enjoy getting their throat flesh ripped, they are all masochists too.
And then there is the sloppy writing that doesn't care about details or sticking to a stable storyline. One example is the way vampires seem to have complete control over humans
to the point where they can make them think, forget or do anything they please, and yet somehow half of their problems involve unruly humans. Not to mention that this whole thing
about needing an invitation to enter a house becomes completely pointless. In one episode a vampire says that they don't just burst into flames when the sun comes up, a few episodes
later they are doing exactly that. And so on... an endless stream of violence, gore, sex, emotional outbursts, betrayals, twists, new creatures, etc. all churned out by witless writing
that is just there to keep you from switching off the screen while feeding you more and more junk. It's sometimes entertaining in a pulpy dime-novel way, but this kind of thing
gets boring fast.
Pushing Daisies
Based on most of the first season.
Bryan Fuller is really repeating himself now. This is partially a retread of his Dead Like Me show with a similar collection of characters that have to deal with
death in a quirky way, by way of an Amelie clone, except it doesn't have the character and base in reality that those had. Ned has a gift for bringing things back
to life with a touch of his finger, except that if he lets them live for more than a minute, something or somebody else has to die in its place. Ned teams up with a
detective, and with his childhood crush that he brought back to life, in order to solve murder mysteries by bringing the dead back for a minute and asking them questions.
This concept is almost as contrived as it sounds, and to make things worse, it isn't developed any further, with the writer giving him the illogical ability to turn
back time and bring rotting fruits and leaves 'back to life' as well, which makes no sense (humans would grow young again if that were the case). The reactions from
the zombies usually don't feel realistic either. But the show has quirk and cuteness on its mind, and isn't bothered by such details. And that's another problem: It's
all cartoonishly and colorfully cute and quirky, which is mild fun for a couple of episodes, but then it wears out its welcome without something else to balance it:
Something edgy, somebody that feels real for a change instead of these ridiculously perky and cute women, some drama, anything! Another significant flaw is the heavy
use of a narrator to tell us everything we already know. In short, this is stale stuff that is only light entertainment at best despite its vibrant colors, and it
desperately needs some life injected into it. Too much quirk and lightness is bad for a series.
Whispers, The
Based on the single season.
At the end of the first episode I was sure that Spielberg had something to do with this since his fingerprints were all over it, what with the heavy reliance on kids
and a Spielbergian feel of magical strange encounters with other-worldly forces. The credits confirmed this, which means he is either repeating himself, or he is an
auteur even as a producer. In any case, this show starts quite well actually, with a gripping mystery involving mysterious powers manipulating children into doing
disturbing things. The story and mystery develop at a good pace, involving various government agents and soldiers as well as families, as they uncover what these
forces are up to, and the race between paranoid governments, other-worldly agendas and plots, and parents who also happen to be agents, escalates constantly. The
deterioration in the writing and story starts after a few episodes, however. The biggest problem is in how they treat children, as if they never dealt with children
before. Children may be very gullible and open-minded and accepting, but when it comes to doing obviously horrible things based on strange voices, and despite what
their own parents tell them, this show seems to think they are completely stupid. Also the writers set the rules, then every time a development plays itself out,
they change the rules, especially at the end of the first season. Some episodes feel very contrived and manipulative, a story written by writers that are too involved
in their own internal logic and in pacing and stringing the audience along from one plot twist to another, to bother with realism and careful character and world
building. This cancellation made sense.
Emerald City
Based on the single season.
A re-imagining of the Wizard of Oz as a dark fantasy with adults, for adults. Dorothy is a 20 year old woman raised by her aunt who is suddenly transported to the land of
Oz where there is a complex struggle between believers of magic and science. Both are terrified of the looming prophesized 'Beast Forever'. This rich world is populated by
witches with different agendas and their strange covens, industrious steampunk scientists that can build mechanical people, an amnesiac scarecrow soldier who may to may not be
a killer ...and a person that does not know their gender. This show does not shy away from killing anyone, and the world is rich with detail and striking sets and costumes,
courtesy of Tarsem Singh of 'The Cell' fame. This is the good. Unfortunately, many of the characters are flat and the story-telling and writing are weak. Dorothy seems to have
two facial expressions, and registers no surprise or wonder at the amazing world in which she finds herself. Almost all of the characters waver this way and that without rhyme
or reason, and I struggled to make sense of them throughout the season. They do strange things without an explanation, then change their minds often. I watched the whole thing,
and wanted it to be better, but it never got off the ground for me.
Brimstone
Based on most of the single season.
A tormented, dead police-man who got sent to hell for killing his wife's rapist gets a second chance. He is given the mission to recover over 100 escaped dangerous souls
that are currently hiding with the living, and to send them back to hell. This is an episodic show, and the writing is so pedestrian and uninspired that it feels like a
cookie-cutter old-school cop-show, except the cop and criminals have random supernatural powers and cannot be killed. The writing has the mentality of a video-game, with
obvious and neat little clues always leading the cop on a predictable track to the evil soul, and then a tattoo is magically erased off his arm every time he succeeds in
order to keep track of his points. Yes, it's another monster-of-the-week show. The charming devil appears as his boss to tease and play sadistic games with him, which
lightens up the show a bit, but even this aspect lacks imagination. Personality-wise, the leads are passable, but never stand out. So all-in-all, there isn't anything bad
here, but it is forgettable, uninteresting entertainment.
Taken
Based on all 10 episodes.
Spielberg presents X-Files: The Drama. 10 long episodes covering four generations and three families whose lives were changed due to alien abductions
and UFO sightings, from the Roswell incident to today. At first some characters are interesting, especially the brutal, calculating soldier and strange
aliens, but as soon as we get to know them they are replaced with weaker characters, then replaced yet again with uninteresting children and teenagers.
The effects are passable, the spookiness of abductions was covered much better in X-Files, the conspiracy and government angle was more interesting in
X-Files, the magic of encounters was handled much better in Close Encounters, the cheesy and heavy narration is ludicrously delivered by a child,
and the drama, which is the main focus of this series, is very soapish and overlong. Spielberg, please stop using children to carry your flicks.
Twilight Zone, The (2002)
Based on most of the single season.
This third incarnation of the Twilight Zone series is closer in tone and content to the original than the fun 80s version, but its heart is all wrong and it's a painfully
mediocre effort. The fact that the opening theme is by Korn should give you a clue: This often feels like an attempt to rejuvenate and remake the series with a parade
of hot young actors, except that they forgot to hire talented writers. The trail-blazing original and the even better 80s version are hard acts to follow, and this makes
the mediocrity even harder to take. The original, even when it was cheesy, approached moral twists from a human angle and usually involved at least some thought or
character. This one seems to enjoy pulling out weird twists from left field and give the protagonists moral choices that are completely random or very superficial.
The writing in general isn't very satisfying or well thought out either. In other words, the writers seem to think that the only thing needed to make a Twilight Zone
episode is something supernatural or weird that puts the protagonists in a difficult and bizarrely unusual position, then throw some hot young actor at it. In addition,
Forest Whitaker is miscast as the narrator. As with any anthology, there are some better and entertaining episodes, but the hit ratio here is quite low and the rest
are only slightly above average.
Carnival Row
Based on the first season.
Fantasy, alternate pseudo-Victorian-esque world where history meets mythological creatures like fairies and fauns. The people that call this steampunk do so incorrectly since
there is no sci-fi. The many plot threads include a forbidden love between a soldier and a fairy, a brutal killer-monster in the city and the detective tracking it down, politics
and a deep rivalry between politicians, wars between races, a city overwhelmed with immigrating creatures, a 'racist' woman and her new shocking neighbour, and much more.
Besides the various creatures, this is a very unimaginative world, seemingly modelled after 19th century Earth, but the very loose morals and behaviour are pure 21st century,
and the society is pure Woke fantasy. I was ready to stop after two episodes. It's all about simplistic views that reduce everything to one or two black & white factors.
Intolerance, vicious hatred of immigrants, racism, ubiquitous toxic oppression of women, etc etc ad nauseam. Besides being the umpteenth show this year alone that hopped on
this tired bandwagon, the biggest problem is that it's so brainless, simple-minded and crude, attacking its audience with a sledgehammer. Episodes three and four seemed to
improve and actually write a story worth watching, but then it's right back to the constant stream of sledgehammer juvenile preaching, episode after episode. Unimaginative
on many levels.
Killjoys
Based on most of the first season.
There's fun light entertainment, and then there's air-headed uninspired fluff that is simply lacking in joy and anything of interest. It's also awkward when a show
worships its own protagonist more than its audience and tries too hard to market her as a badass girl for fans before there are even fans. A trained assassin and her two
boy-toys work as bounty hunters in a wild west of a galaxy, which also has an ominous but generic evil Company and generic revolutionaries. There's lightly fun banter
and humor, and that's the only good aspect of this show. There is a lot of action, but this is stuff straight from a bad 80s action b-movie, complete with fast cuts
and shaky cameras and cool gadgets to distract from the fact that the trained assassin doesn't really look very trained. The first few episodes are quite bad, with a
mission-of-the-week structure and copy-paste action that seems more designed for girls and fanboys than guys, complete with an obnoxious chick-pop-rock soundtrack with
a faux-grrl attitude. The two boy-toys, the camera, the music, the costumes, and everyone else worship this girl, making one constantly wonder what the fuss is all
about. It improves after a while as the story-arcs develop and there is more character development, although these are not really anything imaginative to write home
about. The world-building is derivative and uninspired. It's slightly better than Dark Matter, but only slightly. Constantly feels like artificial posers, with a lot
of uninspired copying from much better shows. Less marketing, more content please.
Star Trek: Discovery
Based on the first season and some of the second.
A mixed bag of a Trek series, partially enjoyable despite its many many flaws, until an unforgivable flaw came along. This is another prequel, taking place only a few years before
The Original Series that plays very fast and loose with the Trek universe, blatantly contradicting many things (and I'm not even a Trek-fanatic). Starfleet is finding its footing
and learning the politics of an expanding universe (especially how to deal with Klingons) while exploring new worlds and going where no man has gone before. At the center of most
events is 'Michael' Burnham, a black female human trained by Vulcans, who often takes action according to her own principles, causing many problems with Starfleet authorities
as well as her Vulcan adopted father Sarek (yes, that Sarek). There are both longer story arcs as well as episodic dangers and mysteries intertwined. The good: Trek never looked
better thanks to Bryan Fuller and a beautiful and detailed production. The story-writing is capable, sometimes interesting, other times merely uninspired but functional. The
casting and characters are a mixed bag ranging from not-bad to bland to very poor. The actress at the center is as bland and forgettable as they get. The writers also make
the same mistake most politically-correct shows make of turning the woman into a super-human and making her better than anyone else at absolutely everything, whether it is fighting,
action, science, logic, know-how about everything and anything, relationships, etc. This makes it impossible to accept her as a real person. In terms of the Trek universe, even
as a non-expert I kept noticing things like 'anachronistic' technology, a blatant re-imagining of Klingons, and a complete misunderstanding of Vulcans. So far, these were all
things I could put aside (with some difficulty) and I partially enjoyed the good aspects of the show nevertheless. But then they made Sarek into a sentimental man, and Spock
into a completely unrecognizable broken man, even having him see shrinks and making him dependent on his black super-human sister whom we never heard of before. And that's when
I had quite enough. I'm fine with an alternate re-imagining of Star Trek, and this is not the first time Klingons were altered, but never lay your filthy PC fingers on the original
characters that I grew up with ever again. Thank you.
Incorporated
Based on most of the single season.
I was ready to stop watching this within the first five seconds. It starts with a description of a future dystopian world: Climate change, evil corporations, and poor zones
exploited and neglected by the rich zones. Obviously I expected a liberal preachy disaster, but kept watching anyways. Surprisingly, it didn't go in that direction once the
world was set-up, and floundered for completely different reasons. This is about a future where ruthless corporations rule the world, and where many people vie for power in
the lower ranks, as well as the criminals and some poor people from the slums infiltrating the companies and trying to maneuver or manipulate the system in different ways.
The technological details and various gadgets and technologies are pretty good and imaginative, and although the story starts very boringly it gets more interesting as it
goes, but the world-building is weak and unimaginative (as described in the intro), and the characters are all bland cogs in a wheel of ruthless games, rather than actual
personalities. Their extreme behaviour and decisions don't make sense half of the time, seemingly doing many wild things to keep the thrills and the plot moving along.
The writing felt like the output of a thriller-writing-factory, and the world, characters and story never came alive. Just another modern show that is good with technology,
but bad with humanity.
Colony
Based on most of the first season and a bit of the second.
Aliens have taken over Earth again, and pockets of human resistance are fighting them. Except that, for the whole of the first season, there is not a single alien to be
seen, and sci-fi is so rarely used that it is irrelevant to the plot. The show starts right in the middle of a resistance movement, except they are fighting a human fascist
government run by collaborators and set up by the aliens. We never learn what happened, we barely see what the occupation looks like and how it works, so we have no idea
what the humans are facing, what they are fighting, and why they are fighting. Similarly, the motivations of the collaborators and their gung-ho attitude towards abusing
and killing their own species are never clear throughout the whole season. Instead, we get lots and lots of 'thrilling' details involving cat-n-mouse games, spy games,
resistance action, and a family stuck in the middle of it all with family-members playing both sides of the fight. Except, since there is no background, why should the
audience care? What were the writers thinking? I'm not a fan of back-stories used heavily in shows, but this has zero background. It also doesn't help that the characters
are as bland and forgettable and generic as they get. So I started skipping, but kept watching, hoping that the story will open up. By the second season I had given up,
although it seemed that things were starting to open up, but it was too little, too late, and way too slow. Plus, I read that the show was abandoned mid-story in season
three, so I didn't feel like investing any more time. Plus, one of the writers was involved in Lost, so that is an automatic trust issue. Taking this into account, the
holding back on the sci-fi and all this 'mystery aliens' nonsense suddenly feels like audience manipulation rather than mystery. In summary, a badly managed show from all
points of view.
Lucifer (DC)
Based on the first season.
Vastly overrated and another painfully superficial Bruckheimer-produced show. The show's ambition only makes it's lack of imagination worse. It's not about some demon, or some
other supernatural being, or human turned vampire living on Earth, but about none other than Lucifer himself. When it comes to fantasy movies about demons devils and angels,
most have a poor imagination and cannot imagine beings behaving vastly differently than humans, but this one just makes this the gimmick of the show: Lucifer has had enough of
managing Hell and doing his duty, so he clips his wings and spends time with humans as a human, indulging in every desire and whim, only with supernatural powers such as
immortality, an irresistible devilish charm, and the ability to extract a person's deepest desire and use it. Except that he has no experience as a human, and is puzzled
by some of his own behaviour, especially when it comes to a hot detective who brings out his vulnerabilities. So he visits a shrink. The result? In this show, Lucifer is nothing
more than a spoiled handsome playboy used to getting his way, as superficial and uninteresting as any playboy, and is ultra-confident, narcissistic and carefree as only an
irresistible immortal can be. Tom Ellis is actually good in this role and fun, and the humor does offer plenty of chuckles, but the complete lack of imagination and the
reduction of such a potentially interesting character to a silly boy-toy playboy is too painful to watch. The parade of model faces and bodies only makes it worse.
As far as plot is concerned, the show commits two more crimes: The mythology involving Lucifer's 'relationship' with his 'Father', his angelic brother, and even a 'mother' (groan)
proceeds at a snail's pace, like a throwback to 90s shows, and the format of the show is yet another plain, episodic detective series, as if Bruckheimer still hasn't had enough
with his endless glossy CSI franchise. So not only is Lucifer reduced to being a playboy, he is also made to use his powers to solve murder mysteries. The rest of the celestial
beings in this show like angels would be laughable with their human behaviour if they weren't so sadly unimaginative.
Cloak & Dagger (Marvel)
Based on the first season.
This feels more like a teenage supernatural thriller rather than a superhero series. A freak combination accident and shooting bring together two children that gain
a special connection and hidden powers from their joint-trauma. Years later, the teenagers have grown up into psychologically broken individuals, but another encounter
brings out their freaky abilities, only they seem to be controlled by them rather than the other way around. For half of the season there is much angst and self-entitlement,
and things pick up for the second half as the plot finally kicks in and they start to figure out their powers and make use of them to fight various conspiracies and evil
corporations that have ruined their lives. The powers include psychic super-knives made of light, teleportation, and the ability to explore people's dreams and nightmares
in surreal visions.
At first the story looks intriguing and has a complex emotional core. But very soon one realizes the writers simply don't know what they are doing and are lacking
basic skills. Namely, the ability to build three-dimensional characters, think through consistent motivations and behaviour, and to connect the dots. Instead, they seem to have
simply thought up various plot points and thrown some random character traits at random stock characters without working out many of the details. So half the time in
this show, things happen that don't make sense, people behave in ways that don't ring true, and characters have suddenly moved to the next plot point or conclusion
while you are left trying to figure out how they jumped from A to B. The writing does improve somewhat for the second half, but not enough. The worst offender, however,
is the soundtrack. Obtrusive, and in poor taste, it features a collection of the most derivative, obnoxious, auto-tune, emo, vapid, modern collection of pop songs, one
after another after another, as if some millennial producers decided to leave their iPod pop-music collection on while filming the show. This show is the equivalent of
those cellphone kids that have their earphones and music on while doing everything, without actually investing effort in what they are doing. This one has a good base
and potentially entertaining story, but needed more work.
Gates, The
Based on most of the single season.
This starts as a mix of rich society soap opera and 90210-esque teenage high-school drama taking place in a gated suburbia community, except with vampires, werewolves and witches.
Instead of housewives having affairs, they go off hunting humans with wild men of their past behind their husband's back, a vampire's bite bonds a couple and stands for fidelity,
and teenagers, on top of having their usual angsty problems, now have to worry about sucking the life force out of their loved ones. There's a catty scheming back-stabbing witch,
and both love triangles and quadrangles. In addition to this show being almost as bad as it sounds, I am not sure what kind of target audience would enjoy both soap and teenage
drama together, and what they were thinking when they made this. As if that weren't enough, the writing is often poor and lazily makes up its own contrived drama, having characters
do stupid things. For example, a vampire reveals himself to a human in order to save his life by killing a threat, but no one ever thinks of having the vampire simply kill with
his bare hands instead of fangs. Just when I was about to give up, the writers start writing more interesting thrilling developments and dramatic crises towards the end of the
season, gathering momentum, and then it suddenly ends. My guess is the execs told them to switch to another approach, then cancelled the show anyways.
Frequency
Based on the first three episodes.
I knew this used the 2000 movie as its base but I didn't know it was a straight remake. This is the same plot as the movie, padded out to fill a season, replacing the male
protagonist with a female and the loving father with an irresponsible dad just because it is 2016, and making useless changes like making her father a policeman instead of
a fireman, which makes it less interesting. It's about a freak connection between ham radios allowing a child to talk to a dead parent across a twenty years gap, with all the
expected drama that this entails. Except the focus is on preventing catastrophes that happened in the past, and then preventing other catastrophes that occur because of the
changes they make by communicating across time, butterfly effect style. Most of the thrills involve a serial killer that goes after some family members. The original movie was
deeply flawed to its approach to time-travel rules, and this show is no different in that regard, copying its flaws. Movies can make up any time-travel rules they want, but when
they apply them inconsistently, that's when it becomes 'implausible' and impossible to enjoy. For example, the fact that some people's memories are memories and others are
completely altered. Or the way that changes propagate to the future either in 'real-time' or retroactively depending on the writer's whims. In short, this is a useless, padded-out,
inferior remake of a very flawed movie.
Last Ship, The
Based on the first season.
Within a few seconds of the show, and without looking at the credits, I knew this was a Michael Bay production. The soldiers were square-jawed patriot poster-boys spouting
cliches to a rousing canned soundtrack, and soon things were blowing up and people were fighting for no reason other than to feed the show with regular, slick action scenes.
If anyone watches this to see a thoughtful show or a dramatic thriller about a virus apocalypse, this is obviously not it. To be fair, some episodes are better than others
dealing with a wide variety of crises, and one of the strengths of this show is the constant momentum and continuous story-lines, each episode picking up seconds after the
previous. The plot is about a US navy ship at sea with over 200 soldiers and a couple of CDC scientists that become the last hope for humanity as a virus wipes out billions
on dry land. But the stupidity keeps infecting the writing like a virus: To start with, much tension and war is made over the only two chances for a vaccine: A 'primordial
virus' sample from the Arctic and one female CDC biochemist, except that they said themselves that the virus had already mutated, and there doesn't seem to be anything unique
about her knowledge. Then starts the jingoism, and black and white view of the world: Evil Russians appear straight out of a cartoon, chucking nuclear bombs over people's heads
on a whim without any seeming interest in their own survival, nevermind the human race. Then a Cuban dictator, and various other people that want the virus for a power trip,
and these handful of square-jawed Americans never falter, fighting evil, working on a cure, and saving everyone they meet from themselves. It's downright ridiculous, if only
for the lack of interesting, even 2-dimensional human characters. Tribute is paid to human emotions with some corny lines, they keep doing stupid things like walk in and out
of infected areas without a safe quarantine procedure, or test a vaccine on six healthy humans instead of one sick one. In between all these stupidities there is some
entertaining action and thrills as more and more things go wrong, then more insane people get in their way that don't seem to have any interest in basic self-preservation,
just so that our heroes can have someone new to fight, kick-ass and kill. Enough said.
Resurrection
Based on the first one and a half seasons.
Although this is based on a book written in 2013 and is not officially a remake of the French 'The Returned', the book is obviously plagiarized and stolen from that show. Not
just because it deals with dead people coming back to a small town and causing many upheavals and dramas, but because it uses so many of the same ideas from the original, thus
making it an obvious copy. As such, it doesn't deserve to judged on its own terms, especially since most the good aspects of this show are the ideas stolen from the original,
and its original material is quite pedestrian. The original started very strongly with superb atmosphere and intense quiet moments as some long-lost dead family members come
back (as normal people, not zombies), re-awakening forgotten, dead or repressed memories and feelings, and causing havoc with their relatives that have since moved on. And
then it unravelled with poor writing. This one doesn't have that magic, and it seems to create a more solid story at first, working out some the details that the original left
out, but then it unravels as well in the second season as it deteriorates into convoluted Lost-territory where more developments just keep happening without much rhyme or reason.
So not only is it stolen, it doesn't have much to offer even on its own terms.
Saving Hope
Based on most of the first season.
Another medical drama with the same template of many other similar shows, combining episodic little medical dramas with ongoing relationship drama between the doctors. The only difference
with this one, is that the drama with the patients continues even when they go into a coma or die, since there is a resident doctor in a coma whose spirit wanders the hospital
talking to the passed-out or dying patients. There is also a bit of a 'Ghost' element here with the comatose doctor having a fiance nurse in the hospital who does everything she can
to talk to him or wake him up. Otherwise, it's all kinda mawkish, emo and uninspired. The 2-4 patients per episode come in with a wide variety of emotional or personal problems as
well as their medical crises, and the doctors have to deal with both. Most of the doctors are unrealistically cute and pretty, the relationships are dull, and the writing doesn't offer
much in the way of intelligence or inspiration. It sometimes works in small doses in some episodes, but given that there are so many medical shows, this one simply isn't special enough.
Houdini and Doyle
Based on the first five episodes.
Tales of friendship between these two famous people were enough to inspire this silly paranormal-mystery-solving show. This short-lived series imagines Doyle as the believer in the
paranormal and Houdini as the skeptic, for a classic and often-used type of partnership, and they combine their very different skills in their curious and adventurous chases after
bizarre cases. Houdini uses his skills in figuring out tricks and illusions and getting out of sticky situations, and Doyle uses his skills as a doctor and his detail-oriented
sleuthing. The cases always involve various elements of the paranormal, and, in the tradition of Sherlock, usually involves some kind of trickery, but the show leaves some room to
doubt and always involves outlandish adventure and elements of the bizarre. The structure is episodic. Unfortunately, the show feels like half-baked fan-fiction. And it is also
flooded with endless sloppy anachronisms. Mysteries are often solved with sudden leaps of intuition out of left field. To add insult to injury, the show is inundated with political
correctness, preaching on toleration and the treatment of women, and somehow manages to be both anachronistic in its tolerance, and portray intolerance in over-the-top ways at the
same time. This is toned down somewhat after the first two episodes, but not enough. It looks like it should be a fun show, but this is just lazy populist writing.
Joan of Arcadia
Based on many episodes of the first season.
Joan is an average teenage girl in high school who starts getting missions from God who appears to her as various people at random, and the missions, get this, often involve
her doing something difficult in her personal life like dating and listening to a jerk at school, or getting her driving license, because, if she does these things, they cause
a chain reaction that ultimately results in something good. And, she gets to learn life-lessons. This premise isn't always as bad as it sounds, as some episodes manage to
evoke some good and touching drama, but it's bad enough to sink the show in general. For starters, why would God need to appear and instruct these actions, thus interfering
with free will, in order to get the result he wants instead of just engineering it in a million other ways. And then there's the stupid and unimaginative way of communication
via flawed humans instead of a much more effective and direct method. There's also the fact that there is nothing special about her that would deserve this kind of communication.
And finally, there's the life lessons that sometimes are nice, but mostly feel like a talk your mom would give you. The dialogue is pretty good, and can even be sharp and fun
at times, but the premise and plots make it impossible to enjoy the show as a whole. Other elements include the usual high-school teenage drama, parenting woes, a recently
crippled brother, and a cop-father who finds himself fighting incompetence under him as well as corruption over him, all of this adding many more life lessons for everyone to learn.
Early Edition
Based on most of the first season.
The premise of this one is that some dude gets tomorrow's newspaper every day along with a mysterious cat, and, since he is a nice guy, this forces him to spend all
of his life saving people and averting disasters foretold in the news. His friend wants to use it for financial gain, but soon learns that this tends to backfire,
and yet, somehow, saving people in danger and interfering in crimes never backfires. In fact, disasters and huge mistakes are fixed often with a simple well chosen
words, because, this show wants us to believe that things like kindness, faith, warmth and selflessness can save any situation in an instant, and the rest is taken
care of by some kind of benign karma. Because, in addition to quick and easy solutions, this show also wants us to believe in endless coincidences, where people
you just met turn up in the headlines the very next day, and news events turn out to be connected if this helps you perform a good deed. This is the kind of
show where street hoodlums turn out to be kids stealing for their suffering mothers. In short, this is the Hallmark version of superheroism. It's about
heroism without superpowers, unless you consider a magical newspaper, kindness and good luck to be superpowers. Sure, the hero is reluctant and suffers doubts and
the loss of his personal life, but that's OK, because, according to this show, self-preservation is evil. What a load of fuzzy, sentimental crap. I can't say that
it's all bad, and some episodes are somewhat entertaining. But, in general, the warmth of the show tends to get too cloying too often, and, otherwise, there is no
surprise, character or personality to keep one watching.
Fringe
Based on most of the first season.
I should really just skip J.J. Abrams TV creations. He is obviously a commercial hack with no respect for his audience, presenting only manipulative, brainless, uninspired writing
engineered only for commercial success. This cut-and-paste job is a blend of Alias, X-Files and Eureka. There is a clique working within the government assigned to bizarre
cases involving what seems to be supernatural or weird science, and Abrams gleefully chooses populist cases involving gross-outs or horrific strangeness, except they
are always reduced to pseudo-science and have no sense of mystery and intelligent complexity as with the X-Files. Also, this time it is the brainy man who is the skeptic,
and the female agent that just goes with it. The story arcs involving an all-too-powerful corporation, its many agents and motivations, its relationship with the government,
other traitorous individuals and their criminal gangs, and the surprise, inbreeding relationships between all of these people, are all reminiscent of Alias, and aren't much
better in terms of plausibility or intelligence. Once again, the writers constantly demonstrate that they are making things up as they go along, contradicting previous details.
As if that weren't enough, the story arc moves at a snail's pace with a symmetrically engineered distance between key episodes. And then there are the Eureka elements: An insane
but quirky and childish scientist that helps the investigations, and the endless stream of impossible gadgets and technologies that keep appearing out of nowhere for the episodic
thrill of the week. Although Dr. Walter Bishop is acted well and provides the only lively personality of the show, the writers obviously have no clue what to do with him, assigning
new childish quirks-of-the-week for comic relief that are here one day and gone the next, turning him lucid or incoherent as convenient plot devices only, and never allowing
him to develop into a real person. Of course, the canard of geniuses knowing everything about everything is abused once again. The rest of the cast are capably acted but
are quite forgettable as personalities. In short, it may seem entertaining and thrilling for a while, but this is just another unrewarding, skin-deep, commercial hack job.
Event, The
Based on the single season.
Comparing a show to Lost dooms it from the start. Fortunately, this show doesn't have much in common with that one despite the many comparisons by reviewers. Unfortunately,
this show resembles a weaker 24 season, except it ends with an unresolved cliffhanger, and it has 'aliens'. Just replace terrorists with 'aliens' that are identical to humans
and who have some advanced scientific know-how and weaponry (which only makes 4 or 5 appearances in the whole season). They think, look and act like humans, they have no
unique capabilities, just more advanced scientific knowledge, and the only thing that separates them is that they have their own agendas which conflict with the human race.
So, yes, basically just advanced terrorists. The President of the US, his entourage and army, and some untrained programmer kid who somehow magically turns into a Jack Bauer,
have to fight the endless crises, several attempts to kill various people, plots against the human race, secret agendas, double and triple agents, conspiracies
within conspiracies within conspiracies, and so on. People sway from one extreme to another without rhyme or reason, they switch sides, change agendas, repeat mistakes,
make stupid decisions, perform despicable acts for minor selfish motives, all to propel the action and messy plot forward with constant momentum, and it all collapses
under its own weight within a few episodes. Add to this the casting: A handful of people in the President's entourage are passably OK, the rest are either awfully miscast
or terribly bland. In summary, this is addictive and entertaining like a bad season of 24, but you will regret watching it given the terribly messy writing, the lack
of character and surprise, and the cliffhanger finale.
Paradox
Based on the single season.
Less flashy British CSI with a sci-fi twist: Clues are given to the detectives and a scientist as images from the future. The detectives have to race against a ticking
clock to solve a murder mystery that will take place in the future by trying to piece together a puzzle out of the cryptic images, sometimes involving themselves in the
events that unfold. Unfortunately, this is too contrived to enjoy. You could take any detective episode from any show, collect 8 random images from the episode that
don't give anything away too easily, then show these images at the beginning of the episode and you'd have this show. And since the writers didn't even get close to
the part where the source of the images is revealed in this first season, nor do they give us a theory as to why the images are so cryptic, I found it unenjoyable.
Blood Ties
Based on most of the first season.
Although this show is based on books that predate Buffy, the adaptation is post-Buffy and therefore has to deal with not being original. In addition, the
acting and writing have severe flaws of their own. Vicki Nelson is an ex-cop gone PI who finds herself specializing in supernatural cases, a wide variety
of killer monsters, and criminals with superpowers, especially after teaming up with a mostly moral and helpful handsome vampire. Her ex is a cop (who,
for some reason, never seems to have a backup when he goes investigating), and her secretary is a goth-librarian who finds supernatural solutions in books.
Any of this sound familiar? The structure is mostly monster-of-the-week with some longer character development and two-parters. All the leads are only
partially OK: They have presence, personality and looks, but never materialize as three-dimensional people due to superficial acting. So they all come off as
dull and unmemorable even though the writing occasionally gives them something to do. The writing, too, seems like it has potential at times, but is mostly
bland, features awkward attempts at humor (which may be the actors/directors fault) and has its brief moments of good drama, only to constantly disappoint
by not developing them. It's like there is one person in the team with some talent, and everyone else doesn't have any. A show that never comes to life,
and ends up feeling like a bland copycat.
Fear Itself
Based on the single season.
Masters of Horror season three, transported to another network that imposed reduced gore and nastiness. It's a horror anthology directed by several names in the horror
movie industry, including John Landis, Stuart Gordon and Ronny Yu. All anthologies offer episodes that vary greatly in quality, except the 13 episodes here are mostly
mediocre, weak or poor entries, with a small handful of watchable ones, and no great ones. Many of these episodes seem to be aware that they are making a quickie horror
flick and don't bother much with plausibility, development or character, or even feature some brainless plot twists that make no sense. The enjoyable ones are 'Family Man',
the funny 'Something with Bite', and maybe Gordon's 'Eater'. Very lacking in creativity and definitely not one of the better anthology series.
Iron Fist (Marvel)
Based on most of the first season.
Another in the series of Netflix-Marvel superhero adaptations. This one has the worst reputation of them all and I can see why. It's about a son of a billionaire that
grows up in a mystical monastery around Tibet that trains him to be the ultimate kung-fu warrior with a supernatural ability to center all of his chi into his fist and
make himself unbeatable, giving him the ability seemingly to smash anything and anyone. This show has him fight his own relatives and business partners after he comes home
from being presumed dead, as well as the many minions of The Hand, an evil, criminal and ruthless organization that has its fingers in everything. There is lots of kung-fu
fighting, plots and twists, as well as fantasy elements such as special mystical fighting powers and undead humans.
The biggest fatal flaw is the casting, and it is so obvious as to make one wonder what they were thinking. The superhero is supposed to be an ultimately trained and ripped
kung-fu fighter, yet this guy doesn't have anything remotely resembling the physique, the balance, the elegance, the power, etc. Fight scenes use every trick in the book but make
it very obvious, especially when he is up against actual trained fighters that are obviously slowing down for him. He looks like an amateur practicing dance moves and poses,
rather than fighting. And the rest of the time there are obvious cut-aways as the camera switches to a stunt double. This is enough to sink the show. But the writing is also
poor, with characters switching motivations and behaviour in every other episode just to pile on the plot twists, giving the strong impression that the writers have no plan
and are writing under a 'plot-twist quota'. In short, this is an obviously poor TV series and the weakest of the Netflix-Marvel bunch.
Tomorrow People, The
Based on most of the single season.
Yet another copy-cat uninspired superhero series that is a bland retread of several other ideas. It also features very poor writing. As with X-Men and its clones,
people find they are evolving into super-humans, some turn towards crime, others form a group to fight the evil government organization that was put together to control
or destroy them. Conspiracies and secrets keep emerging, and the people in charge turn out to be one of those inbred Alias-type of circles where everyone is related or linked
via one conspiracy or another. The chief nemesis at first is a one-dimensional cold-blooded killer, then the writers pile on the secrets and personal agendas, not realizing
that these contradict what he did at the beginning of the season. Similar dramas are constantly inserted into the show for some very artificial and contrived character development.
The writers also keep making up rules then break them all the time, making this show unwatchable. For example, there's the rule that both sides agreed on for some reason to not
show their powers to civilians, and the agency takes this extremely seriously, instantly killing anyone who has been exposed, but then everyone constantly teleports almost anywhere
without a care over who may accidentally see them. Their powers at first are 'the three Ts: telekinesis, telepathy and teleportation', but then the writers keep adding more
and more powers to a select few whenever it is convenient, and conveniently forget to use these powers numerous times later on. And it's no wonder these powers disappear, since
obviously if someone has all these powers in addition to being able to stop time, predict the future and turn back time, then he becomes completely unbeatable and omnipotent.
Which brings us to the most ridiculously obvious and repetitive mistake: The fact that these people with super-powers are always physically fighting instead of doing 100 other
basic things with their powers, like teleport themselves or their enemies away, or block their punches with telekinesis. And why do they walk or run every time they teleport?
Later episodes start getting more creative with it, but these only serve to emphasize the question of why they didn't use these things before. There's another random rule about them
not being able to kill humans which makes no sense, especially given that they harm humans all the time, or even kill them by mistake, and all these powers can be easily removed
using chemicals, even though they are supposedly genetic. And so on. Get a clue, guys. This show was unwatchable, and also uninspired to begin with.
Tru Calling
Based on most of the first season.
Brainless, high-concept, episodic TV show that always feels like its made for simple teenagers, as demonstrated by the show's silly name. Tru Davies, who works at the morgue,
is called on to help people by having some of her days rewound so that she can fix whatever went wrong and caused one or more deaths. The episodes quickly feel repetitive, with
a dead person asking for help before she starts her day over again, racing against a clock to fix things both big and small, with some unexpected dead-ends, twists and turns.
Her sister and brother have got to be the biggest losers on the planet, forcing her to save them from various crises and disasters that always take place coincidentally on the
same days that she is trying to save a life. Her experienced and wise co-worker at the morgue is slowly turned into her mentor, and a muddled story arc starts to appear at the
end of the season regarding a man who seems to have the same ability. Eliza Dushku is surprisingly bland and not at her intense best, the concept is never developed, the writers
never take risks or show an interesting imagination, and the episodic structure gets old fast. Watch Day Break instead.
Dark Angel
Based on the first season.
With James Cameron at the helm you would expect something special. And indeed it starts off well, offering some cutting-edge ideas and portrayals of the future.
Politics, economics and morals have long gone rotten and cyber-revolutionaries are fighting an evil government that genetically alters humans into fighting
machines. But that's where the good stuff ends. The ear-grating dialog and characters are all 'hip' and cool in a very annoying way, the plots develop into
ridiculous childish nonsense, none of the characters are memorable, but the worst is the lead female actress who is ultimately boring, can't fight, and portrays
an extremely uncharismatic and bitchy character yet somehow everyone fawns over her because she supposedly looks good.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Based on some scattered episodes from the first season.
This is all wrong. It's impossible to watch this show without expecting it to be a continuation of the movies and it fails miserably in this aspect, as well as
failing on its own right. This is an action-oriented show following the crazy life of Sarah and her son John as they continuously fight against cybernetic
organisms from the future, evade the law, while being helped by the future resistance, all this while trying to make friends and go to school. Failures are almost
too many to mention: The character of Sarah is nothing like the movies and looks like she spends lots of time in a beauty parlor rather than with survivalists
and soldiers. John is a whiny weak-willed teenager that is always complaining and doing stupid things. The robots are given random superman skills that don't
make sense. Their main protector is in the form of a petite young girl who takes off her clothes every chance the writers get, manages to beat every inferior robot
twice her size sent by the machines even though the machines should obviously be technologically ahead of the game, and she is given human characteristics like
smiling, understanding emotions and eating for no good reason other than to make the fanboys relate to her before she kicks some more ass. The writing is bad
and lazy and often doesn't make any sense, with sloppy time-travel plot devices and bad logic. In short, the action scenes may be entertaining, but this is
too terribly insulting to watch.
Phantom, The
Sci-Fi Channel re-imagines yet another oldie, this one a superhero fantasy as a possible series pilot. It's a pity they didn't actually think things through
instead of just re-imagining the look and feel into a hi-tech 24-esque thriller. The costume is updated into some kind of hi-tech suit that amplifies strength
and stops bullets without even a nod to Newton's basic laws of science. The supernatural scenes are silly, especially when juxtaposed with all the hi-tech.
The bad guys live in a nonsensical and cliched evil boardroom that think up pointless conspiracies for their own sake. The plot that uses hypnotic TV signals
is cliched and never believable. The lead is yet another instantly forgettable and bland hunk. The dialogue is awful. There is some action entertainment here
and there if you switch your brain off, but this not only fails when compared to all the great superhero movies of the last decade, it also fails on its own right.
Masters of Science Fiction
Based on the single season.
Short-lived attempt at another Outer Limits type of show with short stories containing a moral message written by prominent sci-fi authors. The liberal moral bent
is painfully preachy and insulting, perhaps suitable for 5 year olds, and it isn't delivered in the form of a speech or twist at the end of the episode, choosing
mostly obvious and predictable stories instead. Hopefully, these flaws were not in the original stories. Out of the six episodes, three are very poor and weak,
and three are only mediocre or moderately entertaining, covering things like how the nuclear bomb or violence is bad, and acceptance of all people as equals, all
in futuristic settings of course. The high production values and good casting help, but most stories end up disappointing.
Langoliers, The
3-part Stephen King adaptation of a novella. The story contains a fascinating sci-fi/horror hybrid concept involving time and a group of airline passengers
caught in a very strange mystery where everyone seems to have disappeared during their flight. But some of the characters are reduced to cliches, and this
movie makes it much worse by approaching them in a very infantile way with very broad strokes. As the group slowly unravel what has happened to them, Craig Toomey
unravels into cartoonish psychotic madness, and the cliched little blind girl somehow knows what is about to happen. Finally, the special effects for the monsters
turn out to be pathetically poor, slamming the lid down on yet another poor King adaptation.
Tommyknockers
By-the-numbers mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's last good book. A woman finds an alien object on her grounds and starts digging it out, releasing powerful
forces into the town that converts everyone into evil geniuses, slowly transforming them physically as well. Jim Gardner, a local alcoholic poet, is immune to
these effects, but can he fight a whole town and his own inner demons? Mostly robotic direction and weak acting, capturing none of the heart of the novel.
Shining, The
King never seemed to like Kubrick's version of his classic novel so he authorized this mini-series to be more faithful to the book but like almost all
King adaptations, the result is disastrously weak. Lame special effects instead of real scares, acting that ranges from dull to annoying, and too many weak
scenes that could only work in a book but not in a movie. Oh, the plot? A man takes a job as the winter caretaker in a hotel during which time it closes down to guests,
and he brings along his family and psychic son only to find evil in the historical building that takes over his personality with violent results...
Smallville (DC)
Based on most of the first season and many scattered episodes.
Superman is an angsty teenager in school and Lana is a pretty but vapid girly girl. Superpowers and evil creatures create havoc with his studies and life in general
as he is forced to save the town day after day while hiding his powers. Lex Luthor, an heir to a mogul's fortune and power, develops a complex relationship of
secrets, power and respect with Clark. A potentially good show developed poorly as an annoyingly angsty, teenage touchy-feely series with horribly dull and whiny
leads. The structure consists of mostly monster-of-the-week plots with uninteresting teenage high-school drama arcs, with matters almost never changing between
episodes. Only the actor in the role of Lex Luthor provides charm, intelligence, and a fascinating character that is miles above anything else in the show and
the bottom line is that such a silly teenage show doesn't deserve him.
Primeval
Based on most of the first season.
A British Stargate involving primeval beasts and dinosaurs by the makers of the Walking With... documentary series. Anomalies are opening up that are portals
in time, allowing creatures from the past to step into the present. Scientists, geeks and soldiers combine forces to study or fight this phenomenon. A good
setup, and the effects are pretty good, but the implementation is poor. This is a show where writers can write phrases like 'the anomalies are concrete proof
that the past exists' without even realizing what they are saying. The characters are either cliches of 'driven scientist', 'evil bureaucrat' and 'knowledgeable nerd',
or outrageously dumb, or the actors simply don't fill in their shoes convincingly. The monsters are unstoppable when it comes to extras, but laughably ineffectual
when it comes to our heroes, rendering the fight scenes impotent. The writing is weak, mind-bogglingly artificial, or secondary to coming up with new monsters of
the week, and the science is either based on too much guesswork and fantasy, or very lacking, as evidenced by the fact that they never even run basic tests or take
readings when the anomalies appear, and they never bother to explain how time-portals always connect only with a moving planet Earth. Entertaining at times due to
its subject matter, but the flaws are bad enough to leave me very bored.
Riverworld
2-part mini-series by the Sci-Fi channel (I refuse to accept their silly name change) that is set-up to become a potential TV series but I doubt this will happen.
It is based on the classic sci-fi books by Philip Jose Farmer that are full of thoughts and ideas, but these writers stupidly decided to re-imagine it as a Lost clone.
This alone is enough to sink this show. Some people die in a terrorist bomb and find themselves in the strange afterlife of Riverworld where innumerable dead people
from various places and times on Earth hang out, including historical figures like Mark Twain and Tomoe Gozen the female samurai. Some are given missions by mysterious
blue creatures, and when they die, they come back to life again in seemingly random times in the future like some kind of computer game. The writers stray very far
from the books, cram some elements from many of the books into 3 hours, and reduce a thinking man's sci-fi story to an action-adventure with simplistic good vs. bad
men, and an elusive mystery Macguffin of the new world a la Lost. Good acting (except for the badly fake Japanese accent by Goossen), mildly entertaining, but quite
pointless, and very insulting to fans.
Hex
Based on the first season.
A girl in a boarding school finds she has supernatural powers and is hounded by a demon, her best friend turns into a ghost, all making her life terribly complicated.
Comparisons to Buffy are not altogether wrong as they do share quite a few elements: The capable blonde heroine who finds herself with inherited supernatural
powers and a fate not of her choosing, complex relationships and even romance with evil, a school setting, horny friends, strong character development,
and a balance of comedy and drama. Differences include the lack of action, a lack of creativity and risk-taking, and not enough strong characters. The real flaw however
is the inconsistent and lazy writing, the most egregious involving the mechanics of a ghost who inconsistently interacts with the real world, and the deterministic and
therefore weakening approach to characters and plot development. Fatalism is always boring.
Christmas Carol, A (2019)
A three-part mini-series based on this classic novel by Dickens, produced by FX and BBC, sounds good. This is a much darker re-interpretation and very loose adaptation,
but this is not the problem with this mini-series and actually could have worked out nicely. The real problem is that it has been fatally infected by Wokeism. This is
the classic story about a miserly character Scrooge, and his visitations by spirits to show him the error of his ways and to instill in him a love for life in order
to find redemption. The recasting of the characters to match a politically-correct quota regardless of historical reality is already par for the course nowadays.
But to completely change the character arc so that it involves sexual victimization, a #metoo event, slavery of black people, and evil greedy white business-men,
simply reeks. Worst of all, the character arc no longer makes sense and, thanks to these drastic darker changes, his redemption and rapid changes never ring true
and, instead, just feels like a modern social justice warrior, once again, is hitting my head with a hammer.
Shut Eye
Based on most of the first season.
I have a low tolerance for crime shows unless they feature something beyond just the violence and a bunch of people behaving like animals. Some class, some cleverness,
a protagonist with some humanity, some crime-fighting, anything. This has none of the above. It combines con-games revolving around a fortune-telling scamming business,
a unique 'gypsy mafia', and some fantasy psychic visions. At the center is a non-gypsy scammer working for some very cruel and hard gypsies. Surrounding him are a dozen
tricksters, liars, criminals and general low-lifes, including his wife and son. Everyone with no exception is despicable in their own way with no redeeming features.
The psychic fantasy angle isn't interesting, with vague visions, and it looks like they spent ten times more effort on the special-effects than on the writing.
Even the cons are not clever, just slimy. Everyone behaves based on base drives and impulses, often doing incredibly stupid things, and the violence and lies are
everywhere. This does not make these people interesting, quite the opposite. With every episode it got worse.
Magicians, The
Based on almost the whole first season.
Harry Potter, the horny teenager version as imagined (ripped-off) by SyFy. Let's see, there's a secret school for witchcraft hidden behind spells, school categories
for budding young wizards, spell sports and tests, rogue wizards, an evil menace constantly in the background, a chosen special boy with extra powers, a geeky girl
that is extremely dedicated to studying spells, etc. There are also elements of Narnia with hidden entrances to magical alternate worlds, as imagined by a writer's
family and kids with dark secrets. So the copying is quite blatant. Add to this pan-sexual obnoxious angry horny teenagers, and scarier bloody violence, and you've got
this show. Except that this isn't the serious problem. What really sinks this one is the very strange characterizations. I've seen this before with shows like Ozark
and The OA: The dialogue is unusual and intelligent, but the characters are narcissistic, cruel and unreal, not quite human, always with selfish agendas, their emotions
explored clinically and awkwardly, and the relationships (especially sexual ones) are cold and clunky as hell. Besides everyone in this show being thoroughly unlikeable,
they also aren't quite all-there, and watching their relationships is especially painful. So, despite the complex story and dialogue, the characters are just way off
and very poorly written and acted, and this makes it increasingly harder to enjoy the show as it goes. It's a combination of the detached writing, and the casting and
acting, and I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if someone told me that the people in charge of this show were suffering from Aspergers, because that's what it
feels like very often.
V (2009)
Based on the first one and a half seasons.
Like Battlestar Galactica, this remake tries to upgrade an old 80s show with mixed results, and is ultimately a failure due to constant poor writing. Unlike BSG,
this show is a remake of a great show, and the remake is a mixture of mediocre, bland and bad, as opposed to BSG's mix of great and terrible. We all know the V aliens
that visit Earth have a devious, brutal agenda and are reptiles hiding behind masks this time, so the pilot gets this over with quickly (too quickly) and sets up
the series with a handful of people that get together to fight the aliens whom everyone thinks are saviors. The effects are upgraded, and the writers now have the
job of re-imagining an alien invasion of human psychology across the whole planet - a very promising sci-fi setup. But the stupidities, bad writing contrivances,
and blandness start from day one and accumulate with every episode. Here are some off the top of my head:
Firstly, all of the actors seem to have been cast for looks over personality. This is a world populated by models, not exactly helping plausibility. I presume the queen
alien rules over them due to biological dictatorship, otherwise it would be hard to imagine how such a bland creature lacking personality could become a supreme leader. The idea
that she convinced the whole human world based on her expressionless and obviously masked face is very implausible, and doing this without extreme censorship (as with the
original series), and blaming it on the humans 'needing a savior' is pathetic writing. Then there is the alien agenda: They don't seem to have any, except to want to play
petty power-games just to pad out the series. In the original, their priority was on getting supplies. And why would they carefully manipulate the whole planet for decades
only to bring in an invading armada? What possible grand purpose could they have to spend weeks and weeks of work on a single teenage boy's state of mind? And then there
is the resistance: In the original, it was a growing network, here it's four people. Pathetic. Other miscellanea: The traitorous reporter character makes no sense as he
suddenly swerves from scheming skeptic to devoted follower. Ultimate stupidity: The resistance brands all their members by cutting into their scalps. In one episode, a
traitor blames his actions on 'we cannot win', in the next he says that he believes in the visitors. Then there is the same contrivance of BSG where we don't know who will
turn out to be an alien. Then there is whole confusing thing about the aliens being emotionless all their evolutionary lives, but then they develop emotions just by
talking to humans or wearing synthetic skin. Ridiculous. And if the majority of visitors are emotionless, then why do they need 'bliss', a purely emotional state of mind
imposed on them by their queen like a drug? All of this shows the writers are making it up as they go along and have no consistency control or an inkling of discipline to
think things through. Season two, as expected, only gets worse, with the show reduced to a petty soapish struggle between a handful of people and catty aliens, and lots of
nonsensical, poor writing dealing with emotions.
Doom Patrol (DC)
Based on half of the first season.
The first episode felt promising, but then things got increasingly worse every 20 minutes. This is based on a more obscure DC comic which supposedly was an inspiration
for the X-Men. It involves misfit, broken, miserable superheros rejected by society or rejected by themselves, with quirky, eccentric super-powers that can be often more
of a curse than a blessing. They are guided and helped by a kind scientist in a wheelchair, as they stay in his mansion. Except, in this show, events and powers are also
plain weird, caused by a super-villain that can seemingly alter reality itself, and even talk to the us the audience, and narrate the screenplay. Unfortunately, it's the
kind of 'creative' weirdness that is more juvenile (think Dan Kwan) and random than clever, where you feel that the writer is constantly patting himself on the back for
coming up with the next silly visual and random idea. Except that a simple random AI computer algorithm could have come up with a similar thing, and made it even more
'creative'. It's hard to enjoy a show where the writer is constantly trying to make himself visible. This is not the interesting kind of creativity, it is a stream of
whimsy with no discipline or skill, that gets boring fast. In addition, one of the main characters is "Crazy Jane" who has dozens of personalities, and almost all of
them are annoying. Her super-powers are even more random, a common fatal problem with DC superheroes. Random means you cannot immerse yourself in the series since there
is no structure, and anything can happen based on a writer's whim. Add to all these fatal problems yet another tired repetitive Woke agenda and you can understand why
this got very old and annoying fast.
Caprica
Based on most of the single season.
An extremely poor Battlestar Galactica prequel spin-off featuring the worst of that show's severe writing flaws made even worse. It takes place about 60 years before
the Cylon attack and explores the rise of the Cylons, the company and family that created them, the circles of conspiracies, religious nuts and criminals that revolve
around this new technology, and an attempt to portray the cultures and religions of the original worlds from BSG. The biggest problem with this show is very simple:
The writers are terrible. Sure, the show is based on story arcs, complex story-lines, high drama, tragedies and a unique sci-fi setup. But the brainless writers
decided to make all the worlds depend on some bratty and obviously dumb teenagers, giving them not only super-intelligent talents that are never believable, but also
magical abilities to control virtual worlds, create souls, and whatnot, all straight out of a bad, undisciplined fantasy outing. The character motivations are
so terrible, they seem random and never make any sense. The approach to religion is laughably bad and superficial. And the culture of Caprica consists of duplicating
the USA and just changing some names for things. The Tauron culture does better, but half the time it feels like they just think they are in a mafia movie.
After watching this, I feel like re-reading some Frank Herbert or Asimov to remind myself of what sci-fi is all about.
Jeremiah
Based on most of the first season.
A poor post-apocalyptic series by the maker of Babylon 5. The setup is that a virus has wiped out every human past the age of puberty (can viruses be that effective?),
leaving behind children to fight for survival. The show takes place 15 years after the event, with various pockets and groups of survivors, each with their own problems,
attitudes, goals and methods of survival. Two men travel the countryside in search of a mysterious Valhalla Sector that may have something to do with the government and
the virus, using a group of people in a nuclear shelter with many resources as their base of operations, going on missions of information-gathering, alliances and aid
while inevitably coming across many adventures amidst the general anarchy. This is a good setup for a show, and the wide variety of survivors is plausible, ranging from
morally bankrupt narcissists in charge of military weapons, to Mad Max style bartering towns, to people training from books to bring back civilization. But that's
where the good stuff ends. The leads are OK but very forgettable, and many of the leaders are poorly cast, with the worst example being Theo: a skimpily dressed
bitch who would most probably be raped and left for dead in a world like this, yet this show thinks hundreds would see her as their leader. There is a very implausible
lack of starvation, malnutrition, diseases, and hygiene problems, with everyone looking too clean and healthy. The lead has an annoying habit of preaching to everyone
in the country, sure of his moral superiority. The plot moves along slowly trying to hook an audience with hints of a convoluted mystery, while most of the episodes
are filler drama. And even the better episodes are sometimes let down by poor attention to detail and quality in the writing. One example is a military outfit which
for some reason saw fit to wire up their own base with explosive so that anyone could blow them up with a press of a button thus conveniently ending an episode neatly.
Jericho this isn't.
Crusade
Based on most of the single season.
A short-lived Babylon 5 spin-off by the same creator taking place in the same universe. Numerous rumors were spread about its cancellation, but since the show isn't
much good, these are irrelevant. The setup is a weak contrivance: An alien species has infected Earth's atmosphere with a virus that will take effect in 5 years
and a captain in his special space-ship has to roam the universe in search of a cure. And then there is the strangely unfocused wandering of the ship spending too
much time with adventures that seem insignificant when compared with the pending deaths of billions. The show promises story arcs but, like Babylon 5, seems content
mostly with various episodic adventures that come up while exploring unknown areas of space, most of which we have seen in many other shows. The approach to cultures,
aliens, politics and humor is simplistic, just like Babylon 5. The leads are all passable but most never come to life and are therefore forgettable. The general tone
of the show is unique, attempting a fusion of juvenile fantasy and sci-fi by having a telepath, a thief, and a wizard... I mean technomage and using names like
Excalibur and Galen. But this comes off more like an engineered attempt to draw in a larger audience rather than a well-thought out world. And finally, many of the
special effects look cheap and unreal, like an old computer game. In short, there are many other much better sci-fi shows out there about the exploration of space
in a space ship.
Revelations
Religious-apocalyptic horror mini-series nonsense about the end of days and a nun and physicist that try to stop it. A Satanist with special powers is on the other side,
stirring up a prison riot, trying to kill a comatose girl struck by lightning for wearing a slutty outfit who is suddenly channeling messages from God and the physicist's
dead daughter. In the meantime, there are politics between various factions of the church, Satanic feline twin fashion models that don't do anything useful, a Satanic conversion
of a troubled youth related to the physicist, virgin births, both holy and evil, and more. Pullman is bland as the physicist, Rhys-Davies is wasted, and McElhone never
registers any religious conviction as a nun, and her character is supposed to be a skeptic investigator yet she believes everything without proof. Somehow, this series
manages to turn off all its viewers: Christianity is preached, but scripture is misquoted and twisted, and most of the movie features gleeful violence, horror and sadism
from the Satanists, and yet the Satanists are only typical Hollywood bad guys with no raison d'etre without Christianity. The series as a whole fails to excite or horrify,
going for implausible Hollywoodized dramatizations and sets, designed to pull in Da Vinci fans but it doesn't do anything interesting, reminding me of The Seventh Sign.
If you want a humorous treatment of this topic with muscle, try Day of the Beast instead.
Blade (Marvel)
Based on most of the first season.
The movies were only above-average superhero entertainment, focusing on a lot of cool techno-dark vampire action and over-the-top shenanigans with blood,
and by the third one I had had enough. This series is just a cash-in that looks like it should be entertaining but never is. For starters, the lead they
got to replace Snipes has zero personality, maintaining a grim look on his face throughout the show and droning monotonously in a menacing whisper-snarl
as if he were trying to channel Batman. He simply never registers as anything and is instantly forgettable. For the story of Krista, a revenge-driven female
ex-soldier forced into a life as a vampire who becomes Blade's ally, they got another non-human performance, but she at least makes up for her flat delivery with
very non-flat eye-candy. None of the rest of the cast stand out, and although this isn't as bad as Mutant X, it is almost in the same category. The continuous
story lines involving complex machinations and agendas amidst the hierarchy of vampire houses helps but although it seems like it should be interesting,
nothing surprising ever happens, as if a factory had churned out a vampire series. In short, action-packed entertainment and it does look cool at times, but
this is generally dull as dishwater.
Demons
Based on the single season.
Yet another attempt by the British to copy Buffy, this one so blatant that it gives the college warrior a foreign (American) 'watcher', also by the name of Rupert.
The warrior, a Van Helsing descendant, is male this time, and his assistants include his girlfriend and a blind psychic, as they battle supernatural monsters in
every episode, with only hints of character-development and story arcs. Despite its unoriginality, it could have been fun, except the protagonist is bland and
looks bored, the watcher has a terribly fake American accent, the blind woman forgets she's blind, the rest of the characters don't register much personality, the
writing is predictable and pedestrian, the monster masks are silly, and the effects are cheap. The British are typically much better than this. Shows what can happen
when you copy instead of finding your own inspiration, I suppose.
Dead Zone, The
Based on the first season.
Cronenberg directed this story to great satisfaction in 1983. Do we really need to see it again padded out to multiple seasons? Johnny Smith becomes even more psychic
after an accident that put him in a coma for 6 years, seeing dangerous and traumatic events in the past and future. Lots of inner torment and drama ensues. His visions are
shown (too) vividly with great special effects and computer graphics, and the acting and direction are strong. This is all moderately interesting but the episodic nature
of the show, the repetitive Kassandra complex drama and the coincidences where he always happens to be in the right place and see amazing things all gets repetitive
and unrealistic after a while. It very quickly becomes like a psychic CSI rather than about the personality, dread and the burden of living with such a gift as in
the book. Uninteresting.
Collector, The
Based on half of the first season.
The setup is that a 14th century fallen priest has been recruited by Satan to collect souls for him, only recently, Satan has given him permission to try
to save them before he collects them. This sounds like a morality show in the vein of Quantum Leap, and it does sometimes plod through the same kind of
simplistic preaching, but mostly, it is just a childish, game-like take on morality, ethics and karma. The contestants (AKA human beings), like in
a computer adventure game, have to find the right combination or push the right ethical buttons within 48 hours to be saved and go on to the next round.
The good news is that each episode ends unpredictably, with some people finding redemption through an unexpected angle, others refusing or continuing to
do the wrong thing due to personal fears or arrogance, and others resulting in different conclusions and twists. The bad news is that the setup is too silly
and the writing is too immature. Satan appears in different forms and ages and has a wicked sense of humor even though the Collector is humorless which is OK,
but when the episodes range from comically silly to melodramatic, it alienates the audience. Although the show is episodic, there is an annoying story arc
involving his attempts to help a bitchy crack-whore, and there's a reporter with an autistic child with cliched mystical abilities. Badly done.
Quantum Leap
Based on the first season.
Typical simplistic, mildly entertaining 80s show that, at first, seems conceptually reminiscent of Sliders. The hero leaps through time, taking over other
people's bodies during a pivotal period in their life and has to correct a momentous mistake they will make in the future/past in order to be able to leap back.
This formula is contrived crap both scientifically and conceptually and having to fix other people's 'mistakes' is wrong no matter how you look at it.
Add to this the sanctimonious and politically correct moral attitude of the show and it becomes unbearable. Also, although it's based on time-travel, there
is no sci-fi, and every episode merely features a different human drama story during the limited range between 1950 and 1980. It's still got amusing characters
and entertaining situations, balancing action, comedy and some interesting historical detail, but this is mild at best and the preachy moral bent ruins it.
Person of Interest
Based on most of the first season.
Although labelled as sci-fi, this is actually just another in a long line of detective, crime-solving series. You see, the sci-fi setup of this show is that a brilliant computer
programmer working for the government, set up a system that searches all e-mails, phone conversations and video footage in the whole country for threats. A system that actually
exists, except that the makers of this show decided to make it a kind of all-knowing program that can find crimes before they are committed, and with 100% accuracy. Besides never
making any mistakes, or never just warning about potential crimes with probabilities, this program is even psychic. In one episode, it warns that a police officer is now in serious
trouble. Can you imagine a program that examines the life of a police officer who is always in danger and under threats, and decides that today she is in real trouble? Neither
can I. Because it would have to be omniscient. A program would even have difficulty telling apart an explicit threat from a joke with any sort of reliable accuracy. In any case,
this programmer, ever since he was ousted from his job, only gets information from this program written in god-code through a back-door, in the form of social security numbers
of people who may commit crimes or be victims in crimes. So this show would have us believe that this hacker, who throughout the show has no problem accessing and breaking into
any system in the world and bringing up exactly the file they need in seconds, cannot get any more information than that from his own system. And why? Because this show wants
him and his action-figure partner to investigate the person until they come up with a reason for the trouble. Which brings me back to what I said: It's just a crime-solving
show. Replace the god-computer with a private investigator who gets leads, jobs or investigates any suspicious activity, and you basically have the same show. Except in this
show we also get a Bond-like action-man (without the charm) who is ex-military and whatnot, who uses his skills to save ordinary people from ordinary crime thanks to the
pointers by his hacker friend. Sounds familiar? Do yourself a favor and check out The Equalizer first - it was done better the first time around, with more personality and
without insulting the audience this much. Or check out any other crime-problem-solving show for that matter. The writing is also mostly episodic crime-of-the-week with the
occasional paranoid conspiracy or cases that involve their friends and their past, some of them entertaining, except that it's impossible to get past the premise. This show
even pulls out that old canard and Hollywood fantasy of a super-hacker better than everyone else who is a female, and a hot one at that. Why do all J.J. Abrams produced shows
insult their audiences?
Total Recall 2070
Based on scattered episodes of the single season.
Sci-fi show that is a blend of the Blade Runner/Total Recall worlds of Philip Dick, a noirish cop show (without a narrative), and some elements of Star Trek's Data,
the android in search of humanity and his maker. The writing explores themes of mind-manipulation, memory, androids that dream and aspire to be human, evil
corporations, Mars colonies, dystopian future, and man vs machines in an atmospheric recreation of Blade Runner that is too low-budget to be immersive. The structure
is mostly episodic with some two-parters and occasional hints of a story arc. Unfortunately, it's not as interesting as it sounds. The dialog is very cliched,
especially at the beginning of the show, as if they copied-pasted from other movies without transporting the rest of the environment to back the words. The
wooden actors don't help either, the writing rarely does interesting things, and all this together with a dark, monotonously soft-spoken and dreamy atmosphere,
constantly threatens to put you to sleep.
Andromeda
Based on the first season and some scattered episodes.
An inferior Farscape clone with healthy doses of Gene Rodenberry's bleeding heart idealism and racial conflict, and some Blakes 7. In terms of Farscape characters we have the
resourceful, idealistic human who came from a different world through a black hole, a fiery female fighter, a spiritual, preachy alien, a weird-behaving colored alien, a huge
warrior with a chip on his shoulder, and character-driven drama and humor. The main story arc is somewhat interesting with a captain of the Commonwealth getting stuck in a
black hole for 300 years only to find that the Commonwealth has disintegrated and the universe turned to chaos. The race of humans known as Nietzscheans who follow
Nietzsche's writings, self-interests and evolutionary gene pool superiority morals serve as the interesting opposing force, but the writers often seem to be in over
their heads when it comes to keeping their behaviour consistent. But the real problems are that the writers periodically serve bad science fiction (especially an
all-too-human AI), deus ex machina solutions by a brilliant engineer who seems to be able to invent anything only to forget about it later, some cheesy cliches,
some painfully badly delivered humor, and too much bleeding-heart preaching. The acting and personalities are weak relative to Farscape, and the makeup effects
are sometimes laughable. Some episodes show traces of the Farscape magic but they only make me want to watch Farscape again. This show gets points for not being
another stiff Star Trek show but unfortunately they didn't pull it off.
The first season starts out horribly cheesy but soon becomes more acceptable, showing occasional potential and more character. Subsequent seasons soon revert back to
cheese however and by the third season, the show discards logic, story arcs and personality drives and becomes a ridiculously cheesy action show revolving around the
main character's ego.
Battlestar Galactica
Based on half of the first season.
Attacked for being a Star-Wars ripoff, and indeed many of the characters, gadgets and costumes seem to be inferior variations, but the story is original.
Using the bible as inspiration, this series attempts to tell the origins of the human race as a colonial race scattered over several planets, all of the distant
non-Earth inhabitants waging war against the Cylons who recently tricked them into accepting peace only to mass exterminate the humans. The remaining humans
escape on a battleship and some smaller ships on an exodus to the promised land, a trip full of hardships, starvation, adventures, battles and strange planets.
Expensive but cheesy effects, silly dialogue and characters, and childish, simplistic writing.
Merlin
Mini-series with an impressive cast attempting to retell the Arthurian legends through the life and eyes of Merlin. Unfortunately, the writing is terrible,
the approach is mostly for children yet contains violent battles, the legends have been twisted and simplified into a dull fairy tale, there is too much
cuteness and forced comedy, the special effects are weak, and most of the actors chew the scenery. Sam Neill brings class and strong character to the
show and there are some good moments but this is just another failure in the long line of bad Arthurian adaptations.
Night Stalker
Based on half of the first season.
An attempt to recreate X-Files based on characters from the original Night Stalker show. Kolchak is the Mulder character, a reporter who always assumes supernatural causes
for one bizarre mystery after another and there's the skeptic female partner who tags along and helps. Strange crimes, mostly murders, uncover beings with
supernatural powers, ghosts, psychic evil, mysterious cult leaders, and other unexplained phenomena. But the leads are dull as dishwater, the stories are predictable,
recycled and bland, and the show structure is episodic monster-of-the-week with monotonous weak attempts at deep dark atmosphere. Even though the X-Files
took a while to get started, it had variety, intrigue and some charm. This feels like X-Files leftovers.
Second Chance
Based on scattered episodes of the single season.
I wasn't aware that they still made shows like this in this day and age. This is a throwback to the cheesy 80s action series and a bad clone of "Six Million Dollar Man".
An old, retired law-enforcement man who is killed is secretly brought back to life with an experimental procedure for a medical experiment, only he comes back as a
30-year-old with super-strength and he is backed by eccentric billionaires with access to advanced technology. After some womanizing, he finds his calling helping
his son with special criminals, only he works outside the law and uses his special powers and his rich, hi-tech saviors' hi-tech tricks. The structure is an old-school
mixture of episodic case-of-the-week and some snippets of a story arc involving the strange rich twins that brought him back to life and their past experiments, as well
as the old man's family. Besides this old-school structure and Knight-Rider-esque approach to crime-fighting, the actors are quite bland, the unlikeable protagonist
never seems to even try to channel the mentality of an old man (this detail is really bothersome and a missed opportunity), and the writing and characters all feel
like they came out of an assembly line.
Time Trax
Based on scattered episodes of the first season.
Instantly forgettable time-travel series that opts for the cheapest sci-fi plot device: A man from the future who travels to the present time. He is a cop tracking down
criminals that escaped him using the only method possible: time-travel. Even culture-shock and social adjustment is supposedly made irrelevant by making him a student of history,
as if that would help anyone adjust to another century. And that is the biggest problem with this show: A lack of imagination. He has several almost super-human abilities which
come into play during the physical action sequences, but his supposed super-intelligence never makes an appearance. In fact, he does many rather dumb things. His assistant, in
the spirit of Knight Rider, is a computer with an all-too-human personality, in this case a mother-figure know-it-all with several hi-tech tricks up its sleeve. Except that it
isn't as entertaining or cool as in Knight Rider, and a holograph computer with hokey anthropomorphism is never interesting. The rest of the characters are forgettable, and the
writing is pedestrian. Some light story arcs regarding an arch-nemesis and a love interest make for a backdrop to the episodic evil plot or criminal-of-the-week structure
that often make use of future technology for their nefarious deeds. Nothing really bad, but neither is there anything of interest.
Listener, The
Based on scattered episodes of the first season.
There are dozens of shows about psychics using their gifts to solve mysteries, so what new angle does this show have to offer? None whatsoever. This is a tired
show in a tired genre featuring yet another psychic whose gifts seem to include many different supernatural abilities based on writers' whims, who works as a paramedic,
forms ties with law enforcement, and just happens to witness a whole lot of crimes and mysteries which only he can solve. Yawn. To make matters worse, the show
is mostly episodic mystery of the week, with a really poor and uninteresting longer story arc about his past which makes minimal appearances. There is nothing
even close to a compelling character, and everyone is pretty, including the doctors and horribly unconvincing cop. Nothing to see here.
Pretender, The
Based on most of the first season.
Vastly overrated cult show. The concept here is the biggest problem: A man can pretend to be anyone else. But the show can't seem to make up its mind what this means
exactly, and the various abilities this man has aren't entertaining or interesting. One ability seems to be to just know how to do things without training or study.
This is hardly impressive and it doesn't exactly celebrate ingenuity. Another is to know what happened to a certain person using some kind of supernatural super-empathy
visions. Another is the ability to lie about being someone and have everyone believe him in seconds, using mind-control maybe? Add to this an additional big problem
that most of the episodes in the first season are formulaic and repetitive (he takes on a new career, helps someone, then escapes in the nick of time before the Centre
catches him), and you have one very uninteresting show. As if that weren't enough, add a female character that is so over-the-top bitchy and dull, she seems to have come
from a soap opera. There is some story arc regarding his background, parents and the mysterious agency called the Centre that is constantly after him, but most of the
show consists of him adopting a new career every episode, doing good deeds helping little people with their problems which somehow always involve a bad person that needs
to be put in his place.
Firestarter 2: Rekindled
Sci-Fi mini-series sequel in name only, completely violates the original's story, characters and themes. Charlie McGee is now a charmless teenage brat, still
on the run from the men in black behind the experiment that gave her superpowers, and having difficulties with her sex life due to an uncontrollable connection
between her lust and her pyrokinesis. When a naive young investigator tracks her down, things become complicated again, with Malcolm McDowell as an insane
scientist, Dennis Hopper as a fatalist with time-vision, and a slew of evil 'X-Boys' with superpowers, the next experimental generation. Thus, instead of the
horror of psychic superpowers and the human drama angle of the original, the story has now become a fantasy-superhero action movie with sloppy writing.
McDowell and Hopper are wasted powerhouses here, the writers seem to have no idea what to do with Charlie, and the ending is so nonsensical, it's bizarre.
Earth 2
Based on half of the first season.
A group of colonists land on an Earth-like planet and it's nothing but conflict, problems, sabotage, and double-crossings from then on as they travel across the planet
to find the rest of their team and a place to stay. This colonization idea could have worked, but the writing always plays it safe and is therefore uninteresting, the
characters aren't addictive to say the least and don't develop much either, and there isn't much sci-fi. There's also too much drama going on with kids. The only really good
thing about this is that it feels like an ongoing arc instead of an episodic space ship show. But in the end it's a very mediocre show about people with a robot and some
gadgets travelling across what is obviously Earth, occasionally interacting with a couple of alien species (one humanoid wearing a terrible suit).
Not exactly a show that will take your mind places.
Goblin (AKA Guardian: The Lonely and Great God)
Based on most of the single season.
This was only my second taste of Korean drama TV based on numerous gushing reviews across the board. ('The Legend' was primarily fantasy-action with drama whereas this is drama with fantasy).
If definitely did not make me want to check out more. This 18-hour production is basically one long romantic-comedy for teenage girls, with its fantasy elements used only for the
drama. There's a war-general from 900 years ago cursed with immortality and with suffering from not being able to forget any death he caused. He is also given god-like powers for
some reason and he is called a Goblin. There is also a bureaucratic system and hierarchy of grim-reapers ripped off from 'Dead Like Me' where ordinary people atone by working
as collectors of souls that have just died, without remembering who they were. And, of course, there are the women they love, or are destined or doomed to meet, with super-natural
complications getting in the way of their ultimate love, etc etc. Other layers and secrets slowly reveal themselves as they discover their destinies. The mythology isn't bad,
and the fantasy aspects and story-arcs are moderately interesting. The problem is that they serve as mere excuses to make this romantic-comedy-cum-melodrama as long as possible,
with lovers separated over and over and over again by death and reincarnation and more reincarnation and prophecies and whatnot, piling on the melodrama in a repeat-loop
until it becomes a ridiculous laughing stock. And in between the melodrama it's worse: The guys here are sometimes prettier and more emotional than the girls, and when they
aren't crying over their doomed lives, they are acting in nauseatingly cute and silly ways seemingly to endear themselves to their teenage-girl audience. And all this while
the girls act usually sassy and cutesy, overwhelmed with their 'romantic' whims, often making one wonder what a 900-year old deity would see in such a silly 18 year old that acts
like a 10 year old girl. Except the Goblin and Grim Reaper often act even sillier of course, which explains it. To top this all off, the music is painfully schmaltzy and they just
keep piling on the montages and romantic flashbacks, and each melodramatic scene goes on forever. In short, not only am I puzzled why so many people would fail to mention that
this is obviously targeted at teenage girls, I felt nauseated by the constant schmaltzy emotional manipulation and superficial cuteness.
My Love from Another Star
Based on the first four episodes.
A final attempt for me at getting into Korean fantasy-comedy TV, seeing as this show is one of the most popular ones. Other, more serious Korean shows I've seen have been better, so I
suppose that it's specifically the romantic-comedy genre that I must avoid. The sheer number of Korean shows of this type are really puzzling, however, as is their popularity even with
adults. The comedy aspect is so 'cutesy' with accompanying over-the-top acting and bouncy music, it seems to have come from a show for kids or silly teenage girls. And the romance is so
programmed with nauseating cheesy music and flashbacks that it is off-putting. The love interest is usually a bland boy-toy hunk, who, after the initial harsh behaviour, necessary
objections and obstacles, always becomes the ultimate cutesy dreamy boy-toy for the female protagonist. Add more obstacles and dramatic challenges in a cycle where their love is
destined to be, but full of inevitably drawn-out drama, then repeat and rinse for a dozen or more episodes, and that's the basic template. In other words, it's a chick-flick rom-com
par excellence except its for teenage girls, and it lasts 12-20 hours instead of 1.5 hours. And keep in mind that I enjoy quite a few Hollywood rom-coms myself so it's not like I never
enjoy this type of thing. In any case, the plot for this one is a bland boy-toy who happens to be a combination of alien, superhero, and immortal Highlander-type human with a long
history, is finally on his way back to his planet when his meets his destined love on Earth. Except that, in this reincarnation, she is a combination of bitch and dumb brat celebrity.
You can imagine the rest.
Being Erica
Based on scattered episodes of the first season.
This is about as 'chick-flick' as it gets. For starters, this is for people that thought that the best thing about Ally Mcbeal was Ally herself, despite the fact that she was
often annoyingly neurotic and made a mountain out of every romantic molehill. If you want to see a show that dedicates itself to similar dramas without the balance of the legal
aspects and male characters in that show, then this might just be for you. It's about Erica, a thirty-something that has made a series of 'bad decisions' all her life and now
finds herself a mess of anxieties, romantic complications and confusions, and a life that is going nowhere. In short, your average modern woman. A god-like therapist enters
her life and starts helping her to fix her problems one by one by using time-travel: Sending her back to pivotal moments so she can see if she can change her life for the better,
which, more often than not turns out to be impossible, yet she emerges from it with a valuable life-lesson. And that's another thing: Some shows shoot themselves in the foot
by inserting corny life-lessons into their endings, but this show is almost only about life-lessons. I wouldn't mind it if the lessons were deep, insightful, unusual or interesting
in some way, but the ones here are self-empowering pop-psychology cliched nonsense that weekend writers were crapping out into women's magazines for decades. Things like 'it only
matters what you think', or learning how to go after what you want, being honest with your friends, and so on. And then there are the men: If you ever needed proof that this one
is only for chicks, the many guys in this show are about the only ones undressing for the camera, they are all hunks and smooth models, and they have that impossible one-dimensional
fantasy-male character that you often find in chick-flicks: They're either just jerks, or ultra-sensitive to Erica's every need and emotion. So, basically, feminists complain about
how women are often portrayed in movies, then they do exactly the same. To be fair, this show does have its moments, but they're eclipsed by all the above.
Torchwood
Based on most of the first two seasons.
A Doctor Who spin-off series. Torchwood is a not-so-secret Earth institute formed to study, capture and use alien technology to defend the planet. Week after week,
their hi-tech radars discover dangerous alien devices, threats, alien attacks, or monsters that need to be captured, thwarted and hidden from public view. The team
is very loose and informal, to say the least, trying to have fun with a job that keeps them so busy. The result is a blend of Men in Black, and fast moving episodic X-Files
thrills. The approach is more adult-oriented than Doctor Who, employing a touch of violence and gore, and lots of sexual content, but the stories are the same blend
of populist sci-fi, entertaining action, and comedy, with frequent forays into drama and emotion.
As a concept, and given the success of Doctor Who, this should be a great show. But there are so many things wrong with this one I hardly know where to start: The sci-fi
rules are obviously made up as they go along and sometimes contradict themselves even in the same episode. The writing is sloppy, the sci-fi gadgets keep coming out of nowhere
as lazy plot devices, many crises often revolve around a 'time-rift' which is just another weak plot device that seems to be able to change the universe in any way the
writers please. Emotional scenes almost always feel forced, overwrought and too melodramatic. The sexuality is so obviously a forced gay agenda on the part of Russell
Davies despite his protests otherwise; The problem is not the homosexuality, but the sacrificing of character and writing just to insert yet another scene of rampant snogging,
flirting and shagging, the characters' slutty bisexuality and omni-sexuality seemingly drifting like the wind from one creature to another, constantly undermining the show
and any attempts at drama. The lead character is an unlikeable arrogant slut that seems to think he is a gift to the universe, his immortality removing any sense of danger
and replacing it with annoying I-can't-die angst. Another character is an annoying over-emotional woman who constantly bosses and mothers people around based on her
whims. The team is so incredibly sloppy professionally that they make it impossible to believe that these people are trusted by a government, have lasted for decades,
and are able to survive so many crises. Etc. The restrictions set by the fan-base in Doctor Who are probably what made the comeback so successful, but this unrestricted
show is a mess.
Ragnarok
Based on the first season.
Norwegian take on its own mythology of gods, chaotic giants, Thor and monsters, except it models itself after Smallville and turns them all into modern-day people and teenagers
with school and teenage problems, adding emerging super-human abilities and evil immortals to their list of problems. It's less annoyingly teenage-oriented, vapid and angsty
than Smallville, which would make this a more interesting or entertaining show, except for one problem: This is infested by pure Wokeisms. Every episode preaches endlessly about
rich white men damaging the environment, Loki is now gay, and the war of good vs evil consists of the good-hearted Thor taking down evil older rich white men that are damaging the
environment. Nevermind that they use laptops, phones and many other things that were made by rich white men in polluting factories. But the trouble with Woke shows is not just
wrong-headed hypocritical politics: It's brainless black & white simplistic politics that point out something wrong with the world and find the most convenient scapegoat without
bothering to connect the dots. And it's copying-pasting the exact same preachy heavy-handed points that 2000 other films have made. I'd ask why Woke people enjoy watching the same
simplistic message repeated thousands of times, but when you have such a flimsy premise I suppose one needs constant reassurance so that it doesn't blow away with the wind.
For All Mankind
Based on the first six episodes.
Officially, this is an 'alternate history' series about how the space race and Apollo program could have gone if the race between USA and Russia had been heightened by Russia
winning the race to land on the moon, amongst other firsts. This show depicts a what-if scenario if the heightened motivation and politics all led to an extended space program
with projects continuing beyond the abridged program that we know about, and with larger ambitions. Unofficially, this show is mostly about Woke politics, using the 'alternate
history' genre as an excuse to fantasize about a Woke version of history, with endless liberal preaching about all the same old tired topics. Women struggling in the workplace,
women always being better than men but having to fight for their place, homosexual struggles with society, the new young generation judging, damning and condemning the old
generation, immigrants with dreams, the astronauts wives home dramas taking priority over the space program, etc etc, ad nauseam. This show looks like it was programmed by a
Woke algorithm AI robot, ticking all the same old check-boxes for commercial success. The actual sci-fi and story about space exploration takes a backdrop to the politics,
and I watched six whole episodes expecting to show to get back on track with the actual story once it got its preaching out of its system, but this never happened. I am hoping
that, in several years, this period in time will be looked back as that silly time in history when crazy people took over the media and used it for endless, tired, obvious
propaganda, repeatedly covering the same talking points and preaching, similar in some ways to propaganda cinema of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but I have my doubts if
that will ever happen. The worst aspect of all this is that it is so mindless and repetitive.
Years And Years
Gay and Woke sci-fi about a near dystopian future. Starting at 2019, every episode fast-forwards a year or two at a brisk pace, making several predictions to do with many
countries falling apart in various ways, as well as things getting worse or disappearing due to climate or political changes. And there is also sci-fi (too-fast) advances
concerning medicine and digital body-implants as well as the ultimate fantasy goal to upload a human as digital data. All predictions so far in 2022 were not only wrong,
but also typical paranoid small-minded liberal fear-mongering with a huge dose of Russophobia. The closest thing the show got right was an Ukraine upheaval in 2022 except
they predicted the exact opposite of reality: A take-over by separatist pro-Russian forces, rather than a Russian intervention due to a take-over attempt by Ukranian forces.
And then they proceed to depict Russians as a government that systematically tortures homosexuals, like some kind of laughable gay version of Handmaid's Tale. The many
predictions and the concept of this show is brave and interesting, but the thinking behind it is so warped, it is useless and very distant from reality. The cast may
have been picked by a PC computer with a 'one-of-each' algorithm. One of the main plot-lines involves a gay international romance and the endless attempts to save his lover
from many countries, even in a fascist Britain. There is child-abuse in the form of actively encouraged child transgenderism by parents and family. There is a sociopathic
activist who blames everyone but herself for world problems, and who threatens to murder a boyfriend of her sister just because he is male. The one straight white male
member of the family is obviously evil, not only cheating, but also going along with fascists. Of course, when the homosexual cheats, he is forgiven instantly. There is
climate-change preaching. And there is even a new form of trans self-body-hate where broken humans are encouraged and given emotional support to kill themselves in order
to turn digital. What more needs to be said? Just one form of warped thinking after another.
Fallen
A mini-series released as three TV movies. A teenager realizes he is not quite human when he starts to understand animals, and angels either try to kill him
or protect him, and he is made to understand his destiny which may involve saving angels or something more sinister. This fantasy series is based on the Bible
with its setup of God, angels, Nephilim, etc. As such, it should be criticized by its adherence to Biblical lore rather than on its imagination. For one thing,
it sticks to the Christian version of angels that claims they can rebel and fall, which never made sense to me. The angels I know have no free will, thus
undermining this show's raison d'être. But even after accepting this viewpoint, it fails on a logical level: Why are angels sent by God on a mission suddenly
killing humans indiscriminately and behaving like jerks and bitches? How did they become so human? Why are all fights reduced to fists and sword-fights
instead of something more powerful or supernatural? Why does the Redeemer seem immortal one second then mortal the next? Although the show does become hammy
at times, the real problem is that it is impossible to enjoy the story since one can't get past the ridiculously illogical setup. Other low points include
preaching to Azazel about feminism and respecting women, and blaming Satan for all wars and humanity's mistakes. At least Dogma was fun because it knew it
was being funny.
Grimm
Based on scattered episodes of the first season.
Bland, uninspired and nonsensical Buffy follower. A cop, as part of the Grimm family, finds that he comes from a long line of hunters of supernatural evil. Only he can see
their true faces, and he uses some kind of super-fighting genes to take them down. So far it's like Buffy, except it's a policeman instead of a high-schooler, it has
almost no humor, and the actors are almost all forgettable. Even the switch to a cop format is a big mistake, since they basically combined cop-show with Buffy, and
this is very uninspired considering that there are hundreds of cop-shows using this very limited crime(monster)-of-the-week format. Another big problem is that they
didn't bother in the slightest to make this remotely plausible. For one thing, every single case of his somehow involves a monster, which means that every criminal
is not human. In addition, his partner is somehow oblivious to all of this, even though he witnesses one bizarre case after another with superhuman feats of physical
strength, impossible deductions by his Grimm partner, and very bizarre deaths. As far as characters go, they are all as bland as they get, except for Monroe, who lends
some humor and sarcasm as a rehabilitated monster that helps the Grimm-cop, but he isn't enough. The creatures are also largely silly, all of them flashing yet another
unconvincing CGI beast-face every time they get emotional, before reverting back to their human self with only a bit of fighting skill. Even the mythology that typically
moves at a snails pace is uninteresting. Definitely not worthwhile.
Merlin (2008)
Based on most of the first season.
Of all the shows to model after, why would a show pick a bad one like Smallville? The laughably contrived setup is that Merlin, Arthur, Lancelot, Morgana, Guinevere
et al are all teenagers living in the same town, and, like superman, Merlin has to hide his superpowers from a law by Uther Pendragon who banished sorcery under
penalty of death. Episode after episode features a crisis brought about by magic and monsters, and Merlin has to secretly save the day with the help of Arthur's
sword and the guidance of his father.. I mean a wise old mentor. In other words, a cheesy teenage fantasy show in a castle, where even a historically challenged
person such as myself could spot dozens of anachronisms in the speech, dresses, and attitudes towards class, gender and race (Guinevere was a black woman?).
The CGI effects are bad, the characters don't seem to learn or grow much, the fight scenes are masked by rapid cuts, and the writing is mostly episodic and
repetitive. At least this show isn't whiny and has more humor than Smallville, making it slightly better, but this is basically just juvenile cheese.
My Own Worst Enemy
Based on most of the single season.
This is one of those rare shows that never get off the ground because of a completely illogical premise. A spy agency develops a way to install another personality
into their spies, making them oblivious to the fact they are spies, living a normal life with families. But why would this help the spy in any way? If they were sleeper
spies in another country and could be awakened whenever they are needed or when they are in danger, then it may make sense. But this not only doesn't help them, it also
puts them in danger, and adds many, many complications and therefore more ways of things going wrong. In any case, the implementation of this concept is entertaining,
with Christian Slater depicting a split personality that not only breaks down and makes the agency lose control over the switch, but one that also starts fighting with
himself. One is a family man, the other is a psychotic and cruel spy. The action-thriller aspects of this show are modelled after 24, with constant action and violence,
and are not realistic but are entertaining. The acting is also pretty good. But it's hard to enjoy a show when it makes no sense.
VR.5
Based on scattered episodes of the first season.
Produced back when VR was still a new thing full of possibilities, this TV series is certainly dated in its effects and technical approach to VR. But
suspension of disbelief isn't enough with this one, since it also features weak, cliched writing. The setup is a female tech-wizard inspired by her dead father
who discovers the next level in VR by connecting a phone connection to her VR system, allowing her to take her caller's subconscious into VR worlds and explore
their mind and thoughts. This is similar to The Cell I suppose, and the episodic stories usually involve her helping conflicted people with deep dark secrets,
which is somewhat reminiscent of Quantum Leap in the sense that it involves the episodic fixing of other people's lives via sci-fi. There is also a slow story
arc involving her past and the circumstances in which her family died, as well as conspiratorial developments involving the mysterious "Committee" which tries to
control anything VR-related and its onion-layered management and secret ties with her father. It all progresses pretty much as expected without surprises,
the protagonist is bland, and her guru-roommate is never believable. The details also never really make sense, as it is unclear why the Committee need her at
all since they can simply take away her equipment and use it, the people she calls never seem to react realistically to the strange phone calls they get,
what she can or can't do once within the VR world is never quite consistent, and of course, the whole Hollywood concept of a female doing the tech-stuff
better than anyone else is tiresome.
Knights of Bloodsteel
Lame fantasy mini-series. Recently, fantasy has gotten a big boost in popularity with a depth that appeals to adults, but this feels like a throwback to the cheesy
geek fodder. The plot involves a world of humans, elves, sorcerers, goblins and dragons and a designated group of four reluctant warriors sent on a quest to retrieve
the magical crucible that holds great power, while the evil Dragon Eye and his minions fight with them and compete at every stage. Sound familiar? The biggest
problem with this series however, is that it never feels like another world. Between the politically-correct casting, the cheesy dialogue that can't decide whether
it wants to be flowery or a modern-day spoof, the cardboard leads that hold no character, the constantly bitchy female warrior, the surveillance and robotic gadgets
that feel out of place, and the really bad CGI effects, this never transports you to a world of magic.
Prisoner, The (2009)
Mini-series 're-imagining' of the original cult series. The original didn't really need a remake, and even if it did, to improve on it would take much talent bordering
on genius. This one features Ian McKellen, and limited itself to 6 parts, so I was interested in giving it a shot. The story, once again, involves a man who finds himself
trapped in the 'Village', where everyone is a number and doesn't seem to know about another life outside, or do they? #2 is the psychologically manipulative near-god of
the village, and beyond the village there is only desert, glass towers in a mirage, and the surreal bouncy spheres as protection mechanisms that somehow stop people from
escaping. Unfortunately, this is modeled after Lost: Throw a confusing bunch of metaphysical nonsense and possibilities including dreams, the supernatural, the subconscious,
Matrix-like hi-tech manipulation of reality, drugs, alternate realities, conspiracies, etc. make the characters utter things that could be construed as deep and mysterious
and make them seem like they know more than they let on, draw superficial parallels between random objects, and finally, throw in some parallel back-story that supposedly
reveals things inch by inch about the reality they are in now. In other words, this is purposely muddled writing carefully designed to impress a lazy and undisciplined
audience into thinking the show is made of genius. Add to this the fact that the first episode right away makes it very clear that we are not dealing with reality, so
all the paranoia and suspense is undermined. The ending seems ambitious and doesn't provide a simple cliched twist ending, but neither does it clarify anything, because
it can't and doesn't want to. If you are going to explore a world of dream-logic or the inner minds of people, then the only thing of interest is to explore their inner
minds, not a plot about escaping, Big Brother corporations, and paranoia. But what did we learn about our characters? Almost nothing.
Haven
Based on most of the first season.
I'm really sick and tired of Sci-Fi Channel shows. It seems they have been using the same template for the past 10 years for all their shows. This may sound familiar: Come up with
a nonsensical reason for strange things, objects, gadgets or superpowers to happen, then have new things, objects, gadgets or superpowers happen every episode while
someone has the job to chase or investigate these new things, objects, gadgets or superpowers. Add a stretched-out story arc involving this someone's past, and progress
this story arc as slowly as possible while distracting audiences with constantly new things, objects, gadgets or superpowers. SyFy have dumbed down science fiction for
kids addicted to their cellphones, and the channel's name suits them. In this show, an FBI agent without a past arrives at Haven, where strange things happen. People's emotions
and secrets lash out in violent supernatural ways, and it's up to her, and her local police friend who pines for her, to track down the culprit as fast as possible,
and solve his emotional problems with a flick of the writers' pen, while she tries to figure out her convoluted connection with this place. So we get endless things
like killer shadows, or butterflies that appear right before killer bedsheets, all the while SyFy tries to keep you watching to see what happens with her constantly
twisting back-story which they are obviously making up as they go along. Dumb entertainment.
Bionic Woman (2007)
Based on half of the single season.
I'm getting really sick and tired of shows about female ass-kickers that have nothing else to offer except a woman in tight clothes fighting. This one is a remake
about a woman converted into a superwoman cyborg by the government and asked to complete missions, and commits the popular sin of casting an extremely dull
protagonist, albeit not an annoying one like with Alias and Dark Angel. The structure of the show is the same as Alias, with a mixture of story-arcs dealing
with family, angst, politics and some problems with the government Bionic project that keeps catching up with them, as well as episodic action-oriented thrills
as the Bionic Woman is sent to save people and the world, while head-bashing with her own team and an annoyingly angsty sister. There's some entertaining action,
but the writing is cliche and dull as well as sloppy, the characters are all instantly forgettable, and the fights use shaky cameras and dizzying editing to hide
the fact that the fights aren't any good.
Charmed
Based on scattered episodes of the first 2 seasons.
A dumb Buffy-wannabe show that is strictly aimed at the teenage crowd, a boring deus-ex-machina fantasy about girl-power, a purely girly show with insufferable
girly behaviour, and a show that seems to care more about sex appeal than writing, acting or anything but artificial emotional resonance and annoying forced angst.
I suppose the creators thought all they had to do was create a supernatural show where teenagers have difficult love affairs and moan about being witches with a destiny
to save the world and the rest would take care of itself. Avoid it like the plague.
Poltergeist: The Legacy
Based on scattered episodes of the first season.
This has nothing to do with the movies, and I have no idea why they picked such a title seeing as it deals with anything that is supernatural. This re-uses the same
old setup of a group of people investigating paranormal events, except that they work in secret and have a family history. The structure is strictly episodic featuring
a monster-of-the-week, and the paranormal evil forces involving a variety of ghosts and evil spirits are mostly unimaginative. Perhaps some could have been made interesting
or scary if the makers of this show didn't go for unimaginative theatrical special effects using wind, smoke and filters combined with some cheesy cheap 90s computer effects
to try to create some excitement and nonsensical action sequences involving malicious spirits. Less is more, and take a page out of the X-Files book, guys. The characters
are bland and instantly forgettable, and there is minimal development. The writing is braindead copy-paste material with no imagination or any realistic-sounding dialogue,
and the crises are all solved by random things that the writers come up with, and the protagonists always come up with the exact thing to do that will work for no reason
whatsoever just in the nick of time. I forgot about the show even before I finished writing this.
Star Trek: Voyager
Based on most of the first season.
Another year, another increasingly poor Trek spin-off. This one feels like immature and stiff geeky sci-fi with a sprinkling of juvenile humor, combined with politically-correct
casting at its worst. There are simply too many things wrong with this show and most of them have to do with the casting and acting, although the writing is mostly recycled or
bland as well. The Voyager is a star-fleet starship that finds itself transported to a very distant galaxy by a powerful being along with its enemies in the middle of
a battle. They then have to learn to work with each other on the long trek back home while exploring many new worlds, cultures and aliens and surviving various imaginative
dangers. Janeway is the stern female captain who constantly has to make so-called noble choices to sacrifice something or another to save worlds and lives, but this often
turns out to be annoyingly repetitive as well as twisted, high-horse, bleeding-heart morality, and she is too stiffly acted. Torres is a constantly angry female Klingon with
uncontrollable emotions and there is a boring black Vulcan, and probably the most stupid thing the PC execs ever did since it would be dumb to assume Vulcans developed the
exact same variety of skin colors that humans did. Ironically, and in a Star Trek tradition, the most humanity and humor is given to a holographic Doctor, a program, who is
acted well, but given that he is a program and not even there, this is utterly ridiculous. The rest of the cast are so bland they are instantly forgotten and the holograph
deck is abused yet again. Also the show is episodic and doesn't really go anywhere, has more humanoid aliens with silly makeup, and it's infamous for a later character used to
attract fans using revealing outfits: Seven of Nine, a female Borg who verbally dismisses beauty and sexuality, but obviously spends hours working on her hair, makeup and
skin-tight outfits.
P.S. I just realized that Star Treks are the most hypocritically racist shows ever made. They idealize the humans and Vulcans to the point of nauseating political
correctness, but when it comes to dealing with many other races like the Klingons, Andorians, Ferengi, et al, they almost always reduce them to a single defining
characteristic, and human interactions with them are usually based on this alone.
Earthsea
Based on LeGuin's novels which I have not read, but I have as many complaints as the fans seem to have. It starts like a Harry Potter clone with a young, new wizard
in training, sometimes reminiscent of Dragonslayer but without the atmosphere. Then it sinks to fantasy cheese with plot details and characters that don't make much sense,
whimsical treatments of magical powers, weak CGI, and mostly miscast or bad actors. There's an evil self-proclaimed king who wants immortality, helpful wizards, an evil
unleashed creature, an order of women led by a hopelessly incompetent mother, and of course, silly romance and cliched dialogue. Still fun at times, but bad overall.
Storm of the Century
A Stephen King mini-series, by-the-numbers and full of recycled latter day King cliches. Some good moments but over-stretched to 4 hours, and the ending makes no sense.
The tale is about an evil man that knows the town's dark secrets, manipulating everyone and causing havoc until the final evil ultimatum.
Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital
Based on all 13 episodes.
Based on Trier's brilliant Riget series, King dumbs it down for American audiences and adds his by-now severely hackneyed trademarks. Where the original had naturally acted,
quirky and very funny characters, this one has forced acting that is never believable and an overused little girl; Where the original had gripping mystery and over-the-top
entertainingly bizarre developments, this one hits you over the head with simple ideas and an anteater; And many of the scenes that are copied from the original
were obviously never understood as they are taken out of context and their motivations removed. The show has some good moments when it goes for darkly funny and some
characters hit their stride mid-season, but otherwise it serves hokum horror and typically lazy writing from King who forgot how to write a good scary yarn 15 years ago.
Rose Red
Stephen King plagiarizes the cliched story of a group of people staying in a haunted mansion to study it, as well as his own ideas used in previous stories.
Violent and mysterious historical flashbacks merge with modern horrors awakened by the group of psychic characters, all come to help prove psychic
phenomena exist while illogically ignoring the obvious phenomena they create themselves every day. King sledgehammers his way through 3 long hours of unsubtle horror,
forgetting that less is more.
Orville, The
Based on most of the first season.
It seems obvious by now that Seth MacFarlane's brand of humor is not for me. First, this is a show that wants to be two conflicting things, and ends up being neither.
It is a silly spoof on Star Trek (TOS and a bit of TNG), with dumb 'bro-humor' on various bodily functions and angry ex-wives, and it also wants to be an homage to TOS
with sci-fi adventures and action on various outlandish alien planets that it takes seriously even when it's a bit cheesy (TOS style). The bland cutesy humor sometimes
looks like it should be funny, but almost never is, just like Family Guy, and the lowbrow and juvenile bro-humor is painful. But worse than this, it undermines the
homage aspect because in the middle of a perfectly good Star-Trek-style adventure with dangerous aliens, they kick in with the silly or dumb gags. I don't know what
it is they were thinking when they created this. But even this would just make it a clunky and silly show. What really disgusts me is the very pervasive childish radical
leftist agenda in every single episode. Women in this show are always better, stronger, smarter than the guys and take every chance they get to bash men. There is
ham-fisted preaching on tolerance for every gender combination and sexual orientation, preaching against religion of any kind, and not even against actual conservative
targets but against the silliest stereotypical 'aliens' you've ever seen. And it does this on every single episode I've seen. The adventure part could actually have been
fun, but the inappropriate humor as well as the agenda ruin any chance of that happening.
Untamed, The
Based on the first seven episodes.
Chinese fantasy series. I'd normally start by summarizing the plot, but seven episodes in, and barely any traces of a real plot have emerged. There are many clans, students
of various disciplines and magic, fights against random supernatural beings, an evil clan, and some pieces of a powerful stone, as if this were aiming to be (eventually)
a mix of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. That's all I could gather so far even after 6 hours. The only good thing I can say about this show is that the aesthetics and
visuals are top-notch. Otherwise, there is bad over-acting by many supporting actors, the humor is childish, and the plotting is painfully slow to the point of absolutely
nothing happening for several episodes on end, instead featuring endless random banal and silly interactions between characters. The magic and powers of the many characters
feel completely random with no rules that I could detect. It's just a bunch of random special effects with no discipline. Sometimes I couldn't even tell if the spell actually
worked. The 'fights' are fluffy dances with wires, and no laws of physics, so these offer zero thrills. And that is when they aren't throwing random spells at each other.
I have a feeling that the only reason this became mildly popular in the West is because it was written by a homosexual and features lots of pretty guys giving each other
endless non-Platonic stares, even though this came out of China. Mindless pretty fluff.
Legend of the Seeker
Based on most of the first season.
Well, the first episode starts like a TV version of Lord of the Rings, with wonderful scenery, a chosen hero to save the worlds from impending doom from a growing
evil lord, and plenty of magic and effects. But it soon deteriorates into D&D cliches and cardboard characters, and, by the third episode, it becomes a modern version of
Xena/Hercules with a focus on episodic fights, girls, quests and magic. Which is no surprise seeing as Sam Raimi produced all three shows, evidently still letting his love
for silly fantasy-action-cheese loose and keeping his real talents for the movies. This is based on Terry Goodkind's novels which I haven't read, but, based on reviews,
this hasn't been faithful to the books. And I should hope not, as the writing is devoid of imagination, discipline and inspiration. As an example of poor writing,
a 'Confessor' is said to have such powers of observation and truth that people follow her blindly, and yet only last episode she failed to see who the hero really was
and lied about him helping her. The first episodes launch the important and mission-critical quest to kill Darken Rahl, but then they wander about the countryside for
the whole season distracted by one little quest, monster or task after another, even finding time to visit a birthplace, as if they were on vacation rather than trying
to save their people. And, as an example of the mentality of this show, the highest rated episodes feature the Mord-Sith, a gang of Dominatrices in tight leather
outfits equipped with a phallic magical weapon that deals both masochism and sadism to the wielder. The characters are unreal cardboard cutouts straight out of a D&D quest,
and the hero has all the personality of a hood ornament for teenage girls. Like I said, much more Xena mentality for fanboys and D&D nerds rather than LOTR.
But at least it looks good, right?
Shannara Chronicles, The
Based on most of the first season.
I haven't read any of the novels by Terry Brooks, but this one feels like a standard fantasy plot transposed into a Twilight-esque fantasy series. At the core is a story
that could have been developed into something grand perhaps approaching Lord of the Rings (although I'm not sure the original material supports so many grand themes).
There is an ancient Elvish tree protecting the realm from demons, a realm that has gone soft and stopped believing in magic. But changes are coming, and when a Druid re-appears
and the tree starts to fall apart, an inexperienced princess and forgotten young son of wizard find themselves on a quest and long dangerous journey to save the kingdom.
But most of the cast feels, looks, acts and talks like they just stepped off a high-school soap-drama set and simply put on some new costumes. Even the costumes feel like someone
combined Gap clothes with LOTR leftovers, complete with low-cut jeans and back-pockets. The cast consists of serious actors in the background supporting the story, while at the
front we get the usual wicked hunks, boy-toys, hot chicks with perfect make-up kicking everyone's ass, and cute boys to make the teenage girls hearts melt, and the guys remove
their shirts for every flimsy excuse. Every time the story starts moving along again, the show stops for another painfully flat romantic or angsty interaction between the flat
pretty leads. In short, MTV produced this one, and it shows, even in the horrible title-track pop music.
First Wave
Based on most of the first season.
Simplistic, amateurish, poor man's version of X-Files by way of Nowhere Man. An ex-thief discovers that aliens are experimenting on humans and making preparations as
the first-wave of their invasion. They kill his wife and ruin his life, forcing him to go underground as a fugitive from both aliens and humans, tracking down alien
encounters and experiments to foil their plans as much as possible, partnering with a conspiracy-freak-nerd straight out of X-Files with many hi-tech resources and
useful knowledge. They uncover many strange experiments involving gene splicing, cloning, psychic powers, and invasive, brutal psychological tests, fighting one
discovery per episode as well as slowly uncovering more about the aliens in a story arc. This sounds like a potentially good setup, but the execution is poor.
The two leads are acceptable but never develop character, many of the guest stars are very bad actors, and the writing, dialogue, directing, and acting very often
combine to create frequent hokey, laughable, implausible, cliched and artificial moments. It doesn't help that the writing looks down at the audience and explains
everything to death either. In short, the amateurish feeling of the show is too pervasive to allow enjoyment. It's hard to believe that Coppola produced this.
Eleventh Hour (US)
Based on some episodes of the single season.
Another American remake of a superior British show, this one by Bruckheimer who turns the original into more of his typically plastic over-produced bores. An FBI
scientific adviser works on cases involving science and nature gone wrong or weird, helped by an FBI bodyguard. The original show was like a non-supernatural
X-Files, but this feels more like CSI without the flashy forensics. Both leads are not only laughably implausible in their roles and hired only for their looks,
but are so bland that they are practically non-existent and make Mulder and Scully look passionate. The writer, imported from the British show, does come up with
some interesting scenarios that frequently dips into science-fiction, but the show is simply too mechanical and plastic to maintain interest.
Automan
Based on a handful of scattered episodes from the single season.
Another highly cheesy 80s creation by Glen Larson, maker of Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider and Manimal. Like his other creations, it doesn't age well and is only
fondly remembered by people that watched it as kids, and this one is so wildly fantastic that it doesn't even begin to be plausible even for kids. Automan is obviously
copied from Tron, except that it illogically transfers the computer simulations into the real world for crime fighting purposes. Walter is a computer wiz that invented
a perfect crime-fighting man in his computer, which has somehow come to life and acquired an independent, cocky attitude of its own. It/he appears to save the day together
with Cursor (Bit), another simulated being that, among other things, can create super-vehicles from energy for getting around the city. Other impossible powers come and go
as reality is thrown out the window to allow Automan to do anything and everything as needed, making him a very boring being with seemingly every superpower in the world.
The impossibility of this setup is bad enough, but the cheese and typically bad 80s TV action don't help make it watchable either.
Alien Nation
Based on a few episodes from the single season.
Preachy political correctness, the TV show, in the form of a 'sci-fi' cop show. A space-ship of alien slaves lands on Earth and humans have to learn to live with
this new species and assimilate them into society. Unfortunately, the aliens are as humanoid as can be, with extremely unimaginative writers giving them only an
'alien' cranium, some different eating habits, and the occasional alien custom. 99% of the time they are all-too-human, and the show uses the setup to explore culture
clash and racism, drawing parallels to the treatment of blacks or even the Holocaust any chance it gets. The fact that this is a cop-show gives them the chance to
uncover different inter-species crimes every episode, but this aspect of the series is just another boring and cliched cop drama. Terrible sci-fi, but worse liberal
preaching.
Roar
Based on very few episodes of the single season.
I don't see how people can claim this is better than cheesy tripe like Xena and Hercules. The 'setting' is a Celtic rebellion against Romans, as a young leader (Ledger) tries
to join the warring tribes together to fight against the evil occupiers. But there isn't much serious history, there's cheesy magic and sorcerers, the people, costumes
and settings never convince you for a second that they are medieval, the scope is tiny, usually only involving a handful of people, the episodes usually revolve around
hammy fight scenes, and yes, there are many scantily clad women in full modern revealing dress, hairdos and makeup wielding swords and beating men twice their size.
There's even a token black man amongst the medieval Celtics and the writing never does anything interesting. That just about sums up this cheese.
Lost World, The
Based on a handful of episodes from the first season.
An action-adventure series inspired by a story by Arthur Conan Doyle doesn't sound bad, but when, in the first episode, you get a girl flying through the jungle with
a perfect hair-perm, makeup and shaved legs pretending to be tough, you know you're firmly in Xena territory. If you like that sort of thing, that is, and even then,
how much of this cheese can one watch? This series features a varied group of explorers that embark to a lost land high up in the mountains where they promptly find
dangers like dinosaurs and ape-men and a ridiculously high number of tribes and people for an isolated land in the clouds. As with Xena, the story is both continuous and
episodic, and the adventures can vary from dinosaur chases to bridal trades or warring 'reptile-men' in bad reptile-suits that speak English. In between the never-believable
action scenes (where the bad guys always miss) and fights with badly-rendered dinosaurs (where the much faster and bigger beasts never seem to catch anyone), we get
skimpily-clad women that take the time away from their beauty salons to wear loincloths. What's not to like you ask? Be my guest.
Salem
Based on scattered episodes from the first season.
The Salem witch trials have been portrayed several times before, usually as a case of religious hysteria, sometimes portraying the people as twisted monsters, often also
in horror movies about twisted people and evil fanatics, or, alternatively, as a movie about men that victimize poor old Wiccans or women. This movie takes the approach
that there were really evil witches in Salem creating real black magic, and makes a horror show out of it, except it wants to be several things at once and ends up being
none. The priests are cliched hypocrites killing women on flimsy evidence, except they don't seem to believe in their own religion much and seemingly have no motivation.
The 'level-headed' atheist for some reason keeps denying that it has to do with witchcraft, except it actually does according to this series, and he even saw it with his
own eyes since magic is quite widespread, thus ending up as another character that makes no sense. The female protagonist is another character that seems to have been
written by several unsynchronized writers or one schizophrenic producer: She freely does evil to innocent people and has many killed, then cries about how she is 'possessed'
by some evil and is suddenly free to follow her more human whims extensively, and she switches back and forth often like this in every episode as if they wanted us to like
her. This is obviously a case of commercial decisions being forced into the show whether they make sense or not. And if you still aren't convinced, there are rampant sex
scenes with modern attitudes, witches that behave like catty, scheming soap-opera queens, a witch in bondage gear, and a modern whore-house right in the middle of a puritan
town. I would ask what were they thinking, except it's obvious they weren't. This is a show that doesn't even begin to work.
Impact
Disaster mini-series based on a meteor impact, but not in the way you expect. This one rips off the basic plot from movies like Armageddon, but has ambition in the science
department, coming up with scenarios that would introduce things like loss of gravity, an exploding moon, loss of electric devices, the complete destruction of Earth,
etc. Unfortunately, the physics here wouldn't even convince a child, with a long list of mistakes and impossibilities, some of them so bad, they are embarrassing.
Apparently, there are no time-zones on Earth, the electromagnetic force can affect gravity and vice versa, brown dwarfs have super-dense mass, moon debris is not
affected by gravity, ships are held down by gravity whereas the sea-water isn't, and gravity is the force that "attracts smaller objects to larger objects".
Personally, I really enjoy watching even weaker disaster movies, but this one is so bad, and the human drama is so cliched, that, despite some good moments towards
the end, it was too painful even for me.
Meteor
Extremely dumb disaster mini-series about pieces of a huge smashed meteor causing havoc worldwide, with bigger pieces threatening to destroy the whole planet.
Most of the movie consists of the adventures of an assistant with social chaos, evil men, power and satellite failures, and whatnot, as she tries to get critical
information that can save the world to the meteor disaster center. This brings to mind a bad episode of 24 as contrived coincidences and bad timing stretch
out a plot device to hours on end, and I half expected a mountain lion to stop yet another attempt at transferring trajectory data. The fact that something
as basic as the algorithm to plot out meteor trajectories would only be in the hands of one person is bad enough, but when they keep forgetting to transfer
the program itself to the center, have no redundant systems for something as important as a planet-wide disaster management center, when the world's resources
and scientists seems to consist only of two Americans, and the meteor is so huge you can see it with the naked eye yet they have no clue how to hit it... the
IQ level of this show drops under zero. What kind of idiot doesn't think of backtracking a few meters to regain cell-phone coverage? The useless lengthy
side-plot about a corrupt cop gone nihilistic only makes things worse.
Under the Dome
Based on the first season.
I found the book by Stephen King to be another tired formulaic work by King with lazy copy-paste characters from his usual stable, much like most of his recent books.
But it did have a good idea of a town cut off from the rest of the world by a mysterious dome, and the rising tension and chaos that ensues. An extended TV series
based on this book produced by Spielberg could take the idea and develop it further, and even give the characters more dimensions with good actors. On the other hand,
padding out the novel to multiple seasons could result in a needlessly padded out soap-opera of lawless survivors, or worse. Unfortunately, almost none of my optimistic
expectations were fulfilled, and the bad turn was in fact even worse than I imagined. It starts out OK, with good effects and a collection of colorful characters. Some
characters were improved slightly over the novel, others were added, or left as poorly one-dimensional as in the novel. The idea of the dome allows chaos to gradually
increase as more citizens realize there is no hope, or law to tell them what to do, criminals run rampant, politicians try to collect more and more power, and secrets
rise to the surface in the pressure-cooker environment of the dome, or they continuously escalate. But then something really terrible happens: The writers start adding
more and more character and plot twists, as well as fantastical elements in each episode that keep adding to the mystery and power of the dome, and soon it's obvious
that they are taking their instructions from the 'Lost' playbook. Characters change so often they give you whiplash and they lose all semblance to reality, the dome
keeps developing more and more god-like powers, and the writers very quickly write themselves into a corner they cannot possibly get out of, and even start contradicting
themselves. The fantasy elements just keep piling up without rhyme or reason just to hook the audience, making any discerning viewer quickly lose interest.
Mist, The
Based on most of the single season.
I didn't like the movie based on this classic Stephen King short story/novella, so I was actually hoping this TV show would improve on it, but I wasn't counting on it.
Padding out a novella to a series doesn't sound like a good idea. The movie featured a childishly simplistic portrayal of religious fanatics, and the ending was completely
nonsensical in terms of character behaviour and was gratuitously doomsday in its approach. The story involves a rapid deterioration of society, as a group of people find
themselves trapped in a supermarket behind a mist of undefined horrors and scary otherworldly creatures, everyone pushed to their breaking point, bringing out the worst in
them. But, without careful and realistic characterization, this simply won't work. This series, at first, does seem better, and it enlarges its canvas to cover a whole
town of people with secrets and grudges, and instead of a supermarket, there are multiple pockets of people in a shopping mall, a hospital, etc. As such, it brings to
mind those zombie apocalypse movies, as well as disaster movies with each group of survivors going through their internal dramas under the pressure of a deadly and scary
environment. Unfortunately, it gets worse with every episode. The Mist and its creatures play by different rules in every episode, and the characters deteriorate to
heavy-handed, broadly-drawn crazy people that constantly do stupid or suicidal things, from the priest and his cohorts that go biblical, to doctors that suddenly turn
into mad scientists, to, obviously, military people that exert their power for no reason. But even the ordinary folk all turn nasty quickly and unrealistically until
it all falls apart. One would expect people to fall apart under these circumstances, but this is simply too heavy-handed and over-the-top.
Lost
Based on the first season.
A few dozen survivors of a plane crash find themselves deserted on a mysterious island with no savior in sight. Strange animals, monsters, artifacts and people are
discovered on the island that don't make any sense. Their back-stories are shown while they try to survive, the mysteries and circumstances growing stranger and more
puzzling all the time. This is one of the most manipulative but well-directed shows ever made that only introduces mysteries and doesn't reveal an inch, getting
viewers hooked while the more soapy drama unfolds. For example, many people have obviously seen the monster but we don't get to see it and nobody ever talks about
what they saw. When a character gets kidnapped, the victim comes back and should reveal some interesting secrets, but the writers give her amnesia. The show starts
off amazingly well but soon it's obvious that the writers are more interested in endless, incredulous and overly dramatic flashbacks than the more interesting action,
survival practicalities and secrets of the island. One story is so stupid it tells how a character robbed a bank and killed people just to get a toy with sentimental
value. This show isn't an adventure with a Macguffin; the adventure IS the Macguffin and the real show is just meandering soap. Even the huge mythology arc
of the X-Files progressed at high-speed compared to this. They lost me after half a season.
Reading reviews on subsequent seasons only confirm what I felt during the first year: that the writers never had a plan, that they are making things up as they go along,
that there is no way they could come up with satisfactory explanations since they don't know what it is themselves, and that the only goal was on pulling in an audience
using every trick in the book, not on writing a solid story that makes sense. The show simply makes up more and more convoluted nonsense involving sci-fi, mystical
mumbo-jumbo, time-travel and magic to keep audiences on its hook, because there never was a plot and they have to keep covering this up with more drawn-out lies and
tricks. This show is so despicably manipulative, that any temporary entertainment value in its individual episodes is destroyed. Now that the show is over, am I allowed
to point at all of you that kept watching it and laugh? A J.J. Abrams hack-job.
Castle Rock
Based on the first season.
I was pleasantly surprised by the previous collaboration between J.J. Abrams and Stephen King '11.22.63', especially given both their dismal TV repertoire. Alas,
this one is right back to the usual J.J. Abrams insultingly manipulative nonsense. This show slaps together a bunch of horror tropes, some of them obviously inspired
by King, and adds plenty of fan-servicing (another J.J. Abrams disease) with many references to King's books. It's about a cursed town of Castle Rock where it seems
nothing but bad things happen, as if several of King's stories all took place in one town. A mysterious prisoner found in the dungeons of a prison seems to bring
the evil with him. But there is also Henry Deaver who disappeared and came back, and his murdered priest of a father, whose name buzzes with shady rumors. For the
first three episodes or so it seems like it might be an intriguing one, with glimpses of a possible solid horror story emerging as it should. But don't be fooled.
The writers then take the show in dozens of different directions, and only connect some of the dots in superficial ways, leaving more questions open than closed,
and soon the questions feel as if they cannot be answered. It's Lost all over again, only more subtle. Towards the end of the first season, these fears are confirmed
with a vengeance, with mystical-sci-fi-time-reality-bending plot twists that try to confuse the audience into believing that everything has been tied together.
Except these superficially connected threads reveal a structure that is 100% utter nonsense. It's as if the writers worked only on plot mechanics that will draw in
an audience, but never had a story in mind. Don't bother with this one. It's pure fraud.
Manifest
Based on scattered episodes of the first season.
I'm very allergic to shows like this that are all about audience manipulation and no actual content, especially after 'Lost'. This one is much more 'Lost' than
'4400', featuring a flight that disappears for 5.5 years, only to come back with all its passengers, all of which have not aged, and sporting new psychic powers.
The mystery of what actually happened on the flight and what is happening to the passengers is not only drawn out artificially forever, it becomes very clear very
fast that there is no possible explanation that fits with all the facts, clues and plot-lines that the writers throw at us. A supernatural Bermuda Triangle-esque
situation soon gives way to government conspiracies, then sci-fi psychic experiments, special blood/DNS markers, etc. all of which are obviously not the answer since
it can't explain the obvious supernatural happenings. And then they go back to supernatural theories, except that the conspiracy and sci-fi angle undermined those.
Of course people are throwing every possible desperate theory at this show such as time-travel, alternate realities, and various supernatural ideas, except that none
of them fit, since the writers are obviously stretching this out and piling on the mysteries and ideas just to keep the audience watching. The more episodic crises
of the week involve 'Callings', voices and visions that the survivors receive in order to save someone, which goes way beyond psychic visions to an obviously controlling
god-like being that is using them like chess pieces in some unknown plan. Translation: The writers are too lazy to write real stories and mysteries, so they give their
characters visions and clues whenever they need to keep things moving in every single episode. In short, another horribly insulting show.
Starhunter
Based on half of the first season.
Bad sci-fi show that aspires to be the next Farscape, Firefly or even Andromeda. A bounty hunter in search of his kidnapped son travels through space hunting
and picking up criminals for a price while trying to take care of his bratty niece who serves as the technical wizard and engineer for the ship. The story arcs
take forever to even start and involve an uninteresting search for his son mixed with a mysterious organization that performs experiments on people and
a 'Divinity Cluster': genes that allow people to gain God-like powers. Most of the episodes consist of a fugitive-of-the-week who makes their lives difficult,
very often with unexplained super-powers, thus shifting this show into deus-ex-machina fantasy realms. The writing is a cut-and-paste job from other shows,
and often shows signs that the writer has no grasp of a situation he is creating with developments sloppily put together. The CGI effects are terribly cheap,
the actors range from dull to terribly artificial, and the humor is the worst, often feeling juvenile and awkward.
Intelligence
Based on the first four episodes.
By picking that title and not living up to it even remotely, the makers of this show are obviously setting themselves up for ridicule. This one doesn't even get off the ground,
as it starts with insultingly stupid ideas, and goes downhill from there with insultingly stupid writing. The sci-fi gimmick here is that someone invented a super-chip installed
in the mind of a spy with a specific 'genetic mutation' that gives him hi-tech super-powers. The basic super-power is... are you ready... a Google search. That's right, he can
search for information on anything instantly, or upload pictures for analysis and get information on anything that he sees inside his head. Granted, he also has access to
international top-secret databases and many other sources of information not normally provided to the average person, but it's still a Google search. The only advantage he has
over, say, an agent with a laptop and an internet connection, is that the search happens in his head and is therefore faster. Which isn't exactly something that spy agencies
are going to fight over. Actually, if you think about it for a second, his mind obviously isn't actually part of the internet, so he still has to access it via a search program
and internet connection, so his instant rich multimedia search results must be, in actuality, the result of a program that could just as easily be accessed via a computer device.
Also, the fact that he has access to top-secret information wherever he goes is the equivalent of sending someone with a laptop constantly logged into CIA's secret files, into the
field. Who in their right mind would do that? Another super-power is the ability to recreate scenes in 3D in his mind so that he can examine the evidence in great detail. Once
again, obviously a program that could be shown on a computer screen since his mind obviously wasn't capable of doing this beforehand. Except this turns out to be a 'bonus' feature
that the chip makers didn't know existed. I kid you not. Obviously no one here has any basic understanding of computer programming. The one aspect of this feature that actually makes
a unique use of the interface with his mind, is that it uses his imagination and subconscious to help fill in the gaps or to create an imaginary image from scratch. Imagine that:
Evidence that has been altered according to the whims of a subconscious. How on earth can that ever be useful?! And so on, each episode offers a dozen more offensive stupidities
like these, with the producers assuming that the audience will be distracted by the slick special-effects enough not to notice how badly the sci-fi was thought-through. The fact
that this super-agent is physically protected from all manner of assassins by a gorgeous female model is just another nail in the coffin of this DOA show. The Knight Rider for the dumb
internet and smartphone generation, except this one makes that show look brilliant.
Good Witch
Based on the first two episodes.
I shouldn't have bothered with a Hallmark show. Cassie is a small town 'witch' that uses premonitions, a magic touch, and herbs to heal her friends and neighbors and all
of their woes, even stuck doors and bad behaviour. A city doctor moves in with his city ways and his rebellious misbehaving teenage son, this giving them more hearts to heal.
Cue the smug looks, the cloying good messages, the overbearing do-good interfering behaviour, and miles and miles of fake happy smiles. All men and boys in this show are
emasculated and unrealistically submissive, and if they aren't it's only temporary just to give the girls something to correct. Yes, it's as bad as it sounds. It doesn't have
to be fake and cloying in order to be 'wholesome' guys. I could only take two episodes and even that was too much.
Bitten
Based on scattered episodes from the first season.
This is as bland and forgettable as it gets. It's a werewolf series with a super-warrior blonde werewolf chick, an ongoing feud between wolf packs, and a doomed romance.
Are they still trying to copy Buffy nowadays? There is a girl who is the only female that has been successfully converted into a wolf, she hates her ex-boyfriend for biting
her and is trying to separate from the pack, except he still loves her, and there are rival gangs and various individuals with ongoing complicated agendas that keep them
on their toes. There are plenty of rules on how to obey the alpha or hide from humans, but of course there will always be trouble-makers. The biggest problem here is
the acting: It's as if everyone takes medication before they get on set. Almost all of them recite their lines in a near-monotone, their faces every once in a while
fake an emotion or two, but otherwise they may as well be zombies. They would be very listless as humans, but as feral werewolves, they are ridiculous. The writing is
quite bland and uninspired as well, except you can't really tell if the writing is doing something interesting thanks to the tedious and sleep-inducing acting. I also
didn't like that the writers approach being a werewolf as if it were an arsenal of super-powers that they can use whenever they want with complete control, and the
super-strength powers seem to come and go inconsistently. The syrupy emo-soundtrack doesn't help either.
Witcher, The
Based on the first five episodes.
I think I have never been more confused. This fantasy show seems to be inspired by a very popular series of Polish fantasy novels, as well as an even more popular
series of video games. But since fans are claiming that this completely wrecked the story and has nothing to do with either, I am going to give the novels (which
I haven't read) the benefit of the doubt. The plot, as far as I can gather, involves a non-human monster-hunter and his destiny to meet a gifted princess of a conquered
kingdom of humans, as well as powerful sorceress. While he wanders the lands, he has to battle not only monsters, but evil kings, curses, elves, and other humans, as
well as a terrible and anachronistic troubadour. There is a lot of action and monsters and special effects, an endless parade of races and creatures, and Henry Cavill
is somewhat intense as the hero but isn't given much to do besides show off his fighting skills and scowls. Trouble is, the writing is so terrible, I found myself
yelling questions at the screen literally a hundred times per episode. What is happening? What was that all about? How did that person get there? Why did that person
do that? Why does almost every character change personality or motivation from one scene to another? Wasn't that person dead? What on earth is going on? And, although
I watched a few episodes to see if it would start coming together, it actually got increasingly worse with each episode. It feels as if someone had taken a series of
novels, picked random scenes from the books to film, skipping dozens of key developments and scenes or even dozens of years of character development. Powers have no
rules and come and go just like everything else. Time passed has no meaning. Characters never make any sense. Here's the big question: If both the fans and gamers
hate this show, and the writing is so confusing, why is the show rated so highly?
Raised by Wolves
Based on most of the first season.
Ridley Scott is no stranger to producing TV shows, but he is more involved in this one, directing the first couple of episodes, and the show is reminiscent of the mystical
sci-fi imagination of his 'Prometheus'. Unfortunately, as with other shows involving big sci-fi names like Spielberg, Nolan and Cameron, the end result is disastrously bad,
going off the rails within a couple of episodes, as if these directors didn't have time to steer their shows and just told the writers to go crazy with it. It also features
many of the huge problems with 'Prometheus' and the terrible character-work of that film. This is about a horrible future where humanity is basically destroying itself to
extinction, with the main warring factions being atheists vs religious 'Mithraists', both of them using advanced androids in very different ways. To try to survive, the
atheists send atheistic-trained androids to biologically birth human embryos on other planets and raise them, while the Mithraists take the long way around in an ark full
of humans. Both find their way to the same mysterious planet full of secrets, and the war continues between the children, some surviving religious adults and androids. A
large bulk of the show, however, consists of androids raising children. The androids' behaviour becomes increasingly strange, and the planet seems to be full of secrets of
strange creatures, symmetrical structures, and supernatural phenomena. The first two episodes promise a lot and deliver a rich imagination and a different kind of world,
and even the androids are appropriately artificial in their approach to parenting and interaction, but the problems start immediately after that with an extremely rapid
deterioration.
The problems are numerous: A problem such as an unlimited supply of power to androids that exert enormous amounts of energy, is minor, and could be attributed to a sci-fi
source of energy. The fact that humans built an android that is 100% invulnerable and loaded with dozens of strange deadly weapons with no safety mechanism and no weapon
in sight that has any effect on the android, seems impossible. Just compare this to Ridley's Blade Runner where androids were scary strong but still vulnerable, and with
a built-in safety expiration date. Also, it's physically impossible to create something that is invulnerable to all weapons. To add unstable emotional programming to such a
god-like dangerous android, is beyond stupid. This shows itself already in the first episode when the android mass murders many thousands of innocents while crying about
motherhood. Did all humans in the future lose their ability to think even basic precautions (same problem as Prometheus)? But my biggest problem with the androids is the
emotion: With every episode this becomes increasingly chaotic and illogical. Androids displaying emotion externally for the benefit of humans and interaction with humans
is one thing, but programming unstable unreliable random artificial non-human emotions internally into an android that can override programming, makes no sense whatsoever.
It's not like androids need emotions to run programs better. If anything, it makes them much less efficient. If you want an android to be a better mother, simply program
different priorities. It's not like they can ignore their programming. And the writers use a huge chunk of the show's time on this, having androids emulate over-the-top,
out-of-control humans emotions increasingly and constantly, even when alone or talking amongst themselves, and then suddenly they revert inconsistently to behaving like
cold robots again in random scenes. So if you were to view the android anthropomorphically (and it's hard not to), the female android is as despicable as a human can get,
mass-murdering innocents while obsessing over her emotions with children. And if you view her logically, she makes no sense whatsoever. I never wanted a creature to be
destroyed faster, and yet the writers kept protecting her with plot armor and invulnerabilities and making her increasingly worse. As if this weren't enough, there are
many more huge problems with this show: The religious aspect is laughable, written by people that obviously have no clue how religion works. The scenes of the religious
people switching off their brains completely and constantly quoting 'scripture' is straight out of Handmaid's Tale. But at least they treat androids with more common sense
(at first). And then there are the mystical scenes of special androids, motherhood, evolution, ghosts, visions, voices, digital simulations with a super-consciousness, etc.,
all written with complete and utter nonsense from the start. So what with show splitting its time between impossible and extremely obnoxious androids, laughable human
behaviour, and nonsensical mysticism, you can understand why I found myself having to force myself to continue watching already in episode five, and skimming over the rest.
Sweet Home
Based on the first five episodes.
Badly done Korean horror. An outbreak makes people turn into hungry gruesome monsters with completely random crazy mutations (not that it ever makes sense, it's just to
give the special-effects people a free hand). A large group of people in a high-rise building try to survive by locking out the rest of the world and staying in the building.
Problem is, in addition to some monsters somehow finding their way in, they have to deal with each other, and they are all highly unstable or unlikeable people without
exception. There are many severe fatal problems with this one: The screenplay is all over the place and seems only interested in monster-attack scenes, gruesome monster
visuals and violent survival or soap drama between one-dimensional character 'types', rather than on structured world-building or characters that make sense. In other words,
it's a comic book that doesn't know what it's doing. Another huge problem is the editing, one of the worst I've ever seen: It constantly cuts away from scenes right in the
middle of something important, stitches together random scenes, some of them flashbacks in such a way where you can't tell if something is a flashback, skips key information,
and skips key scenes during important scenes, etc. all this making me constantly yell confused questions at the screen every few seconds, making me increasingly frustrated.
I watched a few episodes hoping it would sort itself out, but it only got worse. In addition, the characters almost never behave like normal humans and add to the confusion.
Avoid this one.
Supergirl (DC)
Based on most of the first season.
I wasn't expecting much, and got a lot less. This show about Superman's young female cousin not only turned out to be as bad as I feared, it found new ways to be bad.
My primary reason for not liking Superman is that he is too powerful and invulnerable, lacking any sense of danger or humanity, and that whenever the writers
need it, they simply make him exert more effort and suddenly Superman can do anything, including moving whole planets or turning back time. This show only partially
corrects this problem, giving various people weapons that somehow make Supergirl much more vulnerable, providing some limitations to her powers, and introducing many
villains with various superpowers that seem to overpower Supergirl (at least at first). But this is all handled poorly and merely introduces more contrivances
since these things are only used when it is convenient for the plot. Supergirl finds herself up against something that seems more powerful at first (except that
most fights are silly since she almost never gets actually damaged), and then she conveniently finds the solution or effort needed in order to win in time for the end of
the episode. These limitations then disappear for the rest of the season to introduce new ones. Plus, I never understood how someone can crush steel one second,
and then punch robots and villains in a fight without crushing them instantly. Thus powers come and go throughout almost each episode according to the plot timeline
rather than according to any rules or logic. This seems to be a general problem with many DC characters where powers are very badly defined.
But this show has two more big problems: One is that the writing is at the level of a b-movie kiddie show. People often do things that make no sense whatsoever except
that it sounds cool, events and actions are poorly thought-out, there is never any real violence, and emotional problems flare up and are solved neatly in every episode.
The other problem is the insulting political-correctness and millennial vapidity. Only women are in charge here of absolutely everything. All human men are either bad,
crooked, evil, or assistants to women. Supergirl finds she can do things that her much more experienced cousin Superman can't do. Girls beat men at almost everything
with minimal effort. Characters often make speeches with a heavy liberal agenda on how society treats women and minorities. Supergirl make much ado over every emotion
she has, except the emotions come and go every minute like she was still a kid. Even her heroics come off as a selfish form of entitlement posing as morality. Etc.
Plus, the structure of this show is mostly episodic with uninteresting monster-of-the-week tediousness, so it's no wonder the writers focus increasingly on the soapy
personal drama with crushes and love interest drama straight out of high-school. In short, this is simply a bad show on many levels and not even fit for kids unless
you want their minds to be warped.
Being Human (US)
Based on most of the first season.
Presumably, I should be reviewing this show objectively on its own terms even though it is yet another US remake of a UK show. But it doesn't have its own terms, and the only
reason this was made was for money, so fairness goes out the window. The British show was very good and did not need a remake. To re-use the same scripts and story two years
after, solely to be able to cast American actors with American accents and dialogue is simply pathetic. If it were a straight remake of roughly equal quality, then that would
at least be something. But it is inferior in every way: The IQ level is lowered, the plot developments, at first, are copied, but then they add padding, extra elements and
changes that only detract from what should be the focus of this show: humanity as lived by non-humans. The casting is mostly bland. Witwer is cast for his 'vampiric' looks
and is passably good, but he is the best of the lot. Josh, with a permanent deer-caught-in-headlights-look that represents personality, doesn't hold a candle to the original
George who lent the original show most of its comedy, personality and intelligence. And Sally's presence is as ghostly as her character. They have no chemistry, and the reduced
comedy mostly comes off as artificial thanks to the blandness. Most of the humanity, heart and personality of the original is gone. So, in summary, there is no point in watching
this when you have the original, except in order to appreciate the original more. Unless you prefer gloss over heart.
Believe
Based on scattered episodes from the single season.
Although this nonsense is only partially produced by J.J. Abrams, it has his fingerprints all over it. Taking its cue from Firestarter, this involves a little girl with super-psychic
powers that is on the run from the government with the help of some dedicated rogue agents, scientists, and her father whom they helped escape from death row. They run, fight, run
again, but in between all this running and hiding, they manage to focus on little dramas helping ordinary people using her special powers. The biggest hurdle with this show
is the fact that the writers give her every and any psychic power ever imagined, but allow her to use them only at random based on the needs of the plot, drama and momentum. One minute
she is in complete control and can do specific things with specific powers, the next she can't do anything even while emotional, just so that the danger can accumulate and cause more
drama. Imagine a superhero movie where he has every super-power from every superhero movie ever made, only he can use each power based on the writers' lazy needs. This is both
incredibly lazy and insulting. And this laziness is not only concerning her powers. Other characters keep doing stupid senseless things just to further the plot, like hand over
their prize girl to a guy who is being chased by every law-enforcement group on the planet. And the bad guys don't seem to even have their own interests in mind, doing 'bad things'
that are detrimental to their own agenda. Another problem with this show is that it over-indulges in her angelic properties of wanting to help everyone, having her protectors
believe in her as if she were Jesus, except she acts more like a spoiled brat that uses and risks everyone for her good deeds, and throws a tantrum when she doesn't get her way.
Of course, the thrilling plot-arcs of the government conspiracy is always put on hold while she pursues her episodic good deed of the week. In short, a very lazy, boring, insulting
and manipulative show.
Hotel Del Luna
Based on the first three episodes.
Watching another South Korean fantasy-romantic-comedy, I find myself seriously wondering whether the whole country is actually populated by bitchy girls being mean,
or fantasizing about being mean, to their boy-toys. What is it about this relationship trope that is repeated hundreds of times? Yes, I was fooled once again by glowing
reviews, but it seems that all Korean comedies are cheesy cliches with romance targeted at 14-year-old girls and humor suited for small children. And no matter how
silly they are, they will have reviewers describing the show as if it were fit for adults. This one is about a supernatural hotel that caters to the dead that haven't
moved on to the afterlife for whatever reason. The hotel is run by a really young lady who happens to be an ancient ultimate warrior looking for a new young hotel
manager... hey! I heard that snickering. This destined romantic couple look and act like two mannequins, and he may not want to work for her and her scary ghosts now,
but just wait til she teaches him a lesson... OK, stop that snickering. The supernatural elements are completely random, any rules are broken minutes later, anything
can happen as long as they think it looks cool, and the approach to ghosts is to create miles and miles of pretty but completely random special effects and ghostly
abilities without rhyme or reason. I'll give you one guess whether their destinies bring them together backed by the most perfect romantic music soundtrack... OK,
really, stop that snickering or I'll play loud schmaltzy music til your ears bleed.
Scarlet Heart
Based on the first four episodes.
Fooled again by a popular and highly-rated Korean TV show. The descriptions promised a soaring historical drama and romance with a time-travel twist. What I got instead was
a story about a teenage girl from current times transported to 10th Century Korea and waking up in the body of a princess in the middle of a complex rivalry between princes
for the throne. Except that the eight princes look like they all came from a modern boy band complete with abs and modern haircuts, and everyone behaves in very modern ways.
I had to keep reminding myself every few seconds that this was the 10th Century. The fighting and secrets are over-the-top melodramatic, and this is mixed with cutesy comedy
as the modern girl finds herself up against 10th century rules. Except that they don't seem to mind much no matter what she does and how many rules she breaks in shocking ways.
She falls in love with one gentle prince, then with a dark wolf prince with a disfigured face that he keeps behind a modern haircut and chic mask. In short, this is like a
mix of Twilight-esque romance melodrama combined with teenage girl romantic comedy, and the time-travel angle is only there so that modern teenagers can transport themselves
into a 'historical' setting with many boy-toy princes by looking through the eyes of the modern princess.
Last Man on Earth, The
Based on scattered episodes of the first season.
This 2015 show's first second starts with an unintended joke: "2020: The year after the virus". Yes, it's post-apocalypse time, and a destructive, man-child slob is the only survivor.
Or is he? After a year of a spiraling destructive binge of post-apocalyptic proportions, his deep 'longings' for a female of the human species doesn't exactly work out as he
hoped. You know the sentences that start with "even if you were the last person on Earth I..."? Well this show uses these as its setup and proceeds to make hilarious comedy
out of it. The characters are over-the-top obnoxious and idiotic in an annoying way, but the situation is funny, and I was laughing out loud for about 2 episodes. But you can't
build a long-running show based on obnoxious, over-the-top and skin-deep cartoon characters like these, and by the third episode I was cringing and suffering, and it only got
increasingly painful with every episode. This show isn't content with merely using the horrible 'idiotic man-child sitcom character', it takes it even further. And the rest
don't do well either. The writing is juvenile and all I could think of is how funny this would be if it actually featured people. So there you have it; From hilarious to painfully
annoying in 40 minutes.
Forbidden Science
Based on three episodes from the single season.
I never understood the appeal of softcore sex flicks. If you are looking for sex, then just watch porn; if you want an entertaining movie, then just watch a normal
movie. But this kind of crap with its focus on casting for looks and creating sexy sex scenes is neither here nor there. This TV series attempts to blend sci-fi
with softcore flicks, placing the drama in the future where cloning, replaceable body parts, androids, and virtual reality are all available. But the writers do nothing
interesting with these concepts, opting for cliches and messy, almost incomprehensible plot developments. Imagine what a cheap soap opera would do with sci-fi
and you basically have this show. Back-stabbings, corporate wars, scandals, lust, crimes of passion, all weave their convoluted and laughably implausible threads
while the bad actors flatly recite their lines and fake their moans and groans during the sex scenes.
What We Do In The Shadows
Based on the first three episodes.
The Office has much to answer for. This show, like the movie it is based on, turns vampires into a 'comical' faux-reality-show in the vein of The Office, except, like
most shows that try to emulate that show, they have the actors go into this artificial mode of over-the-top dumb caricatures that are unrealistically unaware of themselves
and everyone around them to try to get some laughs. Even the original The Office had a minimal sense of realism compared to these shows. The lack of realistic characters
is what makes this kind of thing so direly lacking in laughs. It's a similar problem to when actors try to be funny and mug for the camera instead of just being
characters and letting the writing create the laughs. Vampires, in this show, are just idiotic and awkward 'people' with flat-mate problems (including dish-washing duties)
as well as the usual variety of vampire superpowers. They seek out virgin victims just because it's fun and standard practice, their relationships with their 'familiar'
slaves are more often awkward than not, and their egos and social issues due to being centuries old produce many uncomfortable situations. This makes the show sound
funnier than it is, though. As I said, the characters are so broadly written and so dumb, they barely get a chuckle per episode.
Wellington Paranormal
Based on the first two episodes.
I think it's safe to say that after 'Flight of the Conchords', 'What We Do In The Shadows' and this one, these guys' brand of humor is definitely not for me. Portraying
characters with single-digit IQs is not funny in itself. In this case we get a bunch of cartoonishly idiotic and deadpan police-men dealing with paranormal phenomena,
like some kind of reality cop-show for braindead audiences. Barring a couple of chuckles per episode, the rest is just non-people not reacting to demons, aliens and ghosts
in any normal way while patrolling their neighborhood, and barely surviving without noticing the danger or the obviously supernatural phenomena. Then there's some
Office-style 'humor' while debriefing at the station with other people as impossibly stupid as them. Where's the wit?
Birds of Prey (DC)
Based on 5 episodes of the single season.
Girl-power superhero series with some teenage angst featuring, yet again, bland, instantly forgettable protagonists with zero personality and poor writing. The daughter
of batman and catwoman (was this written by children?), is the Huntress, a crime-fighting bitchin' superhero who gets her supernatural powers from either her parents
even though they had no supernatural powers, or from the fact that she is a meta-human along with dozens of other meta-humans (who are rip-offs of X-Men/Heroes), because
the writers can't seem to make up their minds. She also is another in the long line of bland and pretty female actresses to think that having a personality means acting
like a bitch. A crippled batwoman serves as the brains and computer/gadget wiz, and a psychic teenage Dina serves the horrible whining even though she has absolutely
nothing to whine about. All three are complete airheads and can't convince anyone of any talent besides the fact that they just got off the makeup chair and never
have a hair out of place even after climbing up buildings and fighting. The writing never does anything interesting and even gets sloppy often, there is only minimal
seasonal developments, and the structure is episodic villain-of-the-week. Terrible.
Lost Girl
Based on a handful of episodes from the first season.
Yet another cookie-cutter fantasy series, this one about a succubus and her plucky assistant running a P.I. gig with the help of a policeman and a slew of supernatural
beings, both good and evil, barely just hidden from human eye. This setup has been done so many times before, it's beyond tired. The structure is mostly episodic
supernatural mystery or evil creature of the week, with extremely lazy writing, convenient clues and developments so it can all be wrapped up by the end of the episode.
If this didn't have the supernatural angle, it would be a bottom-rung detective show. There is also lip service paid to a very boring story arc which progresses at a snail's
pace about her finding her mother who abandoned her. So the writing is painfully bland or dumb, but what about the characters? Well, the succubus uses her sexual
powers to manipulate anyone she feels like, basically raping people, she uses even her friends and lovers, sucks them dry, then throws some kind of moral tantrum at them
while throwing herself at everyone else that has what she wants, and she is so stubborn and selfish that she obliviously causes trouble or pain to everyone around her.
So, basically, not very likeable. But that's OK because she is a feminist symbol of success, refusing to join any clan or commit to any man, and is most definitely in charge
of her sexuality. Her assistant is a walking cliche of sassy, cutesy girl, except she is a thief, so she doesn't do much better. The rest of the cast are better, but they
are in strictly supporting roles in every sense of the word. In short, skip it.
Defying Gravity
Based on the first four episodes.
For a show supposedly depicting a realistic futuristic space mission, they couldn't have come up with a worse implementation. The show is supposed to tell the tale
of a six-year manned mission to several planets in the year 2040, with the drama provided by the crew and an endless series of misadventures. For starters, the
cast looks like they were selected from a reality show, with a token Asian and black man, women selected for looks over anything else, and the rest being either
cliched, or terribly bland. The drama is somewhere between a soap and a reality show, meandering between endless banal relationship issues and sex-oriented
shenanigans. The science is full of amateurish and lazy errors (using nano-technology to explain why everything isn't floating is just pathetic), the writing
is poor, and the dialogue is full of endless male-bashing. On top of it all, they make use of an alien/sci-fi/supernatural/mystical mystery that moves at a
snail's pace, and mix endlessly annoying and pointless flashbacks into every episode, both ideas taken from Lost. In short, a compilation of everything that
is bad on TV.
Ghost Whisperer
Based on a handful of episodes from the first season.
Extremely formulaic and repetitive episodic show. What's worse is that even what it repeats is painfully cliched and crassly touchy-feely. Melinda (a pretty
but thoroughly unconvincing Jennifer Love Hewitt) sees and interacts with ghosts all of her life. There are no tricky psychic powers here, ghosts are simply
depicted as plainly visible people with pale faces and emotional problems that only she can see. Almost every episode is the same: Something spooky/scary happens
until she quickly realizes it's just another ghost that needs help (when will she learn?), some quick and easy research reveals everything there is to know about
the ghost and its problems, she faces rude disbelief before going through some emotional crisis with the friends and relatives, solving both the ghost's
and relatives' psychological problems in a matter of days before sending the ghost off into the light in an overflowing display of emotions. Her husband
is so idealistically supportive that he almost doesn't exist as a real human being, and the rest of her friends and family get some light and insignificant drama.
Motherland: Fort Salem
Based on the first six episodes.
This takes place in a fantasy 'alternate-history' world where witches made a deal with the government to defend their country and have since then taken over the militaries,
and practically all the power in the whole world. The primary protagonists are teenage girls in military training camp while a fierce (special-effects) battle is taking place
between evil and good witches. Now I have no problem with making films with a cast that is comprised of one exclusive gender or race. If the story is stronger or more authentic
and realistic because of this, then by all means do it. It's the leftists that have a problem with it. The problem is hypocrisy. They scream bloody murder when they don't include
women, but it's OK to exclude men. This show not only has a military that is all female, the only men in this show are either useless boy-toys and daddies with zero personality
that are only there to praise the girls, or bad guys, or tribal minorities. There are no strong male wizards, despite the long tradition in fantasy of including these. Putting
all that aside, the biggest problem here is that this is a catty soap-opera for teenage girls. They spend the vast majority of the time fighting, being bitchy to each other, or
having endless emotional outbursts as well many parties and sexual flings, with barely any time left for training. And then are surprised when they fail to win battles against
their enemy. Also there is no sense of danger or action since this show is based on an endless stream of new spells and magic, and there's always someone with a newer better
spell and special effect. I don't think I've ever seen a show that is this absolute in terms of its target audience.
Nine Lives of Chloe King, The
Based on a handful of episodes from the first season.
Yet another clueless, cliched, cookie-cutter, empty-headed show about a blonde superheroine, this one obviously targeted at 15 year old girls, featuring a
teenager who finds out she's some kind of catwoman. She has a chummy, cutesy relationship with her adoptive mom, she has cutesy friends, and she is all angsty
because of her powers, her destiny and the fact that she loves two hunks. Oh, and she can kill guys by kissing them. Enough said. The story arc is boring as hell,
the writing is so dumbed down, your brain will melt into bubble-gum, the personalities and developments never rise above the level of a soap opera, and the fighting
is so bad and her physical skills so obviously non-existent, that even the terribly choppy editing job that does everything it can to spice up the fight scenes
can't hide this. During the first episode, she tells her Mom: "Do not cry, squeal or hug me". This is exactly what I feel like telling this show.
Roswell
Based on a handful of scattered episodes.
So, like, this cute chick gets saved by an alien with super powers who looks just like a hot guy and now her life is gonna become complicated in addition to her wanting
to be more popular, and she has to hide this secret from her friends, but, like, the alien is so lonely even though he has two alien friends, and they all are so like,
alien-like you know, because they pour tabasco sauce over everything they eat and they can listen to CDs without a CD player, but everything will be OK because the
alien thinks she is beautiful, but then the UFO-obsessed FBI-sheriff guy starts suspecting things, and his son, who was dumped by the cute chick, also starts making
her life difficult, so her life is so gonna suck, OMG right? No, really, even as a teenager I didn't want to watch these dumb teenage shows. It gets a little more
complicated as it progresses, dealing with alien hybrids, secret destinies, various competing government agendas, etc. but still with the same angsty teenage base, and
with writing that takes itself seriously, designed to appeal to dumb superficial teenagers.
Leftovers, The
Based on most of the first season.
This show's only creativity is in finding new ways to be terrible. It's like some emo kid thought for 5 seconds and came up with a fantasy event to get everyone
emotional, then made a TV show about it. The event, is that 2% of the world's population suddenly disappears into thin air. Somehow, instead of just making a whole
lot of questioning people that get over their loss after a few years, three years later the world becomes populated by an organization that asks relatives a whole bunch
of stupid questions, a cult of people (mostly women) that don't talk, dress in white and appear everywhere to remind people of what they lost, another cult forming
around an obnoxious, sleazy, bisexual idiot that spouts platitudes and somehow convinced his followers that he knows something, and a whole bunch of depressed people
that make dramatic mountains out of molehills. Lots and lots of drama and tension is made over the white cult, even though they are easily ignored, and their ideas and
mission never make sense, changing from episode to episode. Pseudo-mystical things keep popping up to add to the 'mystery' like dogs gone wild, coincidences, visions,
and a deer that smashes its way through houses, all blatantly trying to make the show deep and meaningful accompanied by terrible touchy-feely music. The mystery of
the event is never explored or discussed with any intelligence, and several people claim to know what it was about but never reveal anything, of course. After watching
the show, I looked up the credits, and was not in the least surprised to find that the creator also made Lost.
Vampire Diaries, The
Based on many scattered episodes from the first season.
Flat, pedestrian, teenage soap drama with vampires. That just about sums this up. There are two vampire brothers, one evil, one on the wagon, both falling for Elena.
There's a witch with growing powers. And then there is a whole bunch of secrets, vampire rivalries, several other love triangles and unrequited loves, power games,
and plots. If the above sounds like a soap, it's because that's basically what it is. The entire cast consists of forgettable hunks and pretty airheads, the writing
is cliched and always predictable and never brings anything new to the table. Even the vampire powers are used brainlessly, with a convenient ring that allows them
to walk in sunlight (otherwise how could vampires go to high school?), and various other superpowers used or forgotten at the writers' whims. One episode even has a
vampire working out, which makes no sense if you think about it for more than two seconds. Vampiricism is handled exactly the same way as drug dealing and drug addiction,
demonstrating yet again the lack of imagination, and even Damon, who is at first chaotically evil in sometimes unpredictable, but simple ways, is softened up for yet
another love triangle. Even the trashy True Blood had some texture and character, but this is just a barbie-doll teenage vampire show.
Originals, The
Based on the first five episodes.
It only takes a couple of episodes to see that this is a spin-off of Vampire Diaries and more of the same glossy garbage. Granted, the actors are tiny bit older in their 20s,
improving it slightly over the silly teenage vibe in that show, but it's still the same approach. All characters are never convincing in the slightest and look exactly like what
they are: Vapid, bratty, pouty and pretty models with 100% attitude and zero personality, pretending to have witchy or vampiric powers and acting like a younger cast of Bold
and Beautiful in a glossy 'gang war'. Plotting and betrayals fly in every episode as they fight over control for New Orleans and over some hybrid wolf-vampire baby, with
law-enforcement nowhere in sight. One would think that after 1000 years, they would have learned something, but they're just a bunch of catty young brats with badly fake
accents, including the '1000-year-old' boys.
Legacies
Based on the first two episodes.
Going into this, I wasn't aware that it was part of that franchise, but it didn't take long to realize that this is a second spin-off of 'Vampire Diaries' and 'Originals',
and, if possible, things were only getting worse. This is yet another rip-off, copy-paste job to deliver another set of entitled, catty teenagers with super-powers in
a soap opera. Do I really need to review this crap a third time? This time, we get the same old formula of X-Men used yet again, combined with Harry Potter and every
vampire/witch/werewolf cliche ever made. It involves a school for supernaturals, where they even play a special school sport, learn magic and fight dragons. Except that,
somehow, in this world, the only people with supernatural powers are teenagers, and all of them are bland, forgettable, catty or walking cliches. (Perhaps some supernatural
adults would appear later on but I didn't stay to find out). Of course, nowadays they are also all despicably entitled, and genders and sexuality are somehow both ultimately
meaningless and meaningful at the same time. Instant junk, from the first minute and every minute that follows.
Mutant X (Marvel)
Based on a handful of episodes from the first season.
Laughably bad superhero show that rips off X-Men, pitting groups of mutant young heroes with various genetically engineered superpowers against each other for
'cool' looking fight scenes. This show and its actors focus only on looking cool. There is no character development because they don't have personalities.
No one is likeable because they don't exist. They over-use wire-work in fight scenes because they can't fight. The writing is childishly simple and takes no account
of logic, consistency or any plot developments that make sense. This one is for children only. Stupid ones.
American Horror Story
Based on the first five episodes.
Absolutely terrible 'horror' series by FX, with a different 'story' per season. Except that it isn't a story in any real sense of the term, as a story needs to be constructed,
whereas this is just a bunch of randomly slapped together horror-movie elements. It's as if someone watched 100 Hollywood horror movies in a month then tried to see how many
things they can squeeze into every single episode of this series. At one point in an episode, all of the following was happening simultaneously: A home-invasion by psychotic
murder-obsessed teens, a supernatural pregnancy, a vengeful ghost, an evil house, a killer ghost, a hysterical past flame looking for revenge, a mad killer-stalker who killed
his family, a husband who may or may not be killing when he passes out, and a Down's syndrome girl who warns of impending death (as if it wasn't obvious already). And this only
takes up part of an episode. Of course, the characters never make any sense or come close to resembling real people's behaviour. How could they? Perhaps this is horror for an
ADD person with a single-digit IQ, but the real horror is in how many people are watching this show and rating it so highly, and how it managed to hire so many good actors.
And it is no surprise that Lady Gaga joined this show, since the writing is as disciplined and tasteful as her dress-code. Another over-the-top trashy show by Ryan Murphy,
except this one is even more over-the-top than usual, is completely brainless, and designed to attract a tasteless audience with no attention span. The fact that this audience is
so large is cause for concern.
Darknet
Based on all six episodes.
30-minute episodes containing about 3-6 little horror pseudo-stories that feel more like a couple of scenes from a horror movie that was never developed beyond a murder scene
and a half-baked 'twist'. These 'stories' are often 'linked' together by simply making the characters meet each other in random places. Almost all the shorts are either just
mere surprise murder scenes, or they leave you hanging wondering what the point was, or they never make any sense, just showing random people becoming killers or cruel sadists
without rhyme or reason. People encounter horror situations when they least expect it, often following clues or playing games, sometimes involving found-footage. The horror
mostly involves murders, and vicious or disturbed people, with only occasional hints of something supernatural (unless it only seems that way because it's so poorly and randomly
written). To cut a short story shorter, this is horror for the ADD smart-phone generation that equate brainless randomness with unique mystery, and that think that short bursts
of sudden highly-contrived violence or cruelty by random people is intriguing horror. If this and American Horror Story present the new face of horror, then we may as well
give up on the whole genre. Beyond brainless, and a complete waste of time.
Tripping the Rift
Based on the first four episodes.
Another unfunny attempt at 'adult' comedy animation a la South Park, this one with a sci-fi theme that throws random references to Star Trek and many other sci-fi movies
and staples. Except this isn't adult, this is juvenile from the mind of precociously filthy 10 year old boy, or a man who never mentally matured past that age.
The height of wit in this show is having God duck in front of a space ship to cause someone behind him to die then call out 'suckers', waving bouncy big boobs
and butt every other minute in front of the screen, kidnapping a chainsaw-sportsman by shoving something up his butt, having a spaceship call someone a whore, and
calling someone 'Harry Ballsack'. Enough said.
Dracula
Based on the first four episodes.
I suppose this is the Millennial version of Dracula, and what a travesty it is. Dracula is transformed into a business-man industrialist hunk with fashionable facial
hair who is fighting an evil, secret-cult called Order of the Dragon in order to avenge his wife's murder. Stakes and garlic are no longer relevant, and drinking blood
is secondary to his plotting and scheming. Dracula becomes the relative good guy since he has some morals when it comes to his romantic love and is fighting a bloodthirstier
cult. Imagine that. Renfield is suddenly a wise black butler, and Van Helsing becomes a co-conspirator with Dracula (!). Re-imagining a classic is one thing, but this is a
gang-rape that goes against the spirit of the original on so many levels. Perhaps they would like to re-imagine Sherlock Holmes next by casting him as a mafia boss and FBI renegade
who tracks down criminals in order to gain control of his territory? To add insult to gang-rape, they have Dracula sleeping around in the now obligatory titillating sex scenes, all
the women in this show for some reason behave like insufferably arrogant harlots, the overdone fight scenes involve a woman wearing leather straight out of a Matrix clone,
attitudes by and to women and black men are completely anachronistic, and Dracula is an arrogant prick with zero charm, making one wonder why women are falling at his feet.
Absolutely terrible. Note to self: After Tudors and this, avoid anything with Rhys Meyers.
Sense8
Based on the first six episodes.
More clueless over-cooked propaganda trash from the one-hit-wonder boys The Wachowskis. To be fair, there is a fun sci-fi/fantasy idea at the center of this, but it takes
too long to start getting interesting, and by then you have been inundated by the politically-correct hammer that is the Wachowskis. The plot involves powers to connect
humans to each other in a cluster of psychic links that allow them not only to share all thoughts and feelings, but to visit each other, help, and make use of each other's
skills. Of course, there is also a Big Bad Evil, who wants to control or destroy them, but this story arc disappears for most of the season and instead the show focuses on
their personal dramas and various escalating dangers and back-stories. In that sense, it's like Lost, where the plot is a manipulative backdrop for the smaller stories.
Which brings me to the characters: There's a gay Mexican action-hero actor who has to keep it a secret to protect his macho image, an African from Nairobi who worships Van
Damme and who is has to face local vicious crime to help his mother who has AIDS, an Indian woman with pharmaceutical knowledge who is pressured to marry someone she doesn't
love, and a white cop who tries to help a young gang-banger despite 'prejudice against black people'. There's a Korean super-woman who is both good at business and kick-boxing,
who can beat professional male fighters three times her size extremely easily even though she's an obviously untrained skinny person (no Matrix-powers here and yet...), and
whose father and brother treat her like garbage just because she is a woman. Then there's a professional ruthless German criminal with ties to the mob, a female DJ from Iceland
with a dark past, and finally, a transsexual who is scorned by everyone except his black lover, and who is one of those fantasy hackers that can hack anything easily without
research or work. In short, it's like the PC, LGBT, and Benetton dream-cast, and the writing makes sure you keep getting the message of victim-hood and widespread 'prejudice'
over and over, along with constant rainbow sex scenes and dripping dildos. Of course, the psychic-joining idea takes on a whole new meaning here, but I kept watching for a few
episodes anyways, and just when the stories started getting interesting beyond the clobbering agenda, the characters join in a laughable 'psychic' orgy where suddenly all
the straight people instantly become bisexual and love it. Remember that ridiculous rave party in Matrix II? I wanted a sci-fi show and got a pride parade instead.
Mists of Avalon, The
A Feminist-Pagan reconstruction of the Arthurian legend based on the popular book by Bradley which justifies its revisionism because the myth of Arthur
is steeped in contradictions and unknowns as well as Christian-male alleged twisting of facts. Not having read the book, and knowing that the fans of the book
hate this movie, I will stick to criticizing the movie, but I can't help but feel that at least some of the problems have been passed on from the original story.
Firstly, where the book supposedly bashes Christianity, this series commits the serious sin of being new-age, politically correct claptrap, whitewashing
both religions and their questionable practices, and claiming that all religions are equal and valid. Not only that, but some of the Pagan women here seem to be
Christian moralists at heart and aren't consistent with their Pagan ethics. Secondly, by making all men into pathetic submissive pawns of the women, they have
committed the same sin they accused men of doing: that of one-sided twisting of facts and hogging of credit. On top of all this, although this is supposedly
a feminist statement, the movie proves that putting women in power would be a huge mistake as most of them act like soap-opera, selfish, catty, fatalistic drama queens.
In summary: Good acting and production values, but the screenplay is as bad as it can get.
Witches of East End
Based on the first five episodes.
Strictly for dumb teenage girls, also because they are the only ones young enough not to remember Charmed. This is pretty much a carbon-copy of that show, which was a terribly
dumb and girly show to begin with. This has less annoying characters, but that's not saying much, and its unoriginality lowers its score some more. Two young women discover
they are witches from a family of witches, and have to fight both romantic dramas and triangles as well as a variety of evil curses and warlocks. Like Charmed, the approach to magic
is completely chaotic, with powers and rules that come and go as needed by the writers. Some spells have consequences, others don't, useful spells and powers sometimes work,
or don't work, and anything can be resolved with a new magic spell when it's time for the climax. The boring casting is strictly the local flat modelling factory (except for Julia
Ormond, what is she doing here?), some of which look and behave like they were stolen from a soap opera, and the guys are fantasy-hunks as imagined by teenage girls, that never
resemble or behave as in reality. Throw in some Twilight-style romantic entanglements and the picture should be complete.
Eastwick
Based on the first five episodes.
Let's compare this turkey to the greatly underrated movie Witches of Eastwick with Nicholson: Where the original had real women, this one has soap queens acting like 14 year
old girls, the mysterious and scary magic of the original is replaced with some kind of comic book mentality where each woman gets only one superpower, the complex and devilish
Nicholson is replaced by an obvious and dumb fratboy, the wickedness of the original is replaced with soap opera bitchiness, and the superb dialogue, rants, witty provocations
are all replaced by stupidity. In addition, the women commit murderous acts on anyone that annoys them with only an oops and a gasp as a reaction, and the people are all
cartoonishly scandalous because, obviously, this show wants to be the next Desperate Housewives. There is a developing story arc, but who cares when the show is this terrible.
Despicably bad.
Beauty and the Beast (2012)
Based on a handful of episodes from the first season.
I wasn't expecting much and got much worse. It's the romantic magical story updated with a very misguided sci-fi twist for modern 'feminist' air-headed teenage girls. The 'Beauty'
in this version is a kick-ass super-detective woman who looks like she just had her hair brushed perfectly even seconds after beating up two guys three times her size. And she
somehow combines detective work with gossip, as her cases often involve a romance gone bad. A sample of her 'brilliant' detective work is that she concluded that a woman must
be pregnant because she had a used pregnancy test box in her bag. The 'Beast' is even worse: A heart-throb hunk with a scar on his face, who turns into a strong monster, more
often voluntarily than not, whenever he has to save women. Obviously the writers of this show are missing the point of the original story and its broad appeal by a few light
years and the 'Beast' is a joke. Much angst is made over whether he will heal or not, and their not-so-challenging romance, while a secret (and very incompetent) military
group try to kill him and everyone involved with him. Except the acting is as superficial and fake as the ideas behind this show. A complete waste of time.
Spooks: Code 9
Based on the first 3 episodes.
Dreadful side-project by the maker of Spooks, supposedly designed for a younger crowd and the result is horrible. Some actors of 24 and Spooks are already implausibly
young, but here they look fresh out of high-school and act like it too. So what's the excuse for making them into spies for MI-5? Nothing less than a nuclear bomb.
See, new terrorists are dynamic and therefore need a new generation of spooks to counter-attack after the failure of the old regime. Yes, the show actually argues
this incredibly stupid point. Nothing interesting is made of post-nuclear London, the budget is much smaller than Spooks, and the show is as lame as it sounds. Kids
playing spies in a show that takes them seriously. What's next, a West Wing with 16 year olds running America?
Kindred: The Embraced
Based on the first three episodes.
A short-lived vampire mafia show, based on a role playing game with a large fanbase, that looks, feels, sounds and smells like a soap opera. Various vampire clans
are clashing under the ultimate leadership of Julian, with a cop on their tail who got sucked into their circles via a vampiric love triangle. This wallows in the
soap opera staples of lust, jealousy, betrayal, melodrama and beauty, only with fangs and glossy clan wars. The casting and acting are glamorously wooden, but the
cheesy 'romantic' dialogue is the true offender, making it impossible to watch this trash for more than 10 minutes. By the producer of Melrose Place and Beverly
Hills 90210 and it shows.
100, The
Based on the first three episodes.
The list of stupidities in this show in the first episode alone would take a couple of pages. Let's start with the premise: Nuclear war wiped out Earth, leaving 4000
survivors in a space station 100 years later, except that their resources are running out, so they decide to send 100 juvenile delinquents back down to a supposedly
radioactive Earth to test the survivability of such a move. It's like a teenage fantasy come true: Teenagers get the planet to themselves without adults to supervise them.
Except that it looks like the same stupid teenagers wrote this show. If you were running out of options, would you send criminal teenagers that are only interested in
themselves to test your only chance of survival? And with only last-second instructions on where to find food? And no equipment or survival instructions or training? And
without even a Geiger counter? And would you send 100 of your youngest from a dwindling 4000-strong human race, including a couple of young children? And let's talk about
the rules on the space station: The rules are death for any minor criminal infraction, even if it means killing a very valuable doctor for a minor crime. And the method
of killing? Ejecting them along with a room-full of precious oxygen. No wonder the teenagers can't wait to get out. The adults are stupider than they are. And the
characterizations... let's see: The leader seems to be the only black man on the station, the doctor is female, the star engineer is a hot chick, while the white men are
stupid troublemakers. On Earth, the only level-headed leaders are female and black, the tech-wizard is Asian, and the white men are testosterone-fuelled troublemakers.
Got it. It also doesn't help that resource-hungry survivors on the ship look like they just got off a modelling set, even after crashing on a planet and living in the
jungle for a few days. An attack by a huge monster only results in a few scratches that heal in a day. They all seem to be more interested in partying than in surviving,
and this is no Lord of the Flies as most are irresponsible criminals to begin with, so obviously the outcome won't be pretty, or interesting in the slightest. Not to
mention the yellow 'radiation clouds' that somehow attack people instantly but can be avoided by going into a cave. And on and on, the list is endless. Frankly, they
couldn't all die fast enough.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Based on the first two episodes.
I haven't read the Archie comics nor seen the original Sabrina, but a probable guess is that this is obviously nothing like that material. For starters, it's dark,
with witches worshipping Satan that 'gives them free will', with plenty of cruel violence and murder. And then there's the Wokeness that is so toxic you can cut
through it with a ritualistic knife. Already in the first episode, Sabrina and others declare war on "masculinity" and the "patriarchy", establish an "inter-sectional"
Wicca club (the I in Wicca), traumatize a man who refuses to handle things the way she wanted, has a boyfriend who acts like a lost puppy and she then rapes his
memories without permission, and then partakes in a ritual where she's taught that women represent knowledge and men represent evil. All that in a single episode!
I watched two episodes, and that is two too many.
Angels in America
Gay fantasy mini-series about the 80s, the AIDS scare, being gay in America, homosexuality and religion, the ozone layer, and angels and ghosts.
Perhaps if I cared about the subject matter it would be more interesting, but personal disinterest aside, the characters are all unlikeable and
even annoying, the drama is stretched, crude and overwrought, the writing bashes your head with left-wing propaganda, the fantasy scenes are silly
and pointless, AIDS is blamed on everyone and everything except homosexual life-styles, and religious concepts are raped.
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