Can we finally dispell the notion that JMS is a genius writer? He’s a genius plotter, but he has always been a terrible writer. And he is perhaps the worst writer of dialogue in all of television. He has amazing ideas, really cool concepts. But he is seriously flawed when it comes to execution.
As an Indian, I found the dance scene in episode 2 to be extremely cringey. For fucks sake, I see enough of that in Indian movies, why is this shit in a Netflix TV series? The show is interesting but the melodramatic dialogues are making it hard for me to watch it.
FYI: the first 4 episodes are basically the pilot. After that, the premise is fully set up
Simple philosophical wonderings about the nature of choice?
Examinations of sexual, gender, and philosophical identity?
Multiple scenes of half-naked people dancing/raving/fucking in slow-mo to pulse pounding music?
Evil shadow authority types who are hiding secret knowledge from the world?
Yup, the Wachowskis were involved in this.
Simple philosophical questions about religion and evolution?
A view of the world that (for better or worse) is filtered through the lens of a liberal baby boomer?
Evil shadowy authority types who are (probably) exploiting gifted people for their own sinister agenda?
Cringe inducing scenes of “urban youths” trying to speak “street”?
Yup, J. Michael Straczynski was involved in this.
I’m not saying each of these things are necessarily bad or or good (most of them, anyway), just that this show is very much a product of its creators. Sometimes with the Wachowskis you get the Matrix, other times you get the Matrix Reloaded. Sometimes with JMS you get Babylon 5, other times you get Superman: Grounded.
I’m about halfway through and I’d say it’s pretty good, but not really amazing. It feels like it’s spinning its wheels a lot and refusing to actually explore the interesting sci-fi premise it’s based on. I could do with a little less melodrama about certain character’s personal lives and a little more with people actually reacting to what should be a deeply life-altering series of events.
Half of the characters seem to take visions and hallucinations that may or may not be psychic phenomena very much in stride. You’d think they would find these experiences a little more important.
Basically for those who’ve read JMS stuff before this seems like equal parts Rising Stars, the telepaths from Babylon 5, and a little Matrix men-in-black thrown in, which incidentally makes it feel just a little bit like Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles too (which it’s often said the Wachowskis were ripped off were inspired by in order to make the Matrix).
Anyway, I say it’s maybe worth getting to episode 4-5 before you decide if you want to keep going or not. I found the first episode very slow and not too interesting, but it’s sort of gradually picked up some steam since then. It’s not blowing me out of the water, but it’s good enough, I guess.
I’d give it maybe a B-, I think.
Edit to add because I just got to it: Oh, and yet another sci-fi show where the scientist character basically says “Because quantum physics makes no sense (to me), that means anything is possible!”
In 50 years people are going to look back at sci-fi from now and laugh at our use of quantum physics as a catch-all excuse for impossible stuff the same way we look back at stuff from the 1950s using the prefix “atomic” as the catch-all excuse.
Edit #2 after some more binging: Slow. Slow, melodramatic, and then slow some more. That’s this show. There are a few brief moments of interest here and there. Any time that one of the characters has to get out of a jam and does so by spoiler the show suddenly seems exciting. If the show was just about that sort of thing, it could be really fun. But instead we get back to melodrama that simply does not work because all the characters are so flat and one dimensional.
For instance, I just finished the ninth episode (I’m sick and there’s nothing else for me to do today, shut up!) and the entire end of the episode is just one character [cut for spoiler I guess](#s “whimpering, crying, and drunk-dialing his ex over and over again while a super miserable version of “knocking on heaven’s door” plays over it.”) Then the episode just abruptly ends after he spouts the kind of dialogue that could only happen in a tv show: Bad dialogue spoilers So deep.
At this point I’m not so sure I want to keep going. That scene was just really, really bad.
But I’m committed to finishing it at this point, I suppose. Probably edit again once I’m done, if I still care by then.
Final Edit and semi-review:
This show should have been six episodes. Cut every scene in half and you would miss basically nothing. Cut out all the slow-mo montages and you can probably make it five episodes. There’s establishing a mood and then there’s holding a shot as it pans slowly over the landscape of a person looking sad while a neon sign says THIS CHARACTER IS SAD and the music sings “Sad sad sad, I feel bad bad bad.” There’s really no such thing as subtlety on this show, it seems.
There are a few brief moments of interest throughout the entire thing, and it’s the same as before. Any time Action tends to be filmed with some actual skill and energy, although even then it’s pretty short and not comparable to something like Daredevil.
The characters remain almost completely flat and lifeless throughout. By the end of the show I found myself wishing the show was more about just Sun and Capheus. He could help her learn to have a little more joy in life and she could help him by being . If the show was just about the two of them, it probably would have been much more interesting. Reducing the number of main characters would probably have helped a lot.
Sun seemed to be the only character with any real depth – Capheus is okay by the end of episode eleven, but before that almost ever encounter he has with another character is to grin happily and stare in awe at their surroundings. Don’t get me wrong though. Sun isn’t some incredibly complex character or anything. She’s just slightly more developed than most of the others. Even now I don’t think I can even remember the Indian woman’s name or any character traits she had other than stuff you know about her if you watched the first episode.
As I mentioned in another comment, you can basically describe most of the characters exactly as you would in the first episode and the last. It’s not so much that they don’t change (although really, they don’t even do that much) but it’s that we learn hardly anything more about them than what we learn in the first few episodes. What we do learn tends to be very cliched and formulaic, and those little morsels of information are spread out amongst the aforementioned SLOOOOWness.
Unlike other commenters I have no issue with the diversity and think it’s pretty nice to see, although you’d think with a 1-in-8 chance one of these characters would be Chinese. The one or two overlong sex scenes I do have a problem with not so much because they were over the line but because (say it with me now) they were SLOOOW.
On the other hand, the white cop who has to convince the black nurse and his hispanic partner to save a young black kid who’s dying of a gunshot wound is, uh…
Yeah. One step forward, two steps back. JMS probably shouldn’t try to write stories about inner-city characters. It never goes well. (If you don’t believe me, google Superman:Grounded.)
Also, was I supposed to take it as ironic that Jonas (Sayid from Lost) gives this big speech about how humans are so good at killing people Wachowski/JMS megaspeech spoiler
And a note to the Wachowskis: this is not actually a movie. This is a television show. The old trick of having two characters simply spend ten minutes together doesn’t mean I actually buy that they are in love, and showing me a montage of all the times they looked at each other doesn’t change that.
In the end I downgrade my rating to a D+, maybe a C-. A few bright spots, an interesting premise, commendable diversity with some weirdly racist undertones here and there, lackluster characters, oodles of psuedoscience and psuedophilosophy, and an equal mix of straw-religious people and straw-atheists.
And let us not forget: IT IS SLOOOOOOW. Even the finale spoiler in the finale is slow and boring. It’s almost impressive how boring it is.
A good premise wasted.
(apologies if this came across as unreadable ramblings. Obviously I wrote it as I went along, and you might imagine I’m a little sleepy by now.)
I enjoyed this show. As I got further into the episodes I realized that this season is supposed to an origin story that introduces the characters and sets up the worlds mythology. Character development of a few characters are little dry, but there are 8 characters to go through and at least they made sense. I also like how they didn’t tie each characters arc in a nice bow and left questions for a season 2.
After seeing the trailer, I was really hoping the Wachowskis would come through on this one. But I have to say, so far it’s really slow, boring and uninteresting.
Gonna give it a few more episodes.
I really really wanted to like it but my god it’s just so dull, the characters have zero depth and at some points in a scene I’m half expecting them to face the camera because all they’re doing is spouting exposition.
Cinematography and soundtrack is great and I really like some of the actors, however I couldn’t name some of the characters if my life depended on it.
Action scenes are great with multiple characters getting involved, very well done, it’s a shame there’s only been like 3 in the 10 episodes I’ve watched.
Apparently it doesn’t get any better but I’ll keep going since I’m almost done but it’s mostly been a waste of time, wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, unless they have a hard-on for forced diversity.
Guys I’m at episode 11 and this show is awesome. It may be a bit weird and slow at the beginning, but when you get to grasp the idea, it is very good. Give it a try.
I just finished it.
If I don’t get another season I will riot in the streets.
The concept of the show is interesting and had potential but it dragged and even after watching many episodes, it still dragged. Too bad really. I like that Korean bad ass lady.
Just curious, is anyone watching this in 4K?
Hey guys…do any of you know the song that is in E01 …its around the 57:00 min mark. Where the girl takes a hit on the pipe.
thanks
The nurse refusing to treat the gunshot wound at first completely killed it for me. The other storylines aren’t to bad but holy shit that cop storyline is awful.
The music selections make me happy. I love me some Sigur Ros and The Antlers.
The show is on Netflix. They have the liberty to make you wait, something a regular TV show would never get free lit doing because ratings.
I do implore people to watch the entire season, it’s clearly written as a whole instead of episode by episode with artificial highs and lows.
Just got done with the first episode. I’m definitely going to keep going.
I won’t give anything away but that was a pretty awesome ending scene! I’m sure most of us are familiar with that particular trope, but that’s the most perfectly executed I’ve seen it done before.
After Jupiter Ascending its amazing these guys get any work
Soo-Jin is a bad ass. I am really liking this series.
It has easily one of the worst openings I’ve ever seen.
I have no idea where to watch this from in Spain.