Thogek

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8

Wow. My reactions to this one are a bit all over the place, but...

First of all, nice job adapting the anime's opening-credits sequence. That was fun. And now that music's back stuck in my head.

For the most part, this one's story is that of the original anime's "Asteroid Blues" episode, with some minor adjustments, and that much works pretty well, although introducing Faye this early is a bit odd but... we'll see what they do with that.

I'm not sure I like giving Jet a family, making his immediate motivations about buying his daughter a decent birthday present. That sorta works, but the anime's making him the starving loner ex-cop whose motivation is mostly about putting food on the increasingly empty table seemed more effective. Otherwise, I'm liking Mustafa Shakir's take on Jet a lot—as well as John Cho's on Spike. Haven't seen enough of Daniella Pineda's Faye yet to have much opinion, but her attitude seems to work so far. (I don't really care that this Faye's not playing so hard to original-Faye's overt sensual angle, as long as this Faye is otherwise similar and interesting.)

As for the end... Hmm. Vicious is, of course, well, vicious, but that seemed rather unnecessarily unstable of him. And was that Julia? If so, that's a rather large change...

Waitaminute. No preview-of-next-session with those randomly wacky character narrations? Perhaps they were a bit too goofy to adapt well. Sigh. They were a fun dessert to each anime ep.

Overall, an interesting start with its own adjustments and wrinkles which we'll have to watch to see how they play out.

I just... what is... going... errg.

Lemme see if I can break some of this down:

• Silas of planet Transylvane. Okay, I see what they did there (missed an opportunity for Gotham bat jokes?), and despite the initial cringe-moment, the explanation kinda works. And I ended up kinda liking the poor guy. Almost hoping he'll stick around (and that J'onn will take it easier on him).
• Dad? Okay, stumbling into recognizable new characters can be kinda fun, but... A little too cheap and convenient to the circumstance, perhaps? (Of all the spots in all the fractures in all the Phantom Zone...)
• The courtroom scenes: W. T. F. Any armchair-jockey who's seen two episodes of Law & Order (much less watched any actual court case) would know better than to construct that childishly simplistic farce of a trial. I know it's a comic-book show, but it's live-action, too; does the courtroom have to be so senselessly absurd as to be less plot-satisfying than a plain comic-panel with the text "Lex was charged with [crimes], tried, and found not-guilty"?
• The Phantoms: Or dementors. Or whatever they are. Meh. Okay. As long as they develop into something a little more interesting as we go. (Hope.)
• Brainy's too-quick of-course-The-Phantom-Zone-has-fractured...: Far too quick a realization-and-discovery (as usual), although I suppose the explanation itself, as a set-back vehicle, works well enough.
• Multiple emotional-breakdown-and-pep-talk scenes. This is certainly a situation that called for bits of despairing over Kara's fate. But could at least someone hold off on the despondent catastrophizing until after a little longer than the first day?

Overall high-level storyline: fair (6/10).
Actual story-portrayal execution: ranges from terrible to fair (4/10).
Sigh.

My impression after just finally watching this...

First 40-45%: 4/10.
So many scenes felt clipped, rushed into the next, with not nearly enough connection to follow what was going on or why. Visually impressive, and I had the distinct impression that something big and interesting was going on, but I was very confused about what it was.

Last 55-60%: 7/10.
A little after we meet Sator, events started flowing somewhat more understandably. Still a bit confused here and there, but not as much. And the big ambitious sequences closer to the end were mostly well-executed (and in stunning detail), including some loopbacks that belatedly filled in some of the earlier-on confusion while completing the story well. Still not quite up to the greatness level the ads promised, IMO, but better.

I have the impression that a second watch would make more sense, in part due to some of the revelations near the end. My issue is that a second watch shouldn't be this necessary to get the story enough to appreciate it.

While I appreciate some degree of mystery and confusion up front that gets explained later on, that doesn't quite work any more when the confusion reaches a level that I don't understand why people are doing what they're doing.

I suspect that this would have been much better if given the additional time to flesh things out, especially the first half. Maybe as a limited series over four to six hours.

While I did like and enjoy this episode, I agree with everyone saying that (1) it was too simple, compressed, and quick and (2) it would have fit much better as a Season One finale than as a Season Two premiere.

Ideally, IMO, this should have been three episodes added to the end of last season:
1. The Trigon-prodding and descent of the remaining characters (Cory, Donna, Jason, Hank, Dawn) into their Darkness, fleshed out much more believably than they were, and laced with a few quick sightings of Rachel's growing despair and Trigon's self-satisfaction.
2. The darkened characters' near-deadly assault on Gar, Rachel's heart, Gar's reaching through to Rachel, Rachel's reaching through to Dick.
3. Dick and Rachel frantically decide what to do, maybe try to free the others, etc., leading into a much more complex and believable fight against and vanquishing of the legendarily powerful Trigon.
Optional Bonus: A short after-scene of Trigon and Mallus commiserating.

As it is, while fun—like a meal of perfectly good food that's just much too quick and small to be truly satisfying—this episode had the effect of feeling like an almost dismissive tossing-aside of the whole Trigon backbone-storyline in a sudden rush to move on to freaking out poor Slade and whatever else is coming next...