Counterfeit reality indeed. Ain't no way any bullshit predictive algorithm correctly interpolated those videos in such crisp detail. It's just not possible—certainly not when this was first produced.
"LOO-ee-ville": How you know John Oliver really isn't an American.
I refuse to believe that Cory would be allowed to moderate a political debate involving his brother, but eh…it's just a Disney sitcom. A+ tie-in to the original series!
I know it's come up before and I was amused at the time, but Joey brought up his middle name again in this episode. It's "Gilligan". No wonder he's so clumsy!
Some good references in the main plot at the high school, even if the plot was a mite predictable. Decent B-plot in New York. Horrible C-plot at the house, culminating in an absolutely bottom-of-the-barrel "sugar rush" gag. Ugh. Ruined everything good about the episode right at the end.
Sophie read the account number off of a 1-in-ten-million check, there. The routing and account numbers were identical!
That closing "news segment" ruined it. -.-
Non-linear storytelling? Check. Doesn't work? Check.
After the stellar episode that preceded it, this one was a real let-down.
Super super super great. Even avoids the Corny Curse that besets so many holiday episodes of Disney shows. Just one nitpick: Riley's arm in the snapshot at the end (she holds the camera with two hands in the motion shot, but only one in the still).
Nice boom mic dipping down into the picture while Feeny gives the assignment. Never noticed that on cable…probably because the picture quality was so bad on that TV.
The writing in this show is cringeworthy sometimes. They didn't have enough time to cover both plots adequately, so what did they do? DO THEM BOTH ANYWAY so both would come off as rushed.
I remember now why I stalled after 4 episodes.
This show started out so strong… Now it's just another fantasy show with an alternate history setting ("United States of Atlanta"… please) and a ton of fanservice-y tropes. I hate to say it, but Izetta was much better before Izetta actually showed up.
Here's hoping the writing picks up and dives back into the meat, like it did in the first episode, or this temptation I have to drop the show just might turn into action.
I, uh… what? Might as well give the next episode a chance, but I'm not a fan of dumping the audience in like that with absolutely no context. And I'm not super fond of the art style either.
I feel ambivalent about rounding this show's raw average of 8.6 up to a 9, but really…all that keeps me from giving the series a 10 is the Bermuda Triangle nonsense and the somewhat weak writing at the very end. The rest of the show is very strong, and it deserves the 9.
So it's gonna be like THAT, is it. No wonder Fav looks like a cross between Kyuubey and Monokuma…
I seem to be finding more and more lazy humor in this show lately. Specifically, the writers are leaning on an awful lot of sexual jokes to get shock laughs, when they really should be focusing screen time on more incisive material. And on top of those, they're also reaching into past episodes to bring back jokes that exhausted their humor weeks ago.
For these and other shortcuts, the episode was stretched an extra 10 minutes, too. Sigh.
Cute parallel, guys. Very meta. Almost too meta, but eh…it's Disney.
Kinda generic anime tropes this week. Could be interesting if they get more into the seiyuu stuff, but if it's going to be this much of a slice-of-life comedy the whole season I'll be disappointed.
This one was pretty good, but dragged down by over-investing in the polar bear dick jokes.
Well, this is promising. I daren't hope for Madoka-level greatness, but let's see where the show goes.
There's clearly a lot of substance in here, and it would have behooved the producers to greenlight a two-cour season to cover everything. Viewers unfamiliar with the source material, like myself, were no doubt pretty lost for most of the season because very little is explained well, if at all. I may or may not give the second season a chance when it airs in January. It was enjoyable, yes—but I don't feel like I would have missed anything if I'd dropped the show after only a couple episodes, as I was tempted to do.
Good points as usual. But I'm struck by just how much the script harped on the "anus" comparison. It just kept coming back. I expect more creativity and variety from the writers on this show.
I expect more from LWT than asking Edward fucking Snowden about dick pics. That whole segment fell pretty flat—exactly the opposite of how it should have gone. Snowden clearly wasn't prepared for the type of humor, and he should have been.
Strictly speaking I should give this a 6 (episode ratings average out to 5.5 exactly)…but nah. It's too "Meh" to get anything higher.
General progression of episode quality is:
The pacing is shit. The writing is shit. Characters are mostly underdeveloped, and nobody gets enough time for us, the audience, to actually start caring about them (except maybe Maihime). I kind of care about Asuha, but only because she's somehow the most likable character out of the entire squad.
Aside from episode-specific problems I called out in comments on those episodes, there were many more that were too obvious or too frequent to bother writing about every time. Some of these issues made their way onto my grand list of series flaws. The first entry was actually the writing, but I couldn't hold it in long enough and so it's above here. As for the rest… here goes.
I could go on, but I've already spent more time turning my notes into semi-complete sentences than this series deserves. Just skip it; you'll miss absolutely nothing. I honestly wonder how I pushed myself to keep going through all the crap to get to that one good episode…which was then followed by several more crappy episodes. It would have been better if I'd just grabbed the ClariS ED singles from some random J-Pop music ripping group and called it a day.
Strictly speaking I should give this a 6 (episode ratings average out to 5.5 exactly)…but nah. It's too "Meh" to get anything higher.
I refuse to round my mean episode score of 4.91 up to a 5. This wasn't even "Meh". The few good episodes were completely buried by the worse-than-shit-tier writing of the rest.
I refuse to round my mean episode score of 4.91 up to a 5. This wasn't even "Meh".
Was…that disjointed mess of an episode supposed to tell a story? I have no idea what just happened, and I don't think the writers know either.
By way of averaging my episode scores, this show should get a perfect 7.0, but I can't quite give it that. There's a long slump in the middle where the writing kinda goes to shit and nothing really interesting happens. I can take that kind of thing from a show if the characters are interesting or likable, but that's not particularly true of this cast.
I was actually kind of enjoying this one, and then the writing at the end was just so weak…
