bigb159

AKOTHSK, I needed you and I didn't know it. I never read the literature on this one, so I came in quite raw, which proved to be the best approach. I fell off the GoT universe a while ago. I got bored of watching GRRM's characters live in blase celebration of their morally bankrupt decisions and actions. Heroes and Villains alike meet the same ends - it's novel in the beginning, but you can only watch so much Greek tragedy and you always end up craving the hero epic. And this is what I was craving - unassuming, tough-as-nails-but-also-naive hero comes from absolutely nothing, thrust by circumstances and his moral character into changing empires. The twists and turns keep on coming through the episodes, and I was delighted to realized that I failed to see them coming. This was wonderfully fresh in an old storytelling kind of way. I loved this season and crave more.

Disney hired the D-team of shorts-writers to prod this lesser-known beloved franchise of Christmas specials along for another holiday season. Sadly the whole office-humor-vacation-retreat leans far too hard towards making elves just like self-centered, tiresome or try-hard coworkers and fails to bring back the magic of earnest helpers delivering Christmas joy. While trying to "grow up" P&L to make it appealing to their former audiences, with the introduction of elves slobbering over love interests, they completely missed the point of a Christmas short. We want to relive childhood innocent magic with our own children. This ain't it.

Bait and switch. It's preachy politics all over again, but they wait until episode six to reveal. White people bad, yada yada. So tiresome.

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.

Used to be a fun watch. Now it's just posturing for liberal talking points. Politics in entertainment is a complete turnoff.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Excessively crude, stultifying characters and plot, terrible music. Nothing about this show is redeemable. Not a single thing.

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.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Entertaining, but... As you watch the show, remember this phrase:"white man bad."

****' 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.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]