"I just feel like I'm not getting a clear direction for this role."
Two episodes in, and I still feel like this season is too busy juggling multiple subplots. Black Noir's line I quoted above seems apt to describe these first two episodes.
The few arcs they're developing do seem promising. We get a glimpse of A-Train wrestling with his conscience, Ryan struggling with his humanity amidst the narcissistic supe circles led by his dad, and The Deep trying to exert some power over his Vought overlords. The Frenchie romance drama is also heading somewhere, although it often feels like any storyline involving Frenchie veers off on its own tangent with no direct link to the main plot.
Pacing, however, is the more glaring issue. With so many subplots they're knitting there's no clear "hook" to indicate what's going to drive this season. It lacks both the intensity and mystery they had in Season 2 (exploding head menace and court drama against Vought) and Season 3 (Soldier Boy and the quest for ultimate weapon against Homelander).
It feels like sequences happen just to justify character development—for instance, the scene with Splinter (the body multiplier guy) feels forced, given that The Boys are held back by such a mid-level supe when they've taken down Translucent before. The whole Sister Sage escapade, attempting to portray her as the smarter character, relies on dumbing down the heroes. As Sage said, do The Boys really think she wouldn't figure out they're tapping their phone? So much for infiltration, MM.
It also feels like the last two episodes have been quite tacky. It's as if the show is self-aware that its audience unironically mirrors the people the show is mocking, so now they have to spend two episodes explicitly highlighting how ridiculous those people are—e.g., the lines between Frenchie and Kimiko mocking the Truthcon participants. It just feels very on the nose and lacks the cleverness that they had before. Even the whole theatrics on "rescuing people from the badguys" (saves) no longer has its cynical wittiness, despite the scene being one important plot point to drive Ryan's character forward.
Oh well. At least Black Noir is funny. And I share his sentiment. Let's hope we're getting some direction in Episode 3.
Future Man ends on a high note after three seasons that got progressively weirder. I can't help but think that a lot of the narrative was created without too much thought about where it was all going, and I imagine that the sad death of actress Glenda Headly during the first season caused some real changes of plan. The finale here feels very disconnected from any events that happened in the show previously, but it's done in such a way that it still works.
Season 2 really didn't work for me and felt like the biggest consequence of the changes. It was very different from what came before and extremely downbeat. Season 3 opts for a bit more fun, some great changes of time period and location throughout, and most importantly it keeps our three main characters together. I didn't find the humour to be quite as on point as before, but the overall tone was a real improvement.
I think the characters of Josh, Tiger and Wolf are going to be the biggest takeaway from this show for me. The actors fit the roles so well that it's now going to be difficult to me to associate them with anything else. Derek Wilson's fake gravel voice and Eliza Coupe's over-the-top aggressiveness were never anything but a joy. And Josh Hutcherson was the glue that held the team together by playing a geeky, terrified everyman that was so easy to relate to. It felt like the actors were always having fun in the roles.
This season makes our heroes wanted criminals being tracked by time police from the future after all the damage they've caused. This is headed up by Seth Rogen. When he appeared at the end of last season I found him to feel out of place but he is integrated far better here. There's also a myriad of famous historical figures who play a part (Marilyn Monroe, Buddy Holly, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus), but while their introduction was fun it also kicked off a run of episodes which really went on for too long. The entire section spent at Haven felt like wasted time in an already short season, and the effect of allowing Tiger and Wolf to grow as people could have been handled much more succinctly. But I did love the goat.
The first season of the show stands as the best it had to offer, but the finale manages to wrap things up nicely. It fulfilled the main requirement which was finally solidifying the bond and friendship that Tiger and Wolf feel for Josh. It's always been funny to see them treat him like crap, but underneath we were all rooting for them to accept each other. They work SO WELL together! And in the end we even find out that it was all based on a true story, with completely whitewashed casting! Genius.
Honestly, I really missed the whole initial concept of the video game geek as the mistaken hero and the mission to kill the man who will destroy humanity, but the show evolved and continued to give us new stuff. This is somewhat rare. Future Man definitely wasn't a show for everyone given how obscene it would regularly get, but it was a show that fully embraced it's geekiness and how silly it was. I'm glad I stayed with it.
[NRK] It tries to humanize the characters so much that it cannot avoid falling into sentimentality and chauvinism, but curiously it does a disservice to historical characters like Princess Märtha by inventing an unbelievable romantic relationship with President Roosevelt. An uninspired example of "inspired by real events", monarchical and patriotic in the worst sense, and surprisingly produced by a public channel.
No one discuss that historical facts can be used as the basis for constructing a fictional narrative ("The Crown" (Netflix, 2016-) does so consistently with good results). The question is if it is really necessary and if that contributes to making a more interesting narrative. Norwegian historian Trond Norén Isaksen said in the newspaper Aftenposten that "there is no indication that the princess and the president had an affair or that Roosevelt was sexually active after being paralyzed from the waist down in 1921." And that the alleged romantic relationship was a "fake new" created by the president's opponents and especially The Chicago Tribune newspaper. This historical reality is so fascinating, with its political intrigues and conspiracies, that the sentimental story of unrequited love. La ficción evita la realidad para crear una narración que es mucho menos atractiva. Fiction avoids reality to create a narrative that is much less engaging. And it is the great mistake of the screenwriters, who also detract from characters like Prince Olav, here portrayed as a simple jealous husband, and Eleanor Roosevelt, overshadowed by her husband.
As a Dutch person, I never actually knew the story behind Fokker and the KLM, so that got me interested combined with the preview I saw. In that preview they mentioned this was one of the highest budget Dutch television series ever made, with lots of actual footage, models and CGI where needed. Without spoiling anything from the storyline itself, I can say that not once I noticed I was watching a CGI enhanced scene. Of course, once you know that CGI is being used you can easily guess the scenes in which it was used, but nonetheless it was extremely well made. The most important part is actually the acting and that's absolutely perfect.
The fact they used a younger and older Anthony Fokker and Albert Plesman (and their wives) was the stroke of a genius. Not only that, in one case the older actor adjusted to the younger and in the other case vice versa, either way they were so well cast and even better how it smoothly went from one to the other. It's a miracle that in such a small country (compared to the UK or US) the young and old Anthony Fokker look so much alike and also share the same traits both on and off camera.
The storyline isn't always true to reality, but it doesn't detract from it otherwise. Being a limited series, I can understand that they had to simplify the death of one of Plesman's sons Jan. In the series he simply just died during a flight, while in reality he died in 1944 while fighting in his Spitfire during WWII. I can see that some people will not consider this to be a good thing, but I do see the burden of explaining the whole WWII phase and as it's not about Jan, but rather his father, I get the fact they did want to show his grief upon losing two sons, but not wanting to extend a couple of episodes just for that.
Fun fact: Albert Plesman's son Jan had the nickname De Vliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman) which coincidentally is where the name of this tv series came from, though in this case they called it Vliegende Hollanders (plural, Flying Dutchmen), obviously meaning Anthony Fokker and Albert Plesman.
Great tv show and although I don't often watch Dutch productions because of bad experiences in the past, this one was well worth it and has shown me that we can deliver production quality comparative to UK or US productions.
