This season starts strong and offers some of the best episodes ("Lonely Souls", above all), but it gets completely lost after Laura's killer is revealed. The cheap soap opera elements are the only things left and it doesn't even feel like a parody anymore. Characters have completely different personalities and do silly things all the time. Ben Horne's descent into senile dementia and James new cringe-worthy love interest could be counted among the worst moments in television history. Windom Earle had some potential as the new threat, but he ends up just fooling around and acting like a weirdo with no real consequences. The last episode "Beyond Life and Death" makes little sense but is visually interesting. It might be what David Lynch's wanted to do but made me feel the previous 10 episodes even more useless.
There is a difference between unique and influential products. While unique works tend to keep their edge and traits for years after release, influential works are strongly related to the time they were created. What was felt as fresh and innovative back then tends to become stale and trivial over time as it gets endlessly imitated by later products. "Twin Peaks" has a little bit of both. I got a chance to rewatch the original series after decades and could feel both its unique and influential elements. It felt a bit old and trite at times, but after getting back into the mood I thought the show still holds pretty well. The exaggerated soap opera elements are hilarious but are well-balanced by the crime fiction storyline and uncanny, surreal elements. The first season has very little action and takes its time to introduce Twin Peaks and its inhabitants. Quality is not so uniform as different directors and writers took part in the project, but overall everything is well-balanced and, despite the slow pace, hooky enough. Attention lowers a bit towards the end, but the intense and over-the-top season finale manages to effectively bring us back on board. Donna and James' story was the only thing that felt a bit tired, sometimes even painful to watch though. Did anyone really care about them?
After being stale for a few years American Horror Story puts aside the flashy glamour of seasons like "Hotel" and finally attempts at doing something different with "Roanoke". This time the series plays with different television program formats and in particular documentaries and reality shows. While previous seasons were a bit too slow-paced, "Roanoke" tends to burn out too quickly. Most of the mystery builds up during the first episodes, and most answers have been already given by the end of the third episode. Things spice up again when the reality show portion begins with a shift in style and some interesting dynamics between groups of characters. Unfortunately, the mystery is unfolded instantly and it all becomes a huge mess a bit too early. We are then left with episodes of people running around screaming or getting dismembered. All closed by an unnecessary and incredibly forced season finale.
Again AHS proves itself to be good in style but messy and rushed in the writing and execution. Still, this is surely the most enjoyable season since Asylum.
After the colossal mess of "Coven" and the incredibly dull "Freakshow", "Hotel" tries to bring back the style that made the first two seasons successful. The visual glamour and extreme violence are back in full swing, but again the storytelling is thin and messy, with too many elements and characters to handle. And way too many wild orgies and random sex (everyone screws anyone, complete with cringe-worthy hipster gothic rock song selection in the background). The first bunch of episodes was a bit bland, but it started to get amusing as soon as all characters have been properly introduced. Did we really need ghosts in here? I thought the serial killer and vampires were more than enough. They just made the characters' deaths cheaper and the plot way more confusing. Anyone can literally resurrect and do whatever. The only limitation they have is that they cannot leave the hotel, but really little happens outside of the premises anyway. Lousy acting aside Lady Gaga was a fun addition to the cast and the perfect way to bring back the classic AHS glamour. It's clear that the whole season was written with her in mind. Drake's fashion firm and models, sexual ambiguity, the drag queen bartender, the vintage movie stars are all themes that you would find in one of her music videos.
Obviously, it's been a long time since I watched the first two seasons or even a David Lynch movie, and it took me a few episodes to get back into the slow-paced mood and remember all characters and related symbology. This time Lynch got a chance to do whatever he likes with no constraints, as he managed to direct and co-write all episodes himself. The final product is closer to "Fire Walk With Me" than it is to the original series even though, as the characters also keep saying, it doesn't even feel like the same place anymore. America changed, television changed, we changed. A lot of the events do not even happen in Twin Peaks, and most of the historical characters just got minor roles. While the original series was fairly linear and self-explicative, there is no-one helping us figure out what is going on. There will be some challenges even if you are familiar with Lynch's recurrent themes and symbolism, especially in the ending. It's one hell of self-indulgent, purely Lynchian 20+ hour movie, but I personally enjoyed it. Despite some cheap-ass CGI here and there (God, that Bob ball and glove dude scene), there are a lot of visually and atmospherically striking shots and a lot of cult moments. I would recommend it to hardcore fans only though.
Season 5 could have had some more interesting development but served as a fairly good conclusion to the series. After two mild seasons, Patty and Ellen are finally back at war and are showing the darker sides of their characters again in their final showdown. It was good that the writer finally remembered that Patty was actually evil and capable of doing the worst things to get what she wants. The mechanics have been the same for a while and there is nothing really surprising or able to match the quality of the first three seasons, but there are a few interesting twists and the plot is mildly interesting overall. Flash forwards don't really work anymore, they had us make wrong guesses about what is going to happen for too many seasons already, and it was obvious that Ellen wasn't dead and that Patty had nothing to do with it. More than showing what is going to happen, they actually show what is NOT going to happen and it's been clear by now.
This season was alright but definitely the weakest. It might be just because I am not too fond of the military/Afghani theme, but it lacked the edginess and character depth of previous seasons. Patty's dark sides and Ellen's development were the main focus of the series, but unfortunately, Patty reconfirms herself as a fairly positive character and does really little this season. It's understandable that they want to change things a little after three seasons, but something a bit spicier would have helped. Here we have Boorman as the absolute bad guy, and he does a good job at being scary and making your fear for the characters' deaths. The other supporting characters and guest stars have been pleasing additions too. The time shifts were unnecessary and didn't really serve their usual purpose to keep our interest high. They were pretty much straight forward, overly repeated and uninteresting.
I started watching Damages again after almost ten years (for some reason I always thought it got canceled after season two). I really liked the show back then, and this season didn't let me down. We have again great writing and performances, and the storylines unfold in unpredictable ways. Of course, it's a slow show with lots of talking going on, but this time it never got boring or too slow-paced. The new characters made me enjoy this the most: the Tobin's were exactly what we needed after the writers decided that Patty is not evil anymore. Maybe it's not the freshest plot ever, but is well supported by great acting and fine writing, which are things that are easily forgotten in TV shows.
The first season had an interesting premise and some funny situations, but at the same a lot of generic drama to swallow. I have a weak spot for characters like Jen, and she really carries the whole show.
The joke wears thin by the end of the first season already, and the second gets even more comical and nonsensical. The twin brother gimmick is plainly ridiculous, and the outcome of that story arc is textbook cliché. Still, it's not yet so bad that it becomes a turn-off.
"Smithereens" dragged a bit too long for its content but was the only decent episode of this season. Then we have a VR yaoi fuckbuddy story and a mediocre teen adventure short movie. They introduce themes that could have been developed into something darker and deeper, but despite all episodes being longer than 60 minutes each, they end up just scratching the surface. It's still admirable how they manage to make new stories every time after so many episodes though.
Season 3 is not as entertaining as the first two but is still moderately funny and at least well-written. It has little development in terms of plot, and it mostly revolves around each character's drama and love stories more than the show itself. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not clear what the focus of this show is supposed to be. Is it supposed to be just a regular drama about strong women in a wrestling setting or something like that? The first season was focused on creating the show, the second season was about the struggles in keeping it alive. For this season GLOW also makes a big leap to Las Vegas but we get so see very little of that. I understand that training the cast for the wrestling scenes takes a lot of effort as most of them are not professionals, but still, I was expecting some more showy trashiness this time. The two episodes focused on the show were funny, but two out of ten seems a bit too little to me. By the way, I hate Ruth and Sam's love story. Sam having feelings for Ruth makes sense, but the thing being mutual was a bit of a turnoff. We knew it would have happened at some point but really...I was hoping they would not take the easy way to build a story.
It's sad to say goodbye to some of the most iconic characters in recent TV (Netflix) drama history, but it was about time for this show to end after it started getting messier and messier from season five. This last season tries to be way too dramatic but is a fair conclusion to one of the most memorable shows of this decade. Like in season six, the first half is a bit too slow-paced, rushing most events in the last few episodes. This happens a lot with shows that have little to say and not much material, but as they had to close a billion story arcs I wonder why they held back. Some characters are expanded further and get a proper closure, some really don't. I wonder if they left some arcs suspended just in case they want to make new seasons at some point.
I can't understand why everyone loves Stranger Things. The first season was dull and too watered down yet fairly enjoyable, the second season tried to offer a bigger menace for the characters but got me tired quickly. Sure it has great production value but gets all over the place with too little substance. Being kind of attached to the characters is the only reason to keep watching. I wasn't looking forward to season three and struggled to watch it until the end. Such a sloppy and recycled plot does not justify a full season, it's was barely enough for a movie. Nothing happens until the last bunch of episodes and by then you couldn't care less. The new bad guys are so random it almost felt like a joke. Russians??? And something like the most incompetent Russian minions in the world. Also, enough of those ridiculous gags and songs just made to be picked up as memes on the internet.
This season starts as rather uninteresting and slow-paced, but gets better during the second half. I was not much satisfied with the ending though: like in Coven it felt again kind of improvised and all over the place (they kept most characters alive and randomly started killing them off during the last couple of episodes just for the sake of it, and honestly it had zero emotional impact). The theme of diversity has been treated in the most obvious ways: the "diverse" ends up being more human than normal people and the likes. At least no one was truly noble this time, everyone got their own dark secrets and flaws, which made the relationships between characters mostly interesting. As always great acting and good characters sometimes affected by shallow, underwhelming writing.
The first episode was not that convincing and made me expect a boring season. Luckily enough all plotlines start to get interesting and faster-paced in a few episodes, especially after Leatherface gets revealed. The asylum becomes the perfect stage for pretty much all of the horror myths and conspirational theories of the '60s, and the well-written characters help to keep the tension high the entire time. There are so many things going on that it gets a bit confusing and too much all over the place, but I guess that's what made the season interesting to begin with.
Asylum's premise was rather boring but grew on me with every episode. Coven is kind of the opposite: I was hooked on the premise and characters but lost interest quickly. There is some teen drama as many mentioned, but the real problem is the plot being so out of focus and poorly developed. It almost looked like they were improvising as they went along. Everyone keeps dying and revive so many times that by the end I couldn't care less. So many great characters wasted. Fiona is probably the only one that preserves a coherent story arc, and her chemistry with Marie Laveau managed to keep me interested until (almost) the end. It's not a terrible show but still a pity.
