Would love to be a fly on the wall to witness the negotiations requiring ‘based on the series True Detective by Nic Pizzolatto’ to be in the credits
This was actually going decent... until that cheap predictable twist.
5 minutes of Boyd > hours of this Raylan
Yeah you know you're not getting renewed when you're not invited to the after parties. Lol.
Starts out promising, but falls flat when it becomes an unoriginal ghost story.
Where Supernatural very much seems to be the Generation X of this franchise, this seems to be very much the Millennial spin off - set a generation before Sam & Dean.
Check an all inclusive barrage using stuff from the "later" seasons of Supernatural (such as the Men of Letters)
Going from point a to b to c to d to find and open the mystery box all while talking about feelings complete with quiet guitar music. The actual plot flies by but the scenes connecting them drag on relentlessly.
I saw someone call this the Scooby Doo version of Supernatural and after seeing the van I can agree with that. Except Scoobs and the gang didn't spend this much talking about their feelings. Sure, it's the pilot and time will tell but atm they'll have to step up their game to keep me interested - and I can't even guess how they will avoid 15 years of canon.
I watched every episode of Supernatural because when it aired it was something new and refreshing. It was "The Boys" of its time. For years we were stuck with female oriented supernatural stuff. From the Scream franchise ... they clobbered to death over Buffy, Angel and even Lucifer, it was always love and relationships.
Sam & Dean were beer drinking, burger eating, rocking badasses! Relationships were more like a Bond movie. Instead we got banter with Bobby, Cas and Cromwell. Episodes of them breaking the forth wall or even Scooby-Doo tribute were legendary.
So I checked out the pilot and they cover a part that was already told in the original series. Without any explanation they changed that. I can't be bothered to look it up, but they also changed a LOT of lore. Introduced the most boring arc of the Original with the Men of Letters in such a tempo it had my head spinning. They don't speak like in the seventies, they don't act like that time and they don't dress the part. I know it's low budget but come on.
Now if that was needed to deliver a kickass spin off, I would have forgiven it, but then they showed us the supporting characters. A person of color and a dandy. I'm all for inclusion but both felt like the bare minimum to meet the quota. Either you go woke or you don't, this just pisses of everybody.
This pilot is something my son would have turned in as homework, something with minimal effort to get a passing grade.They even go hunting in a van like the Scooby-Doo gang. I was really looking forward to this but this only damages the original in my book
Just another “Twilight Zone” rip-off
As always, the opening title/credits sequence is the best part of this show.
That was really bad... Season 1 bad
I don’t know what Nathan is planning here.
Overall, the concept didn’t click with me. Seems like a Nathan for You for people —situations in their lives, rather than business (like the last episode of that series)— while deepens the lore around Nathan itself, it’s image as a super self aware person, with profound anxiety by what others thinks about him.
Anyway, it’s great to see a Nathan show again. I hope this series turns out to be a success.
[7.4/10] Gosh that was long. I don’t think that any episode of television, even an epic season finale for one of television’s marquee shows, needs to be two and a half hours long. Sure, many movies are that long. But movies have the structure and pacing for it, with rising and falling action, act structures, and other foundational elements that make 150 minutes not feel that long. “The Piggyback is basically” fifteen minutes of prelude, followed by two hours of a third act climax, followed by fifteen minutes of an epilogue. It’s just too much.
But there’s good moments here! Eddie’s death is meaningful. Him playing Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” to lure the bats with Dustin is cheesy as hell, but just as awesome. His choice to stand and face the horror rather than run away from it as he did with Chrissy is inspiring and earnest. And there is irony and tragedy in his demise. He was the town pariah and scapegoat, but secretly one of its biggest heroes. The world will never know how he gave his life to save a town that hated him, but Dustin knows, and his uncle knows too. It’s sad, but comes with a certain poignancy.
The same goes for Max’s heartfelt admission that she spent so much time feeling guilt over Billy’s death that she wished something would happen to her, something that would make her disappear. It’s one of the most honest renditions of survivor’s guilt I’ve seen on television, and Sadie Sink owns the scene. The loss of someone who hurt you, but who was also hurt, is a complicated thing, and for all season 4’s missteps and questionable story choices, it gets Max’s vulnerability and strength in the shadow of unspeakable thoughts just right.
As tired as I am of “power of love” stories, I did like that it’s Mike finally saying the L-word that gives Eleven the strength to do her thing. It completes Mike’s arc, with him worrying that he’s not good enough to be with a superhero and that admitting his feelings would make it hurt more. But him deciding that’s baloney and affirming his love for Eleven in every form makes for a beautiful little monologue. The finale lays things on a little thick with visions of everyone’s plans failing and good folks suffering, but the idea that love spurs us to “fight” is a simple but effective tonic to that idea.
There’s a number of lesser but still good moments in the lead-up to this. Argyle finding a kindred spirit in a Nevada pizza shop is a fun win for him. Jonathan validating his brother and wanting to support him no matter whom he loves is a wholesome moment. The Russian prison guard convincing Yuri to once again be a “great man” and help save the motherland by saving “the Americans” is the best thing to come out of that storyline.
But again, there’s just too much going on, and a lot of it seems superfluous. It’s admirable that the Duffer Brothers want to give everyone in the cast something to do. But most everything outside of the Eleven/Max/Vecna confrontation seems like perfunctory piece-moving rather than a vital part of the action.
Lucas closes off the jock jerk/satanic panic storyline, but randomly finds the strength of will to avoid being strangled out of nowhere. Erica likewise beats up a bully twice her size almost at random. Steve, Robyn, and Nancy burn up Vecna in the Upside Down, but it doesn’t even kill him, so it feels like they just mildly inconvenience him. Eddie and Dustin fighting bats includes some cool sequences, and keeps Vecna’s minions from attacking the others, but is a sidestory at best. And once again, Hopper, Joyce, and Murray fighting the demogorgons and demodogs in Russia is the most tangential, tenuously-connected part of this whole season.
Jumping around to all of these storylines is just plain exhausting. While I wouldn’t call any of it filler (okay, maybe the business at the Russian prison), a lot of it feels much less urgent and essential than what’s going on in the main event.
The main event is good though. Max retreating to her happy place, and it being the finale of season 2, is a nice surprise. Eleven finding out how to “piggyback” and fight Vecna via Max’s mind is a cool trick and thrilling moment. And Eleven turning the tide and defeating One, however temporarily, is rousing.
But things quickly devolve into tired exposition and monologuing, where Henry explains how he’s going to shatter the borders between his world and ours, and how it was Eleven, not Dr. Brenner who made him. We already got a giant infodump at the end of episode 7, which was already kind of a stretch. This one is probably necessary, but listening to One simply announce his backstory with some of the usual visuals doesn’t add much intrigue or excitement to the proceedings.
Plus, the episode makes a big deal about how our heroes lose for the first time, but...it seems like they shouldn’t have? Sure, Henry succeeds, and there’s a giant Upside Down-fueled “earthquake” that devastates Hawkins. That’s unfortunate, and I’m glad there’s some kind of cost to all this interdimensional adventuring.
But Eleven found her inner strength and obliterated the guy in the mind realm! Robyn, Steve, and Nancy burned the hell out of him in the Upside Down and blasted him with a shotgun out the window! I’m not saying plausibility is the key in a show where the supernatural is the rule of the day. Yet, nothing in this feels like a loss. It feels like, by all rights, they should have been able to finish the job here and now with Vecna, and the only reason they didn’t is because there’s another season of Stranger Things that needs a villain, and the Duffer Brothers don’t want to have to come up with another one. It would have been better if Vecna had enjoyed more of an outright win than something that seems like a complete loss that turns out to be mere table-setting for season 5.
That said, we do get some great work with Max. It is harrowing watching the life leave her body as she cries out about how scared she is in all of this. It’s a nice contrast to where she’s reminded of what she has to live for with her friends and doesn’t want to disappear. Caleb McLaughlin does an extraordinary job as Lucas reacting to Max’s apparent death with his own cries of pain. And we’ve added to Eleven’s messianic nature by having her effectively revive Max, creating the second of two “miracles” in the episode, even if poor Max remains in a coma.
The epilogue is nice enough. There’s the bevy of tearful reunions you’d expect, with Eleven and Hopper being the best of them, naturally. I’m glad that the show didn’t just jump from climax to cliffhanger. It’s nice that we get some of the denouement and emotional aftermath of all these grand events. But considering how many concurrent storylines and characters they’ve been juggling to this point, even that soon feels overextended.
Regardless, Robyn forming a friendship that has the potential to lead to more with her crush is a really nice scene, and it’s good to see her get the win. Nancy and Jonathan’s deal continues to be confusing and pointless. Lucas reading a Stephen King book to a comatose Max is a creditable homage to one of the show’s clear inspirations. And seeing the town of Hawkins wonder why they’re cursed and forced to suffer like this, with the aftermath of Vecna’s handiwork coming to the fore, helps add a sense of place and scope to the scheme this season.
Overall though, this season finale bites of way more than it could chew. Why this couldn’t have been broken up into three episodes, or even just been built into a better act structure, is beyond me. There’s a lot of good material here. Some of it’s even great. But it’s presented in a way that makes it really hard to get your hands around.
Still, I like some of the big swings the show’s taken in season 4. Vecna introduces a retroactive backstory and mastermind for all that’s happened which is kind of hard to swallow. But having a villain with a face and a personality and a motive escalates this struggle into something broader and more meaningful as a reflection of Eleven’s own struggles. The show’s done good work with a number of the key relationships in the series, and introduced some solid new characters while reintroducing old ones. (I’m glad we got more Owens this year.)
But at the end of the day, this also feels like half a story, despite the ridiculously bloated runtimes for every episode. This is as much a prelude to season 4 as it is its own distinctive thing. Maybe that’s to be expected in the streaming era, but while there’s high points and quality elements at play, the season’s never more than the sum of its part.
Still, a friend described Stranger Things as a show that’s still exciting and worthy of investing in even when it’s missing half of its shots, and I think this finale is a good representation of that idea. Not everything works, and the time required prompts a certain exhaustion factor. But this feels epic and grand and satisfying enough as a temporary resolution to the season’s events. There’s a lot more ground to cover, but also enough to tug the heartstrings and make you cheer, which is still worth appreciating.
this might be my least favorite episode of all time. None of the jokes worked, super boring episode.
entire story is told by exposition - acting is terrible too
simple premise, single location...one of the better/best episodes of this entire series, imo
Dan is WAY overreacting to seeing his dad in the footage.
And who tries to steal mail? WTF? Not only is it a felony, but the likelihood of you getting anything other than junk mail is very low. What possible reason would there be to steal a random piece of mail? So stupid! And then why would you film yourself trying on clothes? Nobody else cares and it isn't part of your research. Then she films walking into the theater. Holy cow is that weird. Melody is a moron and a creep.
So other than the fact I still like the storytelling and style, this episode had pretty much no plot. Yes, it was weird, but really not that interesting. There were a few key nuggets of information, but hardly enough to full 5 minutes, let alone an entire episode. I really want to like this series, but Netflix is making it really hard.
Well that was a disappointing turn. Using the same plot device twice in a series is just too lazy
Worst season of American horror story … what was that shi….. seriously comon what a waste of time !
And we’re back to the stupidity of the kids & now the adults. Wow!!!
Kinda an emotional episode, or it would be emotional if it wasn’t the second episode, this feels like it should have been a mid season thing
Wtf was that?? :| Pretty half assed....could've had something promising with a Stephen King type premise. I'm left with more questions than answers...I guess bring on the alien side of the season.
A pure mess. Come on Ryan take a pill, maybe that will help fixing the constant ridiculous endings.
This episode must have been written by pale people. What a mess.
A little rushed and not very satisfying end to a really good season.
Wow what a hot mess of an episode
"Two wrongs make a white" Seriously? Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a comedy series. No one watches a series for it to be woke garbage. I'll give it a chance but If I'm getting politics thrown at my face 24/7 I won't finish this series.
I was so thrilled and excited to have B99 back in my life... then the episode started. This show has become too woke for its own good. Let's hope the cringe AF writing was all crammed in the premiere so they get it out of the way and move on politics free for the rest of the season.:fingers_crossed: