I gave it now three episodes to see where they are going with this.
Terrible. Still too violent for a MacGyver, the story of this particular episode was very odd.
"Killing" a guy only temporarily for so long without any kind of brain damage (or bleeding out) as a result was stretching it too much for me. At least the "assholeness" of MacGyver was tuned down a bit these last two episodes.
But I still dislike Lucas Till as the new MacGyver, he's still too much of an I-can-do-everything guy.
However, there's no point in complaining every episode that this MacGyver is too violent or Till not really a fit for this role. Although, let it be mentioned that an attempt at a non-violent action show would set this apart from all the other action packed shows.
And please get rid of these stupid jumpcuts (the "sniper" incident, when they were driving away with the white car, wtf is that cutting for?) and the atrocius CG(I) gunfire.
Speaking of getting rid of, write Wilt out. He's such a misplaced character. I liked the actor in Rush Hour, really, and I think it'd be not bad to have him in this in a more serious and important role but definitely not as Wilt. I'm thinking of Simon Pegg's character in Mission Impossible for him.
The MacGyverness felt more natural this episode (remember the bowl of paperclips in episode 2? they go too far with this), as inaccurate and stupid some of it seemed. That's another plus.
There are too many better (action) shows airing that it feels difficult to specifically recommend this over the others.
The only thing that might keep me watching is Tristin Mays as Riley. She reminds me of a young Jessica Alba and with that I get reminded of Dark Angel that I loved to watch back then.
Hot damn, this season is so good. Everything about it is just absolutely awesome.
That opening scene was great. It was super cool to see how differently Barry experiences things.
Harry and Jesse are back! I'm so happy! Let's hope they stick around for a while.
Magenta was a pretty fantastic villain. I'm always a sucker for the whole Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde thing. I can't even really blame her for her actions. There aren't many things in the world that I hate more than abusive parents. Sure, trying to destroy a hospital full of innocent people was way too extreme, but I can't say that I don't understand her motivations. Oh, and her hair was dope.
"Dad cop" is wonderful. And Barry being a "second daughter" made me giggle.
I can't wait for Team Flash to find out about Caitlin's powers.
Julian is a freaking asshole. Everything about him, from his stupid vest to his stupid messy hair, screams bad guy to me. How can you hate Barry Allen? That's just not physically possible. Look at him. He's the sweetest person in the world.
That last scene with Harry and Jesse was so good and pure. It made me really happy.
I've talked about Barry and Iris before, but god damn it, that is some tooth-rotting fluff right there. It should be illegal to be this cute. I can't stop grinning like an idiot.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm... cautiously optimistic about this season? We're 3 episodes in and so far it's good. I'm actually enjoying watching Arrow again.
Am I still bitter about Diggle having a son instead of a daughter in this timeline? Yes, I am. It shouldn't be a big deal, really, but for some reason it makes me sad.
The new team is slowly growing on me. Right now Wild Dog is your typical stubborn, hot-headed idiot, but hopefully he'll get better. Curtis quips way too much and it's not half as charming as when Cisco does it on The Flash, but he was actually useful in this episode, so kudos to him for that.
John and Lyla's relationship is honestly my favorite on the show. I always enjoy their scenes together.
I'm curious to see what will happen next with Felicity and Rory. There's potential for some quality angst there, but I'm not sure if I trust the writers to handle this dynamic properly.
I'm totally here for Bad Bitch Thea Quinn destroying the asshole reporter. Get wrecked, Susan.
The slow-mo shot of Oliver walking away from the explosion was cool in that weird cringey way where it was almost too cheesy to handle, but somehow still made my inner 8-year-old jump and clap her hands with glee.
Oh, and apparently ingesting a drug slowly fries your brain and destroys your internal organs, but if you bathe in it, you're suddenly invincible? How does that even work?
So it looks like we're getting Prison Break: Arrow Edition next week! Just please, kill the bastard that framed John while you're at it.
Well, here's hoping Barry finally learns not to mess with the damn timeline. Also, apparently not one episode can go by without him explaining time-travelling stuff while drawing lines on a board.
Alchemy looks like poor man's Nazgul, but he's sufficiently creepy and powerful. He'll probably be a pretty compelling villain once we learn more about him.
Can Barry and Iris please stop being so darn cute?
Caitlin has her Killer Frost powers! Does this mean she's going to sport white hair and a tacky leather outift like her Earth-2 counterpart? Or talk like she went to Leonard Snart's school of unnecessarily drawing out words? I sincerely hope not. Maybe she could put on a blue dress and belt out "Let It Go" in the musical crossover with Supergirl? Because I'd be okay with that.
I hated seeing Cisco sad, but I'm glad he and Barry made up at the end of the episode. His gauntlets were pretty sick too.
Oh, and it seems that Draco Malfoy changed his name and moved to Central City to be a metahuman expert? I guess things didn't work out for him in the Wizarding World.
This was a really emotional episode with a lot of angst and sadness, and yet the thing that upset me the most was that baby Sara is baby John now. I'm not okay with this. Give Dig his adorable baby girl back right now.
Prepared for the worst, so I wasn't directly disappointed but definitely confirmed my assumptions.
The opening is teasing you with the iconic soundtrack just to change it entirely shortly after and the opening ends with the evenly well-known explosion with the name MacGyver over it. Appears so half-assed. Really.
However, why have they recasted most of the characters and reshooted the pilot but of all the issues we saw early on, they kept the biggest one: Lucas Till? That makes no sense.
He comes off as a snarky, arrogant and condescending ass. He's this way too young superman type of a guy, who can do basically anything. He's too much of everything, he's seriously unrelatable and unlikable to the core. I hope, they turn that assholeness down a lot in the upcoming episodes. This episode - for a MacGyver and this show is just that: a modern attempt at a MacGyver by taking what's cool these days - appears simply too violent for what it is or tries to be. Hopefully that was just an attempt at drawing people in.
CGI effects are atrocius (except the "useful" hints that that object is an unfolded paperclip and such). I hate cheap CGI gunfire, seriously hate it. If the explosion is cheap CGI and defies any laws of physics (bomb explosion), okay, you usually don't have that many of those, you laugh it off and move on. But gunfire was pretty common here and was Blindspot S1 atrocius or even worse. This, for me, is one of the biggest immersion killers in any action packed movie/series.
Having the ex-Rush Hour (TV Series) actor, who played Carter, be in this as "Wilt" seems unnecessary. Any scenes with him are a waste of time as they take away from the MacGyver-ness of the show. He's supposed to be the cover for Mac and has no clue what Mac does for a living. But why?! Why is it so often necessary, to have a main protagonist live with a "cover" friend? Can a spy, super-agent, can-do-everything adventurer, or whatever never live alone without raising suspicion? It never makes sense and always imposes on the actual show at some point. It makes even less sense for a MacGyver show.
It's pretty action packed so it might catch on a younger audience, though.
But what I really wonder is, why should one watch this?
It's a copy of a copy of a copy. Scorpion, Blindspot, The Last Ship, Containment (in a smaller scale), Supernatural, Orphan Black...
All shows with a group of people solving ("world") problems. This has literally nothing setting it apart.
The little things he does with tinfoil and stuff was way too shallow and, well, lame. Opening handcuffs with a bobbypin? Never seen before! Putting tinfoil in some ammonia+corrosive to create smoke to start the firealarm? So exciting!! So much easier than using a lighter and I always have my bottle full with ammonia on me, anyway! A parachute from the planes of that truck? Mindblowing. All these things felt like they were a stupid joke reference to the old MacGyver that is thrown in between all the gun and explosion action. There's (mostly) no relevance to it whatsoever. I wouldn't have anything against a (good) modern MacGyver reboot but not how this episode tries to sell it: as a joke.
I definitely thought that Nyx somehow knew her brother killed himself, based on how she was crying, curled up in her quarters, at the end of the last episode. Guess the writers didn't realize what they implied. Or maybe, she's in denial.
Some very nice character development for Devon here. What we learn of his past turns out to be a bit on the cliché side, but that makes it no less valid as a motivator for his drug addiction. I look forward to finding out more about him, assuming that, because we don't see him die from the stab wound at the end of this episode, he'll be around for at least a while longer.
Those special transfer pod outfits are a neat dodge of a number of issues, on multiple fronts. They avoid: having to find a way for the characters to get clothes in the facility; depicting an underage female† in the nude; implying that said underage female is nude with grown men; and a generally awkward sequence that wouldn't add anything to the plot.
There is a small plot hole, though: Alicia Reynaud orders her techs to pick a transfer pod at random and send a charge to "fry [the occupant's] brain". But apparently it never happens, as in a subsequent scene her apparent lieutenant says they should "just send the charge and end this" but she says no. Interesting oversight on the writers' part.
Given Five's display of skill here, she'd make an absolutely fantastic pen-tester. If she was a real person on Earth in 2016, she could probably get a job at any tech or security firm she wanted. And I certainly wouldn't mind learning a thing or two about security from her. Even just running into her at a conference and chatting for a few minutes would probably lead to some important, useful lessons. Her grasp of space physics ain't too shabby, either. I've always liked Five as a character, and I really love that this show includes such a brilliant girl! Way to flip the script on the traditional male STEM whiz-kid archetype. Actually, now that I really think about it, she's a lot like a girl version of Wesley Crusher—whom I did not hate, unlike so much of the Star Trek fandom.
Speaking of Star Trek, it's neat that the description of how FTL drives work in Dark Matter nicely matches the theoretical physics of warp drives. None of that hyperspace bullshit that so many other sci-fi franchises try to throw around. It's refreshingly simple, as is the description of Blink Drive and its temporary wormhole–based operation.
And on a completely personal note, I've worked in at least two theaters that have identical (or nearly so) metal chairs as in Alicia Reynaud's detention room. Those square frames with three closely spaced vertical flat bars in the middle of the back are pretty distinctive.
† — Five is canonically a teenager, probably around 15-16 years old, from the sources I can find and recall from watching the show so far (though the actress portraying her is 21).
This show is incredibly stupid and bad. But somehow it became a guilty pleasure for me.
It's so bad but at the same time in a way that it is entertaining to watch, just not how it was intended to be.
This show must have the most plotholes I have ever seen in a TV series.
If this wouldn't air on a major network like CBS it'd be cancelled after 3 episodes max despite the really, really low production costs that it must have, I suppose.
But since it's on CBS it got a full first season order of BS technobabble making no sense and characters so unlikable and sterile that I don't care for a single person and wonder how they made it through life so far. Not to speak of the positions they literally fell in.
Katharine McPhee (Paige, the waitress) is the only exception and good "feature" of this series.
Not because she is such a great actress, haven't seen enough of her to judge on that, but being the only halfway reasonable person on this awful cast of awful actors makes her the only likable person, in a way.
It's helping that she is cute, too.
I could go on and rip the premise and every episode apart and make fun of its absurd plots, terrible reasoning, repetitive and dumb dialogues but others did that already well enough.
Although being very nit-picky when it is about technology and terminology, that is basically raped on this show on a regular basis, my biggest pet peeve isn't within the above-mentioned.
Surprisingly it is with the blatantly wrong use of HTML syntax in the opening.
You have the maincharacter narrating that he has a higher IQ than Einstein and is one of the four people with the highest IQ on earth but it is subtitled with stuff like </starring> following the "stars". Ugh.
This contradiction is seriously annoying me and shows the technical and intellectual precision that this show has to offer throughout.
