Who is actually sitting down through six episodes of revisionist anti-American history from the TDS-infected mind of Ken Burns? Go back to doing slide shows, maniac.
This is everything I want in television. The tension of the murder mystery genre lends itself perfectly to continuously juxtaposing human conflict against human collaboration without an assault on the darker senses, and this show knocks it out of the park. Goofy, lovable characters develop in serious, silly and familiar ways, following an unlikely plot arch around a conspiracy which unfolds in a painstakingly slow fashion, complete with red herrings to perfectly fit the overarching theme. Individual episodes do not revel in gore, and the familiar crutch of assaulting the audience with foul language in order to darken the tone of the show is wonderfully absent. People are normal, good even. This is a fun show. Full stop.
It's a love it or hate show, I guess. The show gets off to a slow and stilted start, giving off some of the goofy Canadian SyFy vibes that have you not taking it too seriously. It takes about 4 episodes to set up the world and the characters. Watch through to episode 7 for one of the most intense, moving bits of film I have seen in the past couple of years. Sterling K. Brown and James Marsden carry this show to the end with brilliant acting and strong rapport.
I tried so hard to put my finger on what is bad about this show... until I realized it was basically everything. I generously gave one point for attempting to stay faithful to Roman scenery and architecture. Some of the set pieces and races are really nicely done. But then I took it away for the bad CGI beast in the first episode, and the abysmally stupid and lazy plot devices used for enslaving the "children." Yawn.
Wait until 5:00 in to see why some critics are gushing helplessly over this one. Sadly, another great mildly entertaining plotline, interesting main character gets thrown on the heap due to woke box-checking. Bye, Tracker.
*Edit* Episode 3 dropped, aaaaaaand it's completely woke. Spartan feelings gushing over an ultra-marginalized box-checking rainbow date night dinner. Sigh, they ruin everything.* One episode in, the needle on my woke-meter is twitching. The colonialism-bad, religion-silly metaphors landed in the first few minutes. Oh boy. But cloaking energy sword Zealot = good, so we'll see where this goes. Also, Master Chief never takes the helmet off, no matter how vain the main actor ends up being.
****' characters can be depressed and even deplorable, but not as depraved as portrayed in this reenvisioning. The embellishments ruin the series. I'm out at episode 2.
There is clear evidence here that AI-generated media reviews are going to make sites like this much less helpful. Unless Metacritic figures out how to combat bots gaming the reviews, you are going to lose your readership.
