Yikes. Seems like I'm solidly in the minority here. I have not read the book, but the show is not great, not as good as I was expecting.
I have problems with a few choices:
All the Light We Cannot is too over the top, saccharine, cheesy, and cringy. Feels like a WW2 show made for 12 year old girls. It has 0 subtlety.
Character build up is so not smooth. Like I'm expected to believe in seconds that Werner is this intelligent, warm and sensitive kid who's just stuck in the war. Not to mention the kiss in the last episode, it was unnecessary and unbelievable. Especially when Marie instigated it, she'd only known him for like 5 minutes.
Common tropes and clichés everywhere. Werner is only one to survive the bombing of the hotel and just waltzes out of the rummage barely hurt at all. I cannot believe Marie is walking barefoot around a bombed out house, let alone a bombed out city. I am wondering if those scenes were accurate to the book.
It's so jarring to see foreign stories staring Anglos. I don't understand why they use these strange accents, that are neither really French or English, or whatever they were supposed to be. Mark Ruffalo's was particularly awful.
American storytelling needs to stop making Nazism cartoonish, it is bad writing. The gem obsessed Nazi was the worst. I don't know if it was the actor, or if he just got terrible directions.
Why are 30 year olds playing teenagers? The lead guy playing an early teen in the boarding school was simply absurd. Also young Marie and adult Marie are different races? Like we get it, Hollywood needs more diversity but you can't change the race of someone mid story in a historical fiction that’s based on actual events where race was a huge factor.
That 'Dear Friend' stuff was a spit in the face. I'd have rathered they just never included it.
10 minutes into the first episode, and the thing that strikes me most is just how off the tone of this show is compared to the source material. It has been a while since I saw season 2, but it feels like the tone is veering further and further into the YA sort of genre with every season. Even the action feels off to me. All the weird slow-motion effects and style to it... it just doesn't feel like I think The Witcher should feel. It seems entertaining enough, I guess, but it's just so frustrating and depressing to think how good this stuff could have been if they just kept the vision of the books rather than putting so many distant filters over it.
I'm also really struggling with Yen at the moment. I knew Anya was kind of too young already and not an imposing enough presence in previous seasons. But this is even more apparent as she's spending time with Ciri and trying to teach her magic. She simply isn't Geralt's equivalent in any way in this show. Henry has such gravitas and presence on screen, but Anya is just kinda... there. She looks like Ciri's sister, and it's not at all believable that she could ever be a mother figure to her. She's supposed to be a big presence - someone who Ciri looks up to and respects, not some young girl who is basically on her level. This isn't a knock against Anya (I think she's a great actress), it's just maybe a bit of a miscast. It probably wouldn't be bad if Ciri was younger and more accurate to how old she should look at this point. But as of now, Ciri looks the same age, if not older than she should at the end of the final Witcher book. Quite concerning considering how early on in the story we are.
Dijkstra and Philippa are kinda weird, and I definitely wouldn't say they were true to the source. But I don't actually mind them. I'll reserve judgement until I see more of them.
The scene in the maze missed the mark entirely for me. I'm really not enjoying any of the action thus far. I feel like the action peaked in the very first episode of season 1, and it has been all downhill ever since.
Although the music in the show has always been mostly pretty good, I think they use way too much of it. Every scene, every piece of action, everything just seems to be undercut with sudden dramatic music.
The Jaskier/Radovid stuff is truly abhorrent. Feels so wrong and out of place. It makes no sense.
Almost everything that comes out of anyone other than Geralt's mouth just sounds so generic, bland, and badly written. Ciri's speech at Sheaerrawedd felt so out of place, and the fight right after wasn't good. All the Rience stuff just makes me cringe. None of it even makes any sense. It's like they keep trying to have these big dramatic moments, but they just don't work because they haven't been earned. We're just jumping from big moment to big moment with subpar and rushed setups in between them. This would be less of an issue if they had actually just stuck to the books last season rather than having 95% of it be literal fanfiction. Instead, they've spent this entire first episode condensing all the big moments from Blood of Elves into 60 minutes. They literally had 8 episodes last season to fit this stuff in, but instead, the showrunner kept giving interviews about how "Blood of Elves doesn't have much content to adapt." Yeah, okay. If that's the case, why are you rushing and struggling to do it well or coherently in a single episode at the start of the next season? It's so frustrating.
Overall, this episode wasn't good. As an adaption of the source material? It'd be lucky to get a 2 or 3 out of 10. As a standalone episode of TV that is unrelated to The Witcher IP? A 5/10 is probably more than generous.
[7.8/10] Great follow-up to the season premiere, which sets the course of the season off right.
I love the fact that they pay off the “stealing a truck full of chips” bit from the very first episode of the series. The driver getting to keep his job, and not putting Bear in jail because there’s too many young people there already, is such an uplifting place to take this loose thread in the series. But it comes at a cost -- the driver cautioning, practically commanding, Bear to take this as a second chance and build things rather than tear them down. There’s something wholesome, even inspiring about that idea, particularly how an otherwise despondent Bear takes his good fortune and better advice to heart.
I also laughed my ass off at Brownie and Bucky using their prayer to the creator to lift the curse on the kids as a means to settle their decades-old beef over a girl in comically grandiose fashion. Willie Jack wondering what the hell just happened and Cheese explaining that older folks’ business is complicated was quite laugh-worthy. And the fact that they resort to singing Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” to seal the deal, replete with the spirit guide singing along in his way, was brilliant and side-splitting.
The other glimpses we get of Elora and Jackie’s star-crossed road trip are good too. Them getting away from the shotgun-wielding bumpkins is a bit of a cheat. But their scenes with Megan Mullaly as a newly-liberated divorcee have that awkward observational humor that the show does really well.
It compliments the heavy stuff in the episode. Elora is still mourning Daniel in all the running away, and feels guilt over not taking Bear with her, leading to her tears. You feel for the poor girl, who had her reasons for leaving the Rez Dogs behind, but is also still tied to that place and these people. Likewise, Jackie comes this close to bailing on her own, but eventually takes Elora with her as they steal their benefactor’s truck, an act that is both contemptible and a little sweet. We see a glimpse of Jackie’s home life before the reservation, and her own devotion to building things back up as they tow Elora’s grandmother’s car back home.
I’m glad that the show devoted two episodes to the California trip that had so consumed the kids’ dreams last season, but also that they spend the time justifying why Elora and Jackie would come back -- personally and spiritually.
Overall, a promising start to the new season which brings laughs, pathos, and heart in equal measure.
I have to admit, I got tired of the Carmella-Furio storyline. They make goo goo eyes at each other, mope, and nothing really happens. This is the would-be culmination of that storyline, with Furio coming the closest he ever would to taking out a soused Tony. And then leaving forever. But as usual Edie Falco makes it great, with her funk and sickness afterwards. Her two meals with Meadow were amazing scenes of with blistering text and heartbreaking subtext.
I was very surprised to learn that the contemporaneous fans of the show didn't like Carmela. I understand that she's an obstacle to Tony and that audiences rarely like to see their protagonists thwarted, no matter how bad that protagonist may be, but I've always enjoyed her arc of trying to resolve who she is and where her lifestyle comes from with the fact that she's removed from it and powerless in a way Tony isn't. Her only option is, as the psychiatrist Melfi recommended notes, just leaving and taking the kids with her. Tony, on the other hand, could maybe never join witness protection, but he at least makes more deliberate choices in who he is and what his business entails (though prior episodes like "College" suggest that he was more or less led by the nose into the mob from family and community expectations. I'm not saying that either character's arcs in this vein are better than the other's, but they're different, and I always appreciated the exploration of Carmela's position as much as I did Tony's.
If anything, my only beef was that they tended to hit the same notes repeatedly with Carmela, without really letting the story progress and change. But here, we start to finally see things boiling over for her. Her scenes with Meadow, where she so clearly resents her daughter for being the type of person on the cusp of the kind of life that Carmela always wanted for herself is striking. The effect that Furio's leaving has on Carmella, where she's clearly devastated but in a way she can't vocalize to anyone but Rosalie, and so her heartbreak comes out in other ways, is remarkable writing, that still wouldn't work without the supreme talent of Edie Falco.
On a very different note, Paulie is hilarious and awful at the same time. His mannerisms never cease to make me chuckle, but he does such ridiculous, awful stuff. The way he realizes that Johnny Sac has been buttering him up this whole time and changes his tune so quickly in response is great stuff. And all the business with the old ladies is quality as well. Paulie is always horrible, and the show tries to have the audience see that fact, but damnit, it's all so Paulie.
I also loved the scene with Carmine Jr., and how he started trying to mend things with his Dad and how quickly he turned on Tony after he heard his father compliment Tony by saying he wishes he had a son like that. John Sac's eyes told the story.
"Time travellers. Assemble!"
Before I start rambling on I've gotta say that the final 10-minute montage, the music, the rhythm, the parallels up to a t, was one of the best in the whole show.
After the episode, I've got one question. How the hell are they gonna wrap this up in just two episodes?
Honestly, I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm team Adam. This suffering is too harsh and too confusing for me to keep track. I'd rather everyone dies than keep track of how many Marthas are there.
In total this episode, we've seen 5 Marthas, plus original world Martha. And what probably looks like an Entanglement Martha.
There're two Jonas, one who goes to world B with alt short hair Martha, and another Jonas (adult Jonas/Adam) who stays in the bunker. Like Schrödiger Jonas.
Alt short hair Martha brings Jonas to World B. Then, she goes back to 1888 to meet adult Jonas and give him the cesium he needs to open the portal. Then, she goes back to Adam in the future and gets locked up in a cage only to, moments later, be sat up right under the portal and for Adam to kill her son via Apocalypse in both worlds.
In World B, Jonas (who has no idea of what's going on) goes to see alt long-haired Martha (who has no idea what's going on), she basically tells him to cool it and Jonas meets Eva, who brings him to her secret bunker and tells him that she wants to save both worlds.
Then, this Jonas decides to insist and, since long-haired Martha doesn't believe him, he brings her to the future where they meet adult Martha, who then sets them back to have sex and conceive the child that will be the key to the family tree.
Long-haired Martha and Jonas go to the nuclear plant, where long-haired Martha gets a cut, similar to the one adult Martha has, which triggers Jonas' alarms and discovers everyone is lying to him. So, he decides to go back and demand answers from Eva. When they get to Eva's secret bunker, another Martha (big scar Martha) emerges from the shadows and kills Jonas, thus living long-haired Martha sobbing and confused. Big scar Martha ends up writing a letter to Jonas that is delivered by adult Martha in 1888.
After that, long-haired Martha goes back home and cuts her hair, thus becoming short-haired Martha, she goes with Bartosz to the nuclear plant but are intercepted by adult Magnus and Franziska, who give short-haired Martha the apple device to go to our worlds and save Jonas so that he could go to alt world and long-haired Martha can learn it all.
The thing that strikes me is that Adam wants to destroy the origin of the entanglement (that's alt Martha and early-expired Jonas), but he's the one who creates it in the first place by sending Magnus and Franziska to give alt Martha the apple device, right? That makes no sense to me because, if alt Martha doesn't save Jonas, they don't conceive a child, so no one would exist. But (and that's a big but) "der Anfang ist das Ende, und das Ende ist der Anfang", which literally means that Adam has to make sure that everyone exists and that the origin (Martha and Jonas' son) is born so that he can break the cycle. Also, if big scar Martha is pregnant, that means there's another Martha. Like Entanglement Martha. So, in some point in the past, short hair Martha had to made a decision (similar to Schrödinger Jonas) and thus, create two pregnant Marthas.
This episode was, by far, the most confusing one, not because of not being able to follow or understand what's going on, but because there're way too many Marthas and that's confusing the shit ourñt of me. Of course, as soon as I see more episodes, I'll probably realize I'm completely wrong in everything I've said.
