Review by wolfkin

Citadel

Season 1

Ummm.. okay? I mean there's a lot of superficial things i could talk about. Like how I don't like Priyanka Chopra as a person. How I don't like how they frame her in the show. Her attractiveness is being pretty not hot and the show really really tries to make her seem "hot". So it's kinda jarring. I'm not big on the flashback narrative device.

But you know what I do like. Spy stories. I love a good twist. I love a good double twist. But this show is making me DIZZY. It feels like 80% of the show is twists and reveals that double back on the twists and reveals from last episode. I've read a lot about the current strike and one of the interesting things i've seen actors and writers talk about is how much shorter TV series are on streaming. I mean objectively I'm sure it's true but this is the first time I've felt it. This show has enough quadruple crosses to fill out a season of Chuck (20+ episodes). But it's only six episodes long. It's incredibly jarring. I mean at first I thought it was just getting incestual which was fine because most shows have incestual casts. Everyone is related to everyone. But then the ties that bind just kept pulling them closer and closer.

This show needs more Stanley Tucci. Tucci grounds this entire show. He's fantastic. I would throw both my sisters at him just to be closer to him. I don't understand how he's so utterly delightful in a role that's even more secondary and less involved that Bruce Campbell in Burn Notice. Tucci is the most shining star of this show and I think Priyanka is fine and Richard Madd is just oddly fantastic as Mason/Kyle. But Tucci absolutely lights up every scene he's in.

I don't really see this as "Franchise" material. I don't really care about the wider world of Citadel. It's odd. But I am interested in where the story goes. I didn't get invested in who betrayed Citadel though. I think we're supposed to be spending every episode trying to find out who and how Citadel got taken down but I kinda just didn't care. I started to get invested and then there are like 7 twists and I just stopped worry about it.

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