This show reminds me of others that have an amazing premise and wonderful initial season, but slowly lose altitude as the seasons progress, and the gaps in the filled in universe just aren't as interesting as we'd hope. Shows like JK Simmon's own Counterpart, or German import Dark were both excellent shows that started out great, but had every season never be as good as the first.
This season has a few choppy bits, with extra trips sucking away the valuable runtime needed for a more satisfying resolution, but the set and costume designers easily carry the show into an extraordinary range. I'm a sucker for time travel shows (like the German import [https://trakt.tv/shows/dark|Dark]) and this shares the dedication to getting those background details right and excellent casting.
Who would have thought that Archer could bounce back to form in season 12?
A third of the way through the season, and I must say that I am impressed. It reminds me heavily of the landmark first season of The Walking Dead (https://trakt.tv/shows/the-walking-dead/seasons/1). Very well thought out, great atmosphere and realistic and consistent characters make the universe feel lived in and important. Really looking forward to the show as it goes forward.
A very surprising return to form for these two, picking up right where they left off some twenty years ago. They have great chemistry, and if you were a fan of the formula before, you'll find a lot to like here. Helen Hunt is a bit pulled back, which is a bit unsettling, but you get used to in a few minutes, and it really is in keeping with her character, a woman in her 60's living in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
This show has become so frustrating to watch, not just because it's a shadow of the excellent show that it was, but because the show still gets so much right. Charlie Booker's grasp of technology is really unparalleled and he can show the future so much better than anyone else. When they do make a VR version of Street Fighter (aka Striking Vipers), it's tough not to imagine the few minutes of in show footage with the two fighters hitting one another in the beautiful vistas of the computer generated backgrounds. Or, when Ashley Too shows it processing her response by spinning colors in it's eyes, it's not hard to see that in a real life toy.
Everyone else can show their poor grades for the show, and there's no doubt it's warranted.And, I'll still watch this show over the new Twilight Zone. Hopefully they can get the easy stuff done with the same skill that they get the tough stuff.
Taken on it's face value, the show seems loaded with cliche. A murder in a small scenic town will expose secrets from the seemingly idyllic populace, the dogged detectives will chase down leads and point fingers to suspects until they find that the killer was amongst them the whole time! And yet, the show succeeds wildly thanks to it's fine plotting and stacked cast (two doctors and an Oscar winner!). I'm not sure if the other two seasons will be able to live up to the first, but I'm looking forward to finding out.
I am really impressed by the depths this show can reach, giving wonderful arcs to an amazing supporting cast and having them earn any success they may find along the way. The tightrope that the showrunners have to walk is really impressive too, making the leads selfish without being unlikeable and giving their actions real consequences to others along the way. Every success they have feels earned, and every failure feels painful. Looking forward to continuing the show.
A very ambitious effort to retell a major story that is so recent in so many people's minds, it's torpedoed by some of the worst stunt casting in recent memory. I also made the mistake of watching the outstanding ESPN 30 for 30 documentary first- do yourself a favor and watch the fictional version first, and then watch the real thing. You'll enjoy it much more than way.
A big improvement from season 1's uneven experiment with poor choices in stunt casting, this season Ryan Murphy learned how to get his actors to even out their performances. Casting Ricky Martin as the sympathetic boyfriend or Penélope Cruz as the iconic Donatella Versace turn out to be much better choices than John Travolta playing a mentally lost Robert Shapiro or Cuba Gooding, jr as alleged to be OJ Simpson. A very solid watch for me.
This season wasn't as bad as the ratings have made it seem, but it's unfortunate that the show was never able to build on it's outstanding debut season, and learn from other MCU Netflix shows that have premiered since then. Of course, I'm referring to The Punisher and the -cohesive season-long arc that it committed to and told. This show again has some great parts, told from a unique perspective, but can never seem to get them to fit together for an entire season. It's too good a show not to be disappointed at the results.
An exquisitely shot procedural, but a procedural nonetheless, this show struggles to lift itself from the dull killer of the week template. It doesn't often succeed.
Surprisingly good. Well edited and plotted, it kept my attention through all eight episodes.
We knew that there was no way that it could live up to the heights that the boys had reached on their old BBC show, but we couldn't believe how low they could sink! With too many overproduced prerecorded packages, awful changes and disappointing locations, the show almost sank despite their winning chemistry.
It's astonishing to know that even with so many outlets for TV production, including the vaunted Netflix algorithm that seems to know what viewers want before they even want it, it took frigging Seth MacFarlane to give us this terrific piece of TNG fanfic. I can't believe that I almost let this show slip past me.
"...[T]here’s a vanishingly fine line between being masterfully unsatisfying and being straight-up unsatisfying."
-AV Club
That's how this show felt, at times, it was an amazing procedural and amazing narrative about the unfairness of the justice system. At other times, it was the worst. At both. I suppose I should give it a higher rating, it was made to be upsetting, but I feel like it wasn't just the characters who ended up deserving better, it was us too.
