6/10
Fair
Not bad but not good
it was all rather
unmemorable and very
forgettable.
The mother was super
annoying and that
daughter 15 my ass
try 22,23 terrible casting
choice.
The ending was
very anticlimax at best
and piss-poor at worst.
Worst episode of the
season.Verdict: weird
unstable mother and
a story that
ultimately
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@davy-endgame-x welcome to parenting, you'll be surprised how many parents like the mother are in real life.
Shout by Pradipa PR
A bit too on the nose in their attempts to poke the issue on darkly designed terms of service and deepfake, especially in light of the Hollywood actor and screenwriter protest (perhaps even inspired by it). The episode leans heavily toward being a meta humor, but it doesn't really work well. Annie Murphy does her best, and I believe Salma Hayek too, but they were given a rather one-dimensional, uninspiring script. As the episode ended I realized Charlie Brooker is the writer. That kinda explains the weak episode.
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@katurian actually, yes. Black Mirror is quite hit and miss to me. When it's good it's really good though, like Entire History of You and Nosedive. Which happen to not be written by Brooker. I think Brooker's episodes I liked are only White Christmas and 15 Million Merits.
Oh, boy. This episode had so much potential and I was honestly so excited for some kind of twist, but.. it just never happened. I even expected some great twist in the last five minutes ("Shut up and dance" pulled it off so well), but just nothing.
It's so weird because I felt like there was so much foreshadowing or hints, like at the beginning when the child was born she was just quiet and the doctors took her away for a minute and no one told the mother anything, then the way the camera showed how the girl was interested in the cat and scared of the dog etc. I thought something was wrong with the girl since birth and it would interfere with the device or she would start killing people/animals and take drugs as a child because she just never learned about it and got curious. Then we got the camera shot at the end where the mother saw herself from the back through her child's eyes and I actually thought she hung herself. Then a minute later I thought the safety switch might be turned on forever now. But nothing happened. In the end the child just got angry, beat up her mother and ran away. It was so anticlimatic. They kept me on the edge of my seat but never delivered anything.
So far this season is really hard for me. I disliked these first two episodes a lot, but I still hope I'll see something good in the next ones.
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@haibara "shut up and dance" is one of the worst black mirror episodes though. its only trick is in the twist, and a rather cheap one at that. make people pedo is a cheap twist trick, just like jumpscare is a cheap horror trick. the writing itself doesn't hold the candle. the kid in this eps hanging herself would be a similar cheap jumpscare trick.
I'll watch this at work during break I said
If there's anything NSFW I'll just dim the screen and hunch over my phone I said
Gen V Episode 1 33 minutes 22 seconds: Challenge Accepted :smiling_imp:
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@bobdole12 should've waited until november
This is why Elon is rate limiting Twitter. He should have done more ,such as reducing the reach of hateful content.
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@yudhir you're insane if you think Elon is reducing the reach of hateful content
Boy. This didn’t “age” well, did it. Starting off with sensationalism - killing a kid (zombie kid, but still, is that what they need to capture an audience?), then going straight into misogyny, both as a joke and in earnest. Dang. People say this show is good, but how much do I have to fast forward until it gets there?:sweat_smile:
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@kyria-crosszeria how is this misogynistic in an earnest? You mean the scene with Shane?
The show had its up and downs.
But honestly I found the last season a high tick up in quality over the last few & it felt like a return to form, so I'm glad it ended in a bang (pun intended).One thing that did prevail thru the up's and down was the cast. They were the heart of the show and put their all into every episode. Many giving performances that are wave above & beyond cable TV. The show gets a ton of hate, but overall I'd say it was a fun journey & I'll definitely miss it.
Thanks for the wild ride & I'm excited to see what they do with TWDU.
P.S - Haters who comment on LITERALLY every episode, can ya'll please just NOT watch any of the other shows & b*tch non-stop no matter how good it is? It will make all of our lives a lot easier :)
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@mattdeezly1996 "when I hate something I stop watching".
^ What a quitter mentality. How are you supposed to know and fairly assess the quality of a show when you only know a portion of it?
I watch a show til the end and judge every episode based on its merit. If it's good it's good, if it's shit it's shit. I pay my subscription to watch the show, and I judge what I get from my money. I'm a consumer, it's a product. There's nothing personal about it. Stop dramatizing as if your mama cooked it personally for you.
I don't understand that David seem to like Lucy already for some reason.
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@jo_is_a_roof She's pretty and sexy, and David is a high school boy. It's easy to get attracted to girls in that age.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.8/10] This is the most traditional Star Wars story of Star Wars: Visions so far, but that’s not a bad thing! It still reimagines the world to a significant extent. The episode pictures some tie where war has wiped out the Jedi, but there are a few remnants left in addition to a few Sith patrolling the galaxy. The idea of a last master, gathering the few remaining allies and potentials, to bring back the old ways, is a cool setup.
What I particularly like about this one is that, like The Force Awakens it’s an homage to A New Hope, but that like The Last Jedi, it remixes and reimagines that influence more than it simply retraces it. Kara isn’t Luke exactly, and her father and eventual master aren’t Obi Wan exactly, and the journey to the site of the action isn’t exactly the journey to the Death Star.
But it’s enough of an analog to feel familiar, while remixing things enough to feel fresh.Honestly, this is the episode of Star Wars; Visions that feels rife with the most potential for a regular series. We have some cool new characters in Kara, the neophyte who proves herself worthy in desperate times, her master, a clever man who uses a key moment to round up Jedi, his friend, who falls to the dark side temporarily but regains his way, and the young amsterless Jedi who kicks off the episode, another young hopeful with a strong heart in need of training. You can see this quarter working, especially in a part of the timeline/galaxy where the Order needs to be restored, and Siths and Jedi-hunters roam the land.
This is a particular tribute to the lightsaber as an almost holy artifact in the Star Wars galaxy. It’s what the master tries to reassemble as a first step toward reestablishing the Jedi as a presence. There’s the cheesy yet cool reveal that the resting comet jutting out on a beam of light from the planet below looks, from the right angle, like a giant lightsaber in the sky. And of course, there’s the clever conceit of the lightsabers du jour being constructed to commune with their wielder, thereby revealing the truth in their heart.
It allows for a clever reveal as to who the good guys and buys are, preserving the key twist of the short. It provides for a good way for the master’s friend to reveal that he’s fallen into darkness but is not beyond redemption given how his saber turns back to a good guy color. ANd Kara’s blank saber turning green when she rises to the occasion works as superb symbolism for the untrained but potential-filled warrior coming into her own.
Overall, this is another strong outing for Star Wars: Visions, with some cool lightsaber action, a great rendition of the franchise’s muthos and lore in an unfamiliar setting, and the intrigue and tension of one man trying to restore the light to the galaxy and requiring those implements that so many Jedi Knights are known for. If they do expand this one into a series, sign me up.
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@andrewbloom I agree with you that this is a potentially great episode for its own series. Only noting that the lightsaber mythos is incorrectly depicted here.
Lightsaber prowess and force power are two different things. You can be proficient in lightsaber combat without having any force-sensitivity (e.g. General Grievous Grievous) and you can be masterful in force but lacking in lightsaber feat (e.g. Jocasta Nu).
Lightsaber crystal also doesn't reflect the wielder's sensitivity to sides of the force. You can be a morally uptight Jedi wielding red lightsaber (e.g. Adi Gallia) and a sith wielding blue (e.g. Anakin after he fell to the dark side. Notice when he was knighted as sith by Palpatine his saber's color didn't turn red).
With a better familiarity with the mechanics Production IG could've made a great Star Wars series though, I agree. They have good script writers.
Review by ragreynolds
VIP7Another good episode, but I must admit that I was kinda disappointed by it as a season finale. It ended well, but the episode felt a bit off. It felt as though every single character just had a sudden change of heart, as though we had missed an entire episode of development. Obviously we knew certain characters were headed a certain way, but they just seemed to suddenly jump from say 60% of the way that they progressed through the last 7 episodes, to 100% just in this one. It felt kinda weird how Homelander just suddenly showed up and got Ryan too - it came out of nowhere. It was still a good episode, but I thought it felt a bit rushed.
Also kinda disappointed that we're kinda just back where we started at the beginning of the season, with no real way to take down Homelander. I was expecting Soldier Boy to take Homelander's powers and then we'd get to see a new side to Homelander next season since he'd be weak and dealing with having no powers. Instead, it seems we're going to get a lot of focus on Ryan and Homelander together - which I do like. I had also thought that maybe all of The Boys would end up with powers by the end of the season, but that didn't happen either (not that that's a bad thing).
Anyway, I thought this was a good episode, but an ever so slightly disappointing end to a fantastic season of TV. Can't wait for season 4.
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@ragreynolds I feel like the cliffhanger-ish, "back to nothing" feeling is kind of pattern. They did this too in Season 1 finale.
Review by ragreynolds
VIP7Another good episode, but I must admit that I was kinda disappointed by it as a season finale. It ended well, but the episode felt a bit off. It felt as though every single character just had a sudden change of heart, as though we had missed an entire episode of development. Obviously we knew certain characters were headed a certain way, but they just seemed to suddenly jump from say 60% of the way that they progressed through the last 7 episodes, to 100% just in this one. It felt kinda weird how Homelander just suddenly showed up and got Ryan too - it came out of nowhere. It was still a good episode, but I thought it felt a bit rushed.
Also kinda disappointed that we're kinda just back where we started at the beginning of the season, with no real way to take down Homelander. I was expecting Soldier Boy to take Homelander's powers and then we'd get to see a new side to Homelander next season since he'd be weak and dealing with having no powers. Instead, it seems we're going to get a lot of focus on Ryan and Homelander together - which I do like. I had also thought that maybe all of The Boys would end up with powers by the end of the season, but that didn't happen either (not that that's a bad thing).
Anyway, I thought this was a good episode, but an ever so slightly disappointing end to a fantastic season of TV. Can't wait for season 4.
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@ragreynolds you summed up my feelings in a much concise way, thanks!
Others might say that this is not as intense as previous episode, which might be true in terms of action and moving the plot forward. But I find this episode is still intense in a different way: more emotional investment.
"Family" and its unfortunately related cousin "abuse" seem to be the the theme that knits together different story arcs of the episode: the obvious Butcher flashback, Kimiko and Frenchie, MM with his family, Soldier Boy, and Homelander.
The episode kind of speeds up the pace in showing Soldier Boy's villainy through a recreation/imagination of Black Noir's flashback; although I'm not too comfortable that they present Noir's flashback at face value (instead of being an unreliable narrator), I think it still kinda works.
It is shown that Soldier Boy is an abusive, selfish bully with anger issues you would typically see among band leads or celebrity groups. While some have defended Soldier Boy's action by comparing him to Homelander ("at least Soldier Boy is not psychotic, emotionally unstable narcissist! He is a normal person not grown in lab!"), I think they missed the point of the show: the biggest issue here is exactly what would happen if people with power (influence) have additional power (literal superpower) while being protected by multi-billion dollar company. They possess all the impunity to wreak havoc. Like MM said, "no one should have the right to wield such power."
This theme of abuse is explicated with Butcher's flashback. No one is inherently "good" or "evil" - you are shaped by your upbringing. As the scenes between his memories, his reflection, and his projection in current time are cut seamlessly back and forth, Butcher slowly realizes that he mirrors the man he hated the most. Yet he fully accepts his succumbing to that darkness while bringing Hughie with him through his personal vendetta against the supes - not caring about the risk towards others who he claimed he loved. Even with parents, one may grow to be a contemptuous person if they live in an abusive family, and it's a cycle that is very difficult to break. Butcher's flashback is certainly the spotlight of the episode for me.
Even with Kimiko's story in the background (her saying that V only explicates what kind of person you are), considering that we've been shown how the character's social lives shaped them into what they are now - Kimiko with her abducted kid background, Hughie's insecurity with his zero to hero job, etc - the message stays strong, countering the superhero cliche of inherently morally good and evil person.
I'm hoping this dynamic could be further explored in the next episode (or season) with the Soldier Boy and Homelander encounter when it's revealed that Soldier Boy is Homelander's father, at least he feels so. An abusive father meets a narcissist kid-who'd-wanna-be-a-father. The ending of this episode becomes revealing when tied up to the earlier convesation between Homelander and Maeve: with Homelander echoing Soldier Boy's words that he "used to dream of having kids" with Maeve, it becomes apparent in this episode that the relationship between Homelander and Maeve (and Soldier Boy and Crimson Countess) it is not something exactly out of pure love.
"Having kids" is not a romantic statement: it's a purely masculine, self-centered ego of having someone of your blood - of your similarity - that you can be proud of. Who the partner is doesn't matter; they are only means to that end. And in that Soldier Boy shares something in common with Homelander as shown through his delight of accepting Homelander readily as his son, albeit lab-grown. He only wants to see a better version of him.
Last but not least, I love the jab at corporate this episode still throws. Ashley spinning breaking news about Starlight in a similar way Disney would spin stories about their abuse and mismanagement; and that A-Train being zombified, again, with the heart of Blue Hawk embedded in his body, serving only as Vought's puppet. I'm not sure if that's the most satisfying end to A-Train's arc, but seeing his disappointed, grim look, his lack of agency, I guess the character suffers a lot. I just hope this will be the last of his arc and the show doesn't squeeze him further.
That said, with the reveal at the ending, I am not sure I am 100% satisfied as I was expecting Soldier Boy bringing down Homelander, or rendering him powerless by the end of the season. Looks like Homelander will continue to be the main villain. I just hope they don't prolong the "mentally unstable" trope too much and find ways to keep the show interesting. Looking forward to the finale.
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@tesbreag do you know what an unreliable narrator means? An unreliable narrator's credibility has to be compromised in the writing. This episode doesn't show that. If anything: it intends to complete and confirm Mallory's recollection of the events, beginning with the exact same, word-to-word conversation (between Edgar and Black Noir) and details like Countess showing up the last with less bruises and damages than others. It doesn't contradict what the audience knows of the story so far. The narrator himself (Black Noir) is not contradicting himself in his recollection - no gaps in the memory, no uncertainty. If anything the cartoon session begins with the one of them saying that the memory is "buried within" Black Noir, implying certainty.
Butcher Scenes: Man, I've lived a fucked up life and I regret so much...
Frenchie and Kimiko scenes:UwU I want to be on radioactive drugs again
MM Scenes: DAAAAD FIGGGHT!!!!!!
Homelander Scenes: Mommy Milky I just want boobie juice and a son.... ;_;
Noire scenes: O_O
Hughie scenes: IGNORE MY COCK! Help me and I'll help you.
Soldier Boy scenes: Sex with old ladies, Drugs, and killing people for fun :D
Starlight Scenes: Doing some dumb social media bullshit and walking away unscathed somehowFantastic episode.
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@seanmsu I think Starlight can get away due to her rabid fans. Imagine if Taylor Swift had been villainizing other celebrity then suddenly she disappeared without a trace and the company did some BS cover up. The popularity rating would go downhill and for sure Homelander wouldn't want that.
Season 3 has started off with a disappointment just in the first few minutes the show becomes a mess of bad pacing, cringy dialogue and awful pandering. The only relevant stuff in the plot was towards the ending. 4/10
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@jkgfsd how so? This comment is so short and full of rant that doesn't explain anything.
Minor plot hole, lol:
Why couldn't Eagly just fly up and get the Antigravity helmet especially after they tried to use him for that other one?
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@alexnader I think they're just kinda dumb and unprepared... they don't seem to have any plan at all for covert operatives (maybe because the brain (Murn) is dead) so the plan with Eagly seems like what they came up with on the spot.
It's decent. I mean, I understand that they want to focus on character development and team building in this episode. But it seems pretty rushed at certain points. Like: 1) when Economos shows up with a chainsaw in an instant. It almost feels like deus ex machina; 2) when Adebayo discovers that Murn is a butterfly. How does Murn even know that Adebayo is wearing X-ray vision? The whole sequences just felt pretty rushed to me, even down to the Adebayo being thrown; 3) The resolution with Chief Locke and Detective Song. There was this tension building then the sequences switch back to Peacemaker and the gang.
It's obvious what they're trying to do, and I know they don't take themselves too seriously, but it feels like they kinda take a shortcut to do that. Even the action sequences are lacking and look a bit low budget (camera shakes and the poor explosion effect). They wasted more time on toilet jokes and quippy banters. The crude jokes worked in the first few episodes but it has ran out of its novelty by the 5th episode. It's watchable, still, but I guess only if you have that much time to kill.
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@tesbreag damn you're the "it's not deus ex machina" guy aren't you? You sound like a bot.
I'm rarely disturbed by what I see on television anymore... but damn... that police station scene was intense!
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@albertic0 I think you don't watch much...
This would be a REALLY good episode if there was not only 3 episodes remaining.... I REALLY don't know how they'll end this series out with only a little over 2 hours left of screen time. I'm really pessimistic this is going to end in a satisfying manner.
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@mattdeezly1996 They said the last episode will be longer
No joke, this single episode is the best Star Wars I've seen since the throne room sequence in Return of the Jedi. I can't think of anything else that comes close except maybe the ending of Rogue One.
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@jim222001 no it's not. Watch the rest of the IP then you can talk. Ridiculous.
Every second spent outside of sitcom world lessens the impact of the show as whole. I have never watched any Marvel content, but the sitcom stuff just works on its own terms. Everything outside the 'bubble' is very standard and tedious.
My only complaint with the sitcom part is getting the time periods so badly wrong: the Internet in the 1980s, on a Commodore 64, in a 'mainstream' sitcom? Was that a deliberate anachronism as a nod to something? As it made no sense otherwise.
Here's hoping next episode is a Horsin' Around-style 90s sitcom!
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@tesbreag yet another commenter who doesn't understand what "tedious" is.
Despite a very, very few valuable moments this series is still a showcase. The one kind that want to sell everything with blood, gore, and semi-complex reflection of our world, but practically that's it? The disapproval of capitalism and all netting media corporations is the thing that keeps it afloat, needless to say, that's counterproductive because thats how the show is sold to us in the first place. The characters are shallow with 2 exceptions, and they are not created in a way that I would have shed tears if any of them died, because I get only so few brief windows to know and invest in them, if there is any, that is. Kimiko died and woke up, then went dancing with Frenchie like nothing happened. There are too many characters and the focus among them is not shared enough to have more than a handful of meaningful moments, especially if their moments are not really about them, but about showing some fucked up mechanism moving our world. The Deep's storyline? It told us more about the collective (and fake churches in real life) than about Deep or A-Train, only to have one scene that binds them to the main story. It's like the show is so in love with its concept what how it thinks it's full of contemporary relevant stuff, that it rarely does anything truly noteworthy besides the creative merchandise they can shine in every 15 minutes.
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@edrick hey, just a tip, there's a troll called teabag who's been policing others about what "deus ex machina" means yet when asked about his definition he just went into radio silence. So in case you wanted to take him seriously; don't.
This finale feels like not just a finale for Season 2, but Season 1 as well. It wraps up the plot that has been worked on since Season 1, and in some ways turning it to full circle, e.g. Butcher's quest for Becca, A-Train subplot, Hughie's self-discovery, and the rest of The Boys's relationship with each other.
As usual, The Boys does the best job when they take a jab on current corporatist-political climate.
“People love what I have to say. They believe in it," Stormfront confidently said. "They just don’t like the word Nazi." A racist superhero is Vought's darling - one that casually screams lingos like "white genocide" to young boys. Seemingly contradictory considering Stan Edgar, who would be target of racism, is Vought's CEO. But Edgar insisted that it is not about him. "I can’t lash out like some raging, entitled maniac," Stan Edgar responded as he smiled when confronted on what he did, "That’s a white man’s luxury." Anger drives demands for securitization. Demands for securitization drives demands for Compound V. Vought just "play with the cards we're dealt." Like Maeve's bisexuality that Vought plays, racism is just another card to eventually drive profit. Be it racism or empowerment, they are all smoke and mirrors.
But of course the thickest smoke and mirror is not a mere woke capitalism - something we can already obviously see. The thickest smoke is one that makes us think that within this war of attrition, another hero existed, and they would fight for our cause. We follow them as they march - our symbol of hope. This episode reveals something that has been foreshadowed very early in this season: "it's a fucking coup from the inside," said Raynor, before her head got blown into bits. Neuman, an obvious parody of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, raised into the spotlight as an opposition toward Vought and Homelander. But as it is revealed that it was her who was blowing people's head, and she has blown the church leader's head too as soon as she knew he has files on supes, it is revealed that she is actually a controlled opposition by Vought. Like the politicians who hail from Democratic Party, a part of ruling oligarchy, The Boys takes another jab that we should really never trust heroes, be it in the form of supe or another.
This reveal is also a very nice setup as it closes the arcs on Season 1 and 2, and prepares for another arc coming in Season 3. It gets interesting as I had myself asking, "can Homelander end up being our hope now?" This sort of dilemma is what piqued my interest in The Boys; we can't really easily label one as evil and another as good, as - like in real life - today's enemy can be tomorrow's ally, and vice versa.
That being said, I do not think this episode is a perfect ten. Butcher's quest for his wife, for example, was quite unsatisfying. Becca, despite having a lot of screen time, does not possess actual agency, and more like a side character who happens to be involved in Butcher's bigger story. Despite revolving around his infatuation with his supposedly long-dead wife, the way the subplot climaxes leaves much to be desired as Butcher seemingly sidesteps Becca's death. How would Butcher reconcile with such heavily emotional feeling, after years of losing her, finding her, and now he is losing her again? How would Ryan, her son, react to the loss of the only guardian he ever knew in all his life? Those questions remain unresolved. We get to see more time of Hughie and Starlight bonding - while it resolves the tension in their relationship, there is not much resolution or development going on in that aspect.
In addition to that, while watching girls trio beating up Nazi is fun to watch (though it seems to lean more on the cathartic side too much) - and especially funny since it is another parody at Marvel, the forced "girl power" scene in Endgame - Maeve's appearance seems a bit too convenient, deus ex machina that resolves not just the issue with Stormfront, but also Homelander. The Boys has been sort of weak in the last three episodes in employing deus ex machina, something I wish could be worked on more on the next season.
All in all though, this is a much better finale than Season 1's.
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@tesbreag you keep spamming that crap on my reviews but went into radio silence every time I asked what your definition of "deus ex machina" is. Sounds like a troll. Bugger off, teabag.
Weird season finale. After all the build up, everything feels anticlimactic. Right down from A-Train--the reason all this mess started--to Homelander.
Before we get to that, let's talk a bit about how weird the whole prison sequences play out. The joke, the attempted rescue, the shootout, all feel really weak especially compared to well-directed sequences in prior episodes. First of all there is really no need for some jocular banter that went for about two minutes or more. Not to mention the pauses. It feels dragging. This includes the attempted rescue which continues the joke.
Second, the shootout looks really weird. We've seen Frenchie did his weird stuff when it comes to the Female/Kimiko, but this doesn't seem logical. He is a professional killer, why the hell he keeps on showing up his head to look at Kimiko when getting shot at? Is he looking to die? Not to mention he got shot prior, on the stomach, how the hell he can walk and help Kimiko walk that easily? Hughie getting to shoot randomly while saying "I'm sorry! I'm sorry" and miraculously hit trained soldiers is even worse. Even the Starlight rescue looks like a cheap deus ex machina for the plot to goes forward.
The Boys had been attempting to mock the quip-ridden superhero genre--that is, the Marvel Cinematic Universe--but the whole prison sequences makes The Boys looks exactly like an MCU episode.
Now we get to the supes.
The Deep. His subplot has been standing on its for quite a while now. There seems to be no direct connection with the bigger plot that has been going on. And this episode his subplot stays that way, while still giving him enough screen time to focus on his emotion. I'm not sure if that is something we wanted to see for a finale. It feels like something to be saved for future seasons. Even if that doesn't mean it's bad, they could have cut it way shorter than what they did.
Then the thing with A-Train feels very anticlimactic. He just popped up there out of nowhere. We were previously shown his desire, his post-power syndrome, his attempt to be relevant. Then in the supposedly final showdown, we finally see Hughie vs A-Train head on. But we don't see A-Train. We see an injured A-Train, a traumatic supe in his mental and physical breakdown. Now this still could be an interesting, emotional confrontation between our protagonist with the one who murdered his sweetheart. Not to mention, the presence of Starlight could make this dynamic interesting--is Hughie done for, how would he cope between his past and present emotion? What we get instead, however, is a slow motion capture with very minuscule combat and almost none of emotional engagement. Then A-Train just went, just like that.
I feel like they are saving him for future episodes, but this being the finale--the culmination of all emotion that has been built up so far--makes this confrontation very lacking. It feels like we are still on Eps 5 or 6, but with worse pacing.
Now Homelander. He is our another main driver of the plot. Everything that has happened so far always leads us back to him. His dynamics with Madelyn the CEO has been a bizarre Oedipus complex-like situation, What happened between them in this episode is actually very unexpected, though one may sense that it would eventually came to this point through the clues scattered so far. This result should have provided a surprising reveal. However, as it turns out, there seems to be something hollow in the encounter. Given the interesting portrayal of their faux-mother-son-sexual-relationship in the first half of the episode, the second half seems to speed up the climax. As if they were being chased by some deadline, that they have to cut it short, while at the same time giving enough spaces for Homelander to give his, in Maeve's words in previous episodes, "boring speeches."
It feels climactic and inconclusive at the same time. And I guess the same can be said with many encounters in this episode. Starlight with Meave. Billy with the CIA. Hughie with Starlight at the church. It feels like they have to speed it up--to shove in the dialogues--for the sake of putting the plot forward. It's shaky and unreliable.
Now, the end of the episode leads us to a quite intriguing reveal. It's not the direction we--or at least, I--expected to take in the season. However, with such really weak build up throughout the episode, the ending feels like forced. As if they have prepared them to be this way, but still unsure how they would bring it up to this moment. As such, while the scene itself is (should be?) surprising, there is not much surprise when I watch the event unfolds. It's less of a "wow, so this is it?" than a "oh okay, so this happens, and then?"
Credits where it's due: Anthony Starr as Homelander and Karl Urban as Billy Butcher display terrific performances in this episode. Especially Homelander with his extremely erratic, unpredictable behavior. But that alone is not enough to pardon the sloppiness of this episode.
Perhaps because they, like MCU and other superhero movies, seem to busy themselves to prepare for the upcoming season instead of trying to give audience a closure of the plot. And that exact reason is what makes superhero movies went boring for these past years. They are focusing to build an universe, instead of writing a good narrative. Unfortunately, this episode robs the fresh air that The Boys has breathe for quite some time. While I hope for the continuation of the series, I am less excited.
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@tesbreag then give your definition of "deus ex machina" and explain why Starlight isn't a fucking one.
This actually is an overall decent finale. The tense in Camina's fleet is good. The Rocinante battle is good. Naomi's rescue is good. The reveal on the end was also good. However there's one reason that makes the episode feels like a jumble of choppily edited scenes: everything involving Alex's death.
I don't take issue with it being sudden and abrupt, as many deaths are. But everyone feels really disconnected from that one incident that should have affected at least all the main casts. Alex just died, but Holden and Naomi spent their time to listen to Naomi's supposed farewell (and spent minutes on it). Amos was more eager to bring Peaches instead of mourning his close friend; even worse he was only informed about Alex's death off screen. For a fellow Martian and somebody who has spent quite a time with Alex, Bobbie seems largely unaffected at all. And Alex, well... The only tribute they gave to this incident is a plaque, which makes for some emotional moment, but that's it. Heck, that part where Holden talked to Naomi to rekindle the events almost feels like Holden breaking the fourth wall to explain to viewers due to how abrupt it is handled.
It almost feels like the event is not supposed to happen, and the showrunners edited in last minutes.
This season has been nothing but a Naomi season that leads to a reunion of Rocinante crew. That incident stuck like a sore thumb, making the supposedly joyful event with all crews gathering feels really emotionally detached. Not to mention that, barring the reveal at the end, most events still happen off screen. Just like most things that happened this season. We don't get to see the impact of something big happening.
So despite being an overall decent episode, this finale closes the relatively most mediocre season The Expanse has produced. I'd even say that the quality is even lower than Season 4. The first four episodes were nice, but it went downhill and stagnated really fast.
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@dtsouza oh for god's sake, save that mediocre exaggerative defense for shows with rabid fans like Mandalorian. Nobody said it has to be done in exaggeration. The death scene only needs to be planned, like Fred's death. Like I said, many deaths were abrupt; what makes the death feels real is how it was edited between the scenes & how others react to it. What we got was obviously a frozen frame of Alex in previous scene with an added CGI blood. It was an unplanned hurried edit that resulted in a bad, chugged in scene.
This is my review so I comment on whatever I wanted. And you're the one who nitpicked that one point regarding Alex's death out of five points I've written. Then the problem is on you.
This actually is an overall decent finale. The tense in Camina's fleet is good. The Rocinante battle is good. Naomi's rescue is good. The reveal on the end was also good. However there's one reason that makes the episode feels like a jumble of choppily edited scenes: everything involving Alex's death.
I don't take issue with it being sudden and abrupt, as many deaths are. But everyone feels really disconnected from that one incident that should have affected at least all the main casts. Alex just died, but Holden and Naomi spent their time to listen to Naomi's supposed farewell (and spent minutes on it). Amos was more eager to bring Peaches instead of mourning his close friend; even worse he was only informed about Alex's death off screen. For a fellow Martian and somebody who has spent quite a time with Alex, Bobbie seems largely unaffected at all. And Alex, well... The only tribute they gave to this incident is a plaque, which makes for some emotional moment, but that's it. Heck, that part where Holden talked to Naomi to rekindle the events almost feels like Holden breaking the fourth wall to explain to viewers due to how abrupt it is handled.
It almost feels like the event is not supposed to happen, and the showrunners edited in last minutes.
This season has been nothing but a Naomi season that leads to a reunion of Rocinante crew. That incident stuck like a sore thumb, making the supposedly joyful event with all crews gathering feels really emotionally detached. Not to mention that, barring the reveal at the end, most events still happen off screen. Just like most things that happened this season. We don't get to see the impact of something big happening.
So despite being an overall decent episode, this finale closes the relatively most mediocre season The Expanse has produced. I'd even say that the quality is even lower than Season 4. The first four episodes were nice, but it went downhill and stagnated really fast.
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@dtsouza I watched the season knowing Cas Anvar's scandal. That's why it makes the episode feels even more extremely awkward. Alex's death itself is forcefully edited in that it's not immediately clear that he died from a stroke (so much they need Holden to explain it to the viewers in the next scene). Many have come to defend his abrupt death by mentioning the beeping monitor, but we don't even see the monitor with three dots on the brain except for the very last moments at a glance and very briefly in the start.
I'm aware of that interpretation of the scene you mentioned, but it just didn't work out for me. It only became beautiful for the viewers due to us knowing Cas' scandal, but is not as meaningful for the Rocinante crews themselves. They were still talking about their own (Naomi & Holden) relationship, in the end.
Especially because prior playing Naomi's recording, when they did talk about Alex it was Holden explaining to the viewers how Alex died. That dialogue was really bad. Not to mention that the dialogue was supposed to be Holden explaining Fred's death to Naomi, making it even worse, especially for The Expanse standard.
It sucks for Pacifist Clarissa that she's had to kill more people against her will than Amos tried wholeheartedly since they teamed up. :thinking:
Though it is a welcome change, it's kind of weird that Chrisjen is going above and beyond to drill into people's heads that
Earth must come firstthey can't treat Belters as a monolith. She's never had much love for them, she seemed more understanding with Fred Johnson's past than Naomi's, not to mention she was personally responsible for torturing an OPA Belter at the start of the show...loading replies
@dtsouza yes, Chrisjen's decision kinda bugs me too. Did previous season indicate that she was sympathetic to Belters?
Naomi's jump through the vacuum was the most retarded scene ever. Aren't you supposed to get immediately sucked out into space if a compartment loses pressure instead of softly floating away? Ridiculous...
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@m4cc someone explained it for you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy0299W67cU
Didn't Clarissa's implant stuff use to look better? :thinking:
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@ansik yeah the S3 mod fight looked more feral. Seems odd that Amazon didn't have a budget to choreograph a fight.
The humour in this unfortunately feel extremely flat for me, and I was left cringing rather than laughing.
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@allthings agreed, it's like someone from Reddit is told to write a script. It's cringe-inducing.
This fight for Ilus doesn't make sense.
It's an entire planet but they are killing each other over less than an acre for fucks sake.
One side take the western hemisphere and the other side take the eastern hemisphere.loading replies
@phug you're missing the point. That's what you got if what you care is about money. Nobody gives a fuck about territory - it's about identity.
Belters, especially the OPA strain, think once they got taken away, they wouldn't be able to return. It's a result of years of oppression - they became paranoid because that's what the Inner always did in the past. Earthers, meanwhile, thinks that they're some universe-wide police which can regulate what can and can't people do. They're not arguing over some territory on the planet for the deposit. They're arguing about who can claim the whole damn planet. A planet to call home.
If you spend some time to actually think about it this whole situation reflects the way real-world US deals with the situation in the Middle East. Earth is US. I thought it was obvious for The Expanse intended audience from the start.
