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Reviews
The Disappearance (2017)
Overall good series, Peter Coyote is extremely annoying
Warning, spoiler alert!!!
Very good series about a kidnapped boy. I became an Aden Young fan after Rectify and Reckoning which were flawed series but Aden is excellent. He's great in this series too. Way too many damn Sullivans in this show to keep track, there are characters with the last name Sullivan both on and off screen. Here are the annoying aspects of this series: 1) Peter Coyote as Henry Sullivan yelling his dialogue throughout the whole entire series, horribly annoying. You know better than this kind of crap Peter, c'mon. 2) Isn't Catherine Sullivan Lukes sister? Wasn't she romantically involved with Fred Cameron who ended up being her brother? Maybe i'm confused, oh well. 3) Fred Cameron was the same person as David Smith, right? Why all the freakin name changes? Makes life a hell of a lot more confusing. 4) The plot would have been much better if the rape of Henry's wife ended up being a cover-up story, they should have revealed that Henrys wife actually had a consentual affair with a criminal and became pregnant, and thats why Henry didn't want to raise the kid. Rape is too overused. 5) Too much of the scavenger hunt clue stuff, that should have ended when the boy went missing. But they kept referring back to clues and then more clues from the kidnapper, letters, clues, stop it already !!!! And Peter please stop yelling!!! 6) Were Stephen Price and Fred Cameron a couple? I mean, seriously, if Fred and his sister were messing around, then Fred and Stephen sounds way more normal. 7) What happened at the Orphanage? Why were kids getting hanged? The priest / father seemed creepy. Did he mess with the kids there? I guess not. Oh well. Kids got hanged. Hmmm. Summary: Anyway folks, its still pretty good and entertaining, worth watching, but episode 4 was really slow, had to fast forward during that one, haha.
The Great (2020)
Great writing, but acting is too self indulgent.
Season 1 is full of surprises and excellent writing. However, this series is flawed due to the exorbitant amount of screen time given to lead actress Elle Fanning. She is basically in every scene of the entire series, and she always has at least 10 times the amount of dialogue as any of the other characters. Now I can understand possibly doing this if there is only going to be one season. But you just can't go on like this folks. We are going to get sick of seeing her every single second of the show, and by the 4th or 5th episode its just overkill. And I'm not saying that her acting is anything less than excellent, but there are many other great people in this series that have so little screen time.
With that said, there does seem to be a trend right now towards series with extremely wordy dialogue, but its just too much. The scenes go on and on and on, and she just keeps blabbing one word after the other, never stops. Look folks, you gotta give the viewer something else to think about besides two characters in the show. It never works in the long run. Many other shows fall into the same hole, like Dead to Me which is in its second season and because it relied to heavily on the two main characters, it has become extremely boring.
Lets take a look at some really good shows, like Succession. With Succession we have at least 6 main characters that all get equal screen time and are all excellent actors. You just can't rely on one or two main characters to carry a whole series. It can easily work in a two hour movie but not in a 10 hour series, not gonna happen.
Also, Elle Fannings acting is too self indulgent and this could be the directors fault. She is an excellent actress and she isn't "over acting", she is just too self indulgent. What does this mean from an acting standpoint? It means that she is taking way too long to deliver her lines, walking around with a look on her face for a minute or two and then delivering the line. Also delivering the lines with too much emphasis, JUST SAY THE LINE!!!! Stop with the self indulgence.
In conclusion, I think that season 2 (if there is a season 2) should depend less on Fanning and more on the other characters. Lets see more of the Swedish characters, anybody, somebody, just not Fanning for 10 hours, please. Also stop saying Huzzah, that's super annoying and unnecessary.