Unpopular opinion: this is the best of the first three seasons. It finally knows what it is and what it wants to be. It's where the mix between having a storyline but also being the center of the Filoniverse works best. It's where Mando being someone who ends up as a witness to stuff much greater than him, where he contributes but he's not the main character, also works best. Also, the "greater" stuff is finally something relevant to him and not to the Skywalker family. Plus, for the first time, the more standalone episodes didn't bore me to hell. It's a simple, fun show, much better than the other two recent "classical Star Wars" shows.
Also: I kinda binged in a few days, which probably helped me with the slower parts and made me appreciate more the horizontal plot, which basically has got 5 minutes per episodes.
Also: if this season came out a year ago, the third episode would have been such a fascinating, ambitious, smart "bottle episode". But in 2023 it's the Wish version of Andor. Maybe it's better if Filoni and Favreau stick to blasters and sabers.
Season 2 does almost everything season 1 did. It's violent, dark, filled with charismatic characters and faces (but not Joe Cole, Joe Cole is terrible), with so many plot twists and double/triple reversals that kinda get to a ridiculous point but keeps it fun until the end. The "almost" is because Gareth Evans didn't direct a single episode and because of that there isn't a single action scene on par with those two or three amazing action scenes we saw in season 1. Is the rest enough? I'm not sure.
A couple of weeks ago I was scrolling on Netflix, Rick and Morty suddenly appeared, I remembered that season 4 left me a bit unimpressed but kinda won me beck with last few episodes, I saw that season 6 was already there, I started watching season 5, I thought it started a bit weak but it grew quite rapidly and in the end I had fun, with some laughs here and there. I guess one day I will watch season 6. Should I? Can you feel the meh in what I just wrote? Maybe I’m tired of it? Who knows?
This is basically five episodes of people running aroung looking for MacGuffins and ignoring everything that made season one great (the characters) because they have to explain the mechanics of the multiverse (which I don’t give a fuck about - the mechanics, the multiverse is fine, I guess). Sophia Di Martino barely registers her presence; Owen Wilson has got the best emotional moment of the season in the finale but basically nothing else to do; Jonathan Majors is funny, the scene in which he opens the big door for the first time is really funny and Timely kinda has a decent arc but now he’s gone; Tom Hiddleston does his best. There’s some nice moments, Benson and Moorehead inject some visual creativity that was the biggest thing lacking from season 1, the final episode is really good, the ending works but… I don’t know…
They put this up one episode a day and I loved that. Every day there was a new episode, they were short, I enjoyed watching them because I like the visual style and I liked how they homaged movie classics. But no, really: one at a day, short, 30 minutes, that’s cool, do that, don’t do weekly hours, do daily 30 minutes, of everything, seriously. Worst part was that they had to make some interconnected narrative with the final two episodes and I couldn’t care less.
Always interesting and fascinating. Plus, two out of four chefs are not that pretentious. That's not bad.
The pilot is a mess, but then it gets better. The humour doesn't always work, but some moments are hilarious. Characters are nice and fun, even though I think Drew Barrymore is too much on the nose. Timothy Olyphant is adorable, though.
There's something missing here that was working so well in the previous seasons. The themes are interesting and the whole soapy part is fun, but there are also some misguided ideas (the gorilla!), there's less focus than usual on "the work" and there aren't many surprises, it all feels really predictabile. Also, what happened to Virginia's kids? :D Nice cliffhanger at the end, though.
It's still fun but yeah, it kinda lost its magic by now.
This is a fun show. I honestly don't know what else I could say about it.
The usual lovely BBC fare: impeccably made and acted, interesting, mature entertainment.
Basically it's an MCU movie but stretched on 9 episodes / two months and with the bizarre/quirky/interesting/best part they push on the marketing side positioned at the beginning instead of the second act.
Watching Obi-Wan Kenobi after seeing everybody get angry about it for weeks, I kinda expected it would rob my house and harass my family. In the end, i found it less boring than The Book of Boba-Fett. Now, "less boring than The Book of Boba-Fett" is not a great compliment but, I mean, this is the usual Disney+ mediocre shit that's got a few really good ideas but lets them go to waste because it doesn't want/doesn't know how to develop them and it dilutes in six hours of TV a story that (maybe) didn't deserve more than a two hours movie. Also, I'm not sure about which creative decision I find more astonishing between (1) "let's throw away the script about Obi-Wan protecting Luke because it's too much like The Mandalorian and use a script about Obi-Wan protecting Leia instead" and (2) "finding narrative tension in a story about a protagonist and an antagonist who aren't really in danger is hard, so let's focus on putting in danger a third character who also cannot really be in danger and having a fourth character who only wants to kill one of those three characters (who cannot die)". And let's shoot ourselves in the foot, while we're at it. Then of course, even starting from that, you still can do good stuff if you can write in a way that creates narrative tension based on deep characterization, relationships, character's journey, developing those ideas that, I repeat, are there but, as usual, don't have any depth. Or maybe you can save the show with a spectacular visual approach, great action, those kinds of things. And sure, there are some good moments but mostly this is a show with amazing production values wasted on a visual and narrative approach that feels twenty years old. Which also makes me think that these shows are starting to really feel very flat and samey in terms of looks and I'm wondering if the celebrated StageCraft is the guilty party in that.
All that being said, I didn't find it particularly worse than the usual mediocre silly pop stuff that we get on Disney+. You know what didn't help? It being released while Stranger Things, Ms. Marvel and The Boys were reminding us that you can do silly pop stuff that is not even remotely perfect but has got so much more personality and/or ideas and/or interesting visual stuff.
Once again, waiting to have all the episodes was the good choice, not only because I prefer to watch stuff at my own rhythm, not only because if there’s a bad episode I didn’t wait a week for it and I don’t have to wait a week for the next one, but also because, after reading people’s hate on it for a month and a half, the expectations are so low that I end up having fun. Also, in this specific case, there’s the fact that in the meantime I watched Barbie, so every time I saw the bad guy (who, to be fair, gives a decent performance) I thought of the dumb Ken from the movie. Anyway, Secret Invasion is another case of wasted potential: there’s a great bunch of actors, the premise was solid and it could have been Marvel’s Andor. But if you wanna make Andor, you need to write and direct the shit out of it and here those duties were clearly given to a bunch of Ikea cupboards. That being said, I kind of enjoyed it, because actors manage to squeeze some fun from it (Olivia Colman is the queen of the world, Ben Mendelsohn is her vice), because seeing the Super Skrull was entertaining, because - as is par for the course with Marvel - there’s a couple of very good scenes you can hang on to tell yourself you didn’t waste five hours of your life. Which in this case are the conversation between Jackson and Mendelsohn on the train, all of Colman’s scenes and the whole conjugal Fury stuff (the best episode is centered on that).
Great start and finish, a lot of kinda average episodes in the middle, with too many recurring jokes. The animal stuff is always great, though.
The first three episodes are amazing. Gripping, romantic, thrilling, deep, sexy... it trojan horses a spy story inside a drama/romance/thriller thing and it does it in a wonderful way. Episode four is where it collapses by letting the uninteresting sci-fi/spy element take control. Episode five doesn't particularly get better. Still, the amazing start and the great cast deserve a view.
A fun show, full of lovely easter eggs, with some nice surreal humour and a plot I actually ended up almost caring about.
Lots of ups and downs for half a season, it gets back on track in the second half, when it starts fucking around with the formula.
As always with MCU shows/movies, there's great stuff here but it's buried under the usual formula and the need to setup a hundred other things by taking time away from the core of the story. This was sold as the Marvel version of a Shane Black movie but it's basically an anesthetized version of Shane Black.
A (mostly) very good cast for a (mostly) very dull show.
By now I put Big Mouth in the same "relax zone" Rick and Morty is. I'm always there for them because I love the shows, I love the characters, I love they intelligent way they tackle certain themes, but also because there's always a couple of great episodes and they don't take too much of my time. At the same time though, I feel their best years are long gone and maybe they should end before things start to go really bad.
It's not as good and ambitious as Fleabag, more of a typical sit-com with all its clichés, but it's fun and smart.
As usual, more episodes mean more diluted storyline. Also, the whole setup of the finale battle and Sunny's behaviour in that situation are quite stupid. That being said, there's still fun to be had from Marton Csokas and Emily Beecham hamming it up, Daniel Wu and Cung Le jumping around, the nice fighting scenes and the whole bizarre mithology. Plus, Nick Frost.
The last two episodes are amazing but for some reason I expected the whole season to be on that level. But still, it's fun and smart.
The usual laughfest, but now with more storyline.
Basically, this is Louis CK using his jokes as the foundation for fun vignettes. It' really funny, but there's also the hint of something much deeper that will come out in the following seasons.
An amazing step forward from season one: it's still really funny, but it gets much better when it mixes laughs with some surprisingly deep and touching reflections on loneliness, survival and the need for others. Jason Sudeikis is great and the season finale is amazing.
The formula feels a bit tired by now, but it's still quite fun, even though going from Jessica Lange to Lady Gaga, well...
It kinda reminds me of Battlestar Galactica and it's not as good as its amazing first season, but this is a really good sci-fi series, with interesting themes, some nice characters and a well thought out plot. Sometimes the writing gets a bit cheesy, the acting is not always consistent and in a few scenes the lo-fi visuals don't really work, but I'm nitpicking. This is good.
A really good third season, fun and gripping from the beginning to the end. This is a real step up from the highs and lows of the firs two years.
That little hand at the end of episode five.
