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Reviews
Runaways (2017)
Juvenile
I normally like Marvel stuff. This is fine as a young-adult/teen show, but it can't possibly be enjoyed by anyone over the age of 20. The story is childish, the dialogue is childish, and all of the characters are two-dimensional.
The acting is reminiscent of a daytime soap, but maybe that's because everything the actors are being asked to do is so melodramatic. Fine for the teen characters, but the parents speak and act like children.
And nothing really happens. The plot is so basic they should've condensed it to a miniseries. It reminded me of an old after-school show where if you missed an episode one day it wouldn't really matter.
See (2019)
Decent premise, poorly executed
The first episodes are visually beautiful, and a decent start to exploring an interesting premise.
But by the end of the season, it gets super basic: one character after another getting into some kind of danger and having to be rescued. Every episode. It seems almost like they felt the story was too complex and so dumbed it right down.
For the second season, they scrap most of the larger narrative they started in the first and start emulating late-stage Game of Thrones but with more fight scenes between your favourite action-movie stars.
Getting through season 3 was a slog. Mind-numbing stuff.
Riverdale (2017)
A fascinating experiment
I finally finished the last season today. I have this compulsion to finish the things I start, otherwise I would've stopped watching years ago.
I honestly wonder what proportion of people who watched all the way through think it was time well spent. The subreddit seems to be dominated by people like me, who loathe the show but can't stop watching.
I feel like Riverdale should be studied, by film school students or creative writers; it's so removed from the standard format of storytelling. It seems like the whole show is written with the primary goal of never being boring. And to hell with reality. And by reality, I don't mean all the supernatural stuff, I mean the infinite plot points that just don't reflect how the world works.
Nor does it care about flow or cohesion or character development. It's basically fanfiction, the kind you'd find on WattPad, with all the tropes you can think of.
The first season is very good as a story. The rest is entertainment; it's a show, not a story. Complete with musical episodes. If I could go back in time, I would probably tell my younger self to stop watching after the first season. Because while the rest isn't exactly boring, it's also just not all that great.
The best thing about Riverdale, though, is that skipping out at any point is fine. Each season is kind of its own story, and there's minimal correlation between previous storylines. And if the open ending in a season leaves you wanting to keep watching just to see the characters get a real conclusion, you don't need to worry about that because they never do.
Riverdale also copped well-deserved criticism about representation towards the beginning of its end. The sole black character was the leader of a gang and the recurring gay character had been a two-dimensional piece of furniture through five seasons. They even de-gayed one character towards the end. There were a few points where I wondered about the genius who wrote some of Veronica's lines, which reflected a kind of teenaged ignorance on some issues. But since nobody ever corrected or acknowledged it, I've actually come to the conclusion that the writers themselves are all Veronicas.
Bitten (2014)
Couldn't finish it
I like these kinds of shows usually, but this one was pretty bad. Most of the cast give terrible acting performances, and the storyline is not particularly compelling either.
Also. The lead actress... I don't know if they coached her to talk that way deliberately or if that's how she talks in real life. Maybe it's intended to be sexy? It was actually really grating. The reviewer who said she should start an ASMR channel is spot on - it's not a normal way of talking and not easy on the ears long term.
Full disclosure: I only made it to the end of season 1. The rest of it could be a masterpiece.
Vikings: The Buddha (2019)
If this series has a villain...
...it's Judith.
Cheats on her husband with a priest, then with her father-in-law. Willingly becomes her father-in-law's mistress while her husband has to just accept it. Distinctly favours the son she had from the priest and ignores her other son, then makes that other son decline the crown so that her favourite can rule instead.
And then yeah.
Obviously most of the characters are terrible people but Judith has just been unexpectedly cruel.
Vikings: A Simple Story (2018)
Nonsense plot points
Having binge watched this, this is the first episode that really irked me as not making much sense. There have been a few moments like that through the series so far, but in this episode, they were glaring.
Why would Francia send an army to help one side in a war between Vikings? Why would Rollo send soldiers to fight Bjorn and Lagertha - for whom he presumably still cares - just to help crown Ivar, a nephew who he has never spoken with? (Rollo left when Ivar was a baby). Why would he get involved? Would the emperor consent to him sending Frankish soldiers to help a leader, Ivar, who is currently a occupying part of a neighbouring Christian kingdom?
Also confusing: Judith's insistence - to the very foreseeable outcome of alienating her son - that Aethelred decline the crown in favour of her favourite son, Alfred. What a strange stand for a mother to take against her child.
I know that the show is only loosely based in history so I'm not complaining about the outcomes of the narrative, but the steps taken to reach them and the decisions characters make need to be rationalised.
The pacing is also absurd. In the time it takes Harald's army to return to Midgard and then Hvitserk to sail to Normandy and back again, Lagertha's army are still sitting in their war camp; literally nobody has moved or returned to Kattegat after their victory.
The Iceland story with Floki is about the only thing in this episode that isn't bewildering.
Schitt$ Creek (2015)
Wonderful
One of the funniest, most well written shows I have ever seen.
Travelers (2016)
Interesting idea, poorly executed
I have watched a lot of sci-fi television. Travelers is a middle-of-the-road series for me. The premise is interesting and the acting is decent for the most part, but there are a few things that drag it down. If you're looking for a decent show with time travel at the centre - I highly recommend Dark (also on Netflix), which is a masterpiece by comparison.
The premise is that the consciousnesses of people from the future, called "travellers", are sent back to the 21st century to inhabit other people's bodies, called "hosts". They're there to "save the world" from a bleak future, assigned missions by a computer program called The Director. They conduct themselves based on a set of "protocols".
Suspending belief is, of course, a requirement of any sci-fi viewing, and this show is obviously no exception. I'm not going to complain about that.
However, rarely is the "save the world" trope ever done well, and this is no exception to that either. We're sometimes told that we can't comprehend why the Director assigns a mission - but sometimes it's made plain. Like there's an asteroid heading for Earth and the team needs to divert its course, or this scientist's invention will wipe out humanity. And all of this goes down in Seattle... I suspect that more than a few non-American viewers like me rolled their eyes when the team's mission is to save a child that's destined to become president of the United States.
The biggest flaw, however, is probably the characters, none of which are particularly compelling. And after 3 seasons, we don't actually know much at all about them. We know a bit about their hosts (whose bodies they inhabit), but the actual travellers are unknown. The leader, MacLaren, for instance - his host is an FBI agent, is married, etc; but the traveller is a complete mystery: we know nothing about him. Of the others, Carly is a tactician, Marcy is a medic, Philip is an historian (trained to memorise the timeline), but that's pretty much all we know about them. Trevor, the engineer, is the only one whose backstory we ever get a glimpse of - but it takes until late in the third season.
This is a result of Protocol 2 ("leave the future in the past"). Which is convenient for the show's writers, but as a narrative element it doesn't really work - because viewers find it difficult to become emotionally invested in complete strangers. In particular, Marcy and David are two of the most boring characters I think I've ever seen on television.
There are some decent supporting characters who are interesting to watch: Kat as the wife who keeps getting close to figuring things out, Grace as the tactless programmer who's slightly obsessed with the Director, and Vincent, as the host-hopping villain (who really could have been featured more prominently).
Overall, in the end, it's not really clear where the narrative was intended to go. Maybe it's because I'm comparing it to Dark, which was a streamlined narrative, but the episodic format of Travelers makes its story feel disjointed and directionless. The premise was interesting, but I didn't find it particularly compelling overall.