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Reviews
The Filthy Frank Show (2011)
thanks b0ss
No amount of exercise, going outside and talking to girls can cure the cancer that this show has planted in my brain. 11/10
Steven Universe (2013)
Great series, don't watch Future
Steven Universe is a gem (heh) of metamodernism. It lures you in with cuteness and a children show atmosphere only to ambush you with serious, adult themes and theme of mental harmony.
The production quality is top notch and you can see that every scene, every story is carefully assembled and executed, with very minor exceptions.
The art style that is based on notorious CalArts art style doesn't restrict itself to it and uses it as a base for a more detailed style. You can tell that the artists and animators know what they are doing and know how to create impactful animated scenes.
The show's writing oscillates between fooling around and serious themes very well, with no out-of-place transitions. The show's characters are well-written and have good arcs.
The sound and musical aspect of the show is great too. The songs feel fresh style-wise and fitting to the theme they support.
And then, after a great main arc, we get to Steven Universe Future.
I probably need to get this out of the way first: I like the concept. I like the idea of epilogue slice-of-life as a whole another season, I like that they acknowledge that this is future, and things change, and people move on. I like that they actually showed Steven's response to everything he has been through. But what came out should've been condensed into about five 20 minute episodes instead of this.
The production quality drops harder than an executioner's axe. Everything that was great in the show before is either taken at a literal value or turned inside out. The characters are dumbed down and act more like husks of themselves. You no longer watch a seamless, realistic story, you look at abstract events that are stringed together to resemble a story.
The season's arc is focused on Steven having a hard time moving on and digesting the events that happened in the previous seasons. Yet it is presented exceptionally poorly. Steven is left to manage his emotions on his own not because of circumstances or his own actions, but because everyone around him has turned into robots. All the characters that were very empathetic and sensitive to Steven's attitude are now contempt with him saying "I'm fine". I understand that this is a simplification of what happens in real life: people try to hide their weakness even from family and friends. But the show makes it look very easy and unrealistic, to the point where you start to look for hints at something deeper.
For a moment I wanted to believe that this is a meta message, that maybe the creators were trying to say that, as the characters move on, as does the format of the show, and you may not agree with neither.
There's even an episode where Steven and his friend watch a reboot of a show they liked and criticize it for the very same things this season suffers from: poor visuals, poor character design that leads to illogical plot advancements. This is never acknowledged by the show, there is no "we get it guys" moment, which leads me to believe that either the creators are okay with this quality, or the season was very, very rushed.
Maybe the poor visual quality is intentional and the approach to every aspect of Steven's problem is this rigid and poorly executed on purpose. Maybe Steven is going to break down only to wake up from a terrible nightmare. And then the viewer is going to realize that this was a parody or satire that pokes at poor attempts at making audience sympathize with characters on screen.
But it never happens.
Steven Universe Future is a great example of how series so great can end so poorly, and how you can wreck everything you have been constructing for five seasons over the course of one.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Barely a story
Three Billboards holds up poorly as a movie and feels more like a draft that accidentally got filmed and published.
Story-wise, the movie is very rough and abstract. All the characters feel like tools that were used to progress this main story arc, which itself isn't complex at all and expects the viewer to accept it as it is, for some reason. People do things because, well, they have to. Otherwise the plot won't progress.
Minor spoilers below:
Mildred seems like a person the viewer should sympathize with, but there aren't any reasons for us to: we have no emotional connection to neither her nor her deceased daughter. We see the interaction between her and her daughter only once, and it doesn't show us anything at all except for the author's awful sense of humor. "She said she wished to be raped - her wish became reality, ha-ha, I'm so cynical and dark, you guys."
Mildred is also seems to be presented as a person who is beyond consequences. This is nestled on top of expected sympathy, so it doesn't work at all. It's not that Mildred is at the point of her journey where she doesn't care, it's that the plot armor is preventing anything from happening to her.
Every other character is barely present in the story. Willoughby and Dixon are the only characters you will remember and for the wrong reasons. Willoughby's death is poorly executed, with, again, barely any attachment to him as a person. Dixon goes from being an idiot, who is either constantly drunk or actually underdeveloped. to a damn vigilante hero who has both brawn and brains. And he forgives Mildred for everything awful she had done to him.