I was shocked at how good this was. King of the Hill was amazing at depicting everyday family situations and slipping in non-offensive cultural commentary. I'm glad to see nothing has changed. A very comforting, non-threatening show that's a fun watch.
It's barely watchable. Here's why I know I can't trust online reviews anymore. Critics always lavish praise on these streaming network shows, but you look and actual viewers hate the show. It used to be reversed: Viewers loved it, critics hated it. I'd guess 90% of reviews these days by critics are paid. Even the Emmys get in on it. A trash show with horrible acting like Palm Royale grabs a boatload of Emmy nominations. It's all fake. I don't even read reviews online anymore because they can't be trusted. I do drop by once in awhile to strongly recommend that you don't trust online reviews. Simply watch a trailer or watch a first episode. You'll know yourself whether you like it or not.
I refuse to believe they didn't hire paid reviewers for this. The lead actor is obnoxiously unlikeable. I didn't stick around to complain, I just turned it off after the first few shows, and I have no regrets. If Palm Royale (another terrible show) can be nominated for Emmy awards, I'm sure HBO can manufacture fake hype online and critical acclaim, too. This show flat ****. It's in that rare group of shows where it's so bad you can't watch it because you're embarrassed for the writers, the actors, and directors.
Like someone decided to make a miniseries about the most annoying, obnoxious, unlikeable and uninteresting people on earth and then set it in the middle of a Poe plot. The dialogue is so far gone that it sounds like an 11th grader wrote it. The sets are pretty but only go so far as to distract from the fact that a bunch of freakishly unlikeable people are walking around uttering things like "Who's ****?" More and more, Netflix shows look like they were scripted by AI programmed by high schoolers. It's just unwatchable.
Just a warning to everyone out there: When critics rate something an 81 and users hit it with a 3.9, something has gone really, really wrong online. You can no longer trust online reviews of anything. By manipulating ratings, these streaming services are virtually guaranteeing that online reviews will soon be ignored and not free advertising anymore. Amazing shows don't get below-5s on anything - if you consider that negative and positive automated reviews nix each other out, and then what remains of real people are scoring it. Stay away from this series. Not even worth it. Max must have paid a mint for the reviews. The lead actor is unlikeable, the little girl is a terrific actress and will have a long career, but she's given nothing to work with here. It's just flat bad.
Whoever edited this needs to be fired and to never work in any type of TV again. The blaring music at the beginning and the echo effect of David Chase's already fascinating voice are so irritating I could barely get through the first part. Whose idea was that? David Chase is talking, turn the GD music down and let the man talk, it didn't need a symphony playing in the backyard, it's absurd. It would be like someone running out on the court while Michael Jordan is playing and doing the Charleston in front of him, it completely took away from the interview. Get on ADHD pills guy, and retire.
Hero worship and makes a superhero out of a stupid criminal. The guy took over and 5 years later brought down himself and pretty much the entire mob. The opposite **** and smart mob boss. Police have much to thank him for, the mob not so much. Anyway, 5 years spending millions compared to life in prison and then death, probably not as glamorous as this documentary makes it out to be. He was so stupid that he was bugged pretty much the entire time he was boss. And didn't know it.
Do you enjoy sterile, lifeless, humorless settings? Pretentious storylines, robotic dialogue, and juvenile camera angles that can't stop smelling their own art and farts long enough to actually connect (This is Adam Scott running in a hallway very intensely from all kinds of wild angles - art!). Severance is for you. Adam Scott aged 10 years in the last three years and looks way too old to be playing the character he's playing. His lifeless, bizarre take on this character is still better than the writing for him, though. That can't get any worse, even in the hands of someone who's been a supporting character actor most of his career (and Severance is a great reason why). If you play ping pong at a corporation to relax yourself a bit, think mental health days are necessary even though you virtually don't move at work or expend any energy other than grabbing a glass of brandy to calm your nerves, and think being asked to keep company secrets is really exciting or even new, if you spend all day feeling sorry for yourself and overestimating the importance of your place at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy and the world in general- in other words, if you have an absolutely charmed life and barely work at all (move) but still get paid mountains of money for it, you might enjoy wallowing in the self-pity and pretentiousness of Severance. This is for people who go to work in a Men's warehouse suit and fancy their plush jobs to be akin to slavery - sure kids are starving to death, sure there are actual problems in the world, but my God, I have to put on a suit today and I'd rather be on a beach trip (facilitated by my great wages). It's for people who mistake college film class camera angles for high art and significance. Like the show they're watching. Severance viewers overestimate the importance of what they're doing with their lives and what they're watching on the screen.
A charming show that alternates between hilarity and the heavier topics that plague people who outlive their natural life. Very few shows can address aging, grief, and loss while still keeping a sense of humor and playfulness. What I love most about this show is how simple it keeps its characters and situations. It never tries to be "big" but just by addressing end-of-life questions, it feels big. Just about anyone could get something out of this show: a child with an aging parent, someone who works with aging or dying people, a parent who's disconnected from their child, or even younger people who want to see how older people see the world (Hint: It's not much different than how they see the world). I just loved it. It's one of the few Netflix shows that's better than its trailers suggest. Not hype! I look forward to season 2.
The cinematography is pretty. That's the only worthwhile thing about it. Like most other modern TV shows, it's a big, beautiful package that's empty when you open it up. If you enjoy watching zombies shamble to epic music, I guess you could get something out of this, but the story is patched together from every zombie show and movie released in the last 20 years (and that's a whole lot of patching that doesn't work once the characters start talking and interrupt the pretty music). The Last of Us is a Walking Dead TV show and video game hybrid with little new to offer the genre. They might as well have re-named the characters Lee and Clementine. I'm surprised they were never sued over the story, but HBO must have covered all their bases. Unlike Lee and Clementine, these characters aren't very likeable. The main actor is so wooden that it's impossible to connect with him, and although the little girl does a great job acting, she's not able to connect with the lead character either in a way that makes things believable. That's his fault, not hers. In case you haven't noticed, any big original release from a major streaming service always gets an 80-90 on here. It never fails. Not sure how much they're paying for those, but the user reviews always give away the shows that are paying for their high reviews instead of earning them. If you see an 80-90 on Metacritic with user reviews much, much lower, you can bet it's one their big, beautiful empty boxes. They've invested a whole lot of money for the soundtrack and cinematography but not bothered much with the script.
My favorite part of season 1 Feud was when it was over. The performance of "Joan Crawford" was so bad, so off, that it was impossible to enjoy the story. It's a testament to Joan Crawford's legend that no actress - not even Faye Dunaway or Jessica Lange - can play her without looking like a parody. They can't speak like her. They can't move like her. They don't have her subtly or her grace, and if you compare their performances to a real interview with Crawford or a movie scene with her in it, you realize there's only ever been one Joan Crawford. And that's all there can be. Some people you can impersonate and pin down. She's not one of them. Which would probably give the old girl a laugh. Not a single person can actually act well enough to successfully act like Joan Crawford (in two senses of the word act). Feud chose to play the fictional "Mommie Dearest" Crawford, the one that's all camp and ridiculousness, the one even her daughter said was "grotesque" and "not the real Joan Crawford." No, she wasn't a dumpy person even in her later career. She was not crude or brash in the way she's played here. And she wasn't drunk everywhere she went. That's the fictional version of her, and it's a shame that after all these years, they chose to go with that version. If you want to see the real Joan Crawford, watch an interview. She's an exceptionally well-spoken person who displays her fiery side with subtly, not brashness. You'll see a glint in her eye but you won't hear her lose her cool. I understand this is fiction - I get it - but you need to at least get the basic mannerisms and tone right, and this show fails to portray that. This could have been a good season if the two actresses had played the characters right, but they didn't, although Susan fairs much better as Bette Davis than Lange did as Crawford. As for Lange - it's wonderful to see her in anything, and she's a tremendous actress, but GD is she not Joan Crawford. She's too old for this role (at the time Lange would have been 68, compared to Crawford being 54 during the filming of this movie). I have no idea why shows don't care about details like his anymore, but they don't. Lange also doesn't have the elegance or larger-than-life presence of a Crawford and is far too old to play the period they're showing here.
It might be time to figure out how much Apple is paying the Emmy people to shell out 11 nominations to this drivel. 51 year-old Wiig is cast as a young, enthusiastic social climber - in the 1960s no less, a time when women were married and living in suburbs by the age of 18. Even a 30 year-old would have been miscast in a 1960s setting, much less a 51 year-old. So that alone ruins any of the cuteness and novelty that you might find hope in for the first couple of episodes. The series slowly devolves into ridiculous scenarios and horrible acting by Ricky Martin. Wiig is a great talent, but she's horribly miscast in this series and falls flat at every turn. It looks less comical and amusing and more sad that a women in the twilight of life (by 60s standards) is still trying to climb the social ladder. Carol Burnnet was a treat to see, she's a lovely woman and so so funny, I'm glad she was cast in something like this, but the show overall falls flat and looks like a skin from White Lotus, just without the realism, comedy, and great acting. So let's finish this up with this: If this drivel could be nominated for 11 Emmy awards, do Emmy awards even mean anything anymore? Nope.
Embarrassing. The portrayal of Abraham Lincoln looked like they'd pulled an actor from a high school play. Actually, let me take that back. I've seen people play Lincoln in amateur plays that were better than this portrayal of Lincoln. Clearly this was a cheap cash in on a very grave moment in U.S. history. Apple handled it like any corporation would: Throw up **** on the screen and see what sticks for $$$.
The number of documentaries sympathetic toward Branch Davidians these days is nauseating. What did they think was going to happen when they opened fire on Federal agents and killed them? And then you have a journalist interviewed here who likely caused this entire incident. This is why governments can't trust journalists. This was supposed to have been a surprise raid but an incredibly stupid journalist raced to the scene and actually asked for directions from a Branch Davidian and told him a raid was about to take place. That gave the man time to warn the Davidians and give them time to get their guns and weapons. I believe the journalist should have been charged in this. If this had been a surprise raid, Koresh was completely unaware, he would have been taken in minutes. This was not a botched raid. It was a bad journalist - you NEVER do something like that, ever what in the world was he thinking - and a cult that wasn't going to be taken alive. Koresh could have walked out and given himself up and saved lives, but that wasn't his agenda. His agenda that day was saving his own life. That's it. And if he couldn't, he wanted other people to die with him. I have no sympathy whatsoever for parents who had their children around this cult nut. What kind of parent would have their child living in a compound that would need that many weapons in the first place? These families were used as human shields for a very sick man, just like the January 6th rioters were used for the purposes of their old cult leader who doesn't care if anyone lives or dies as long as he's okay. Catching these issues early is key. It's a damn shame that agents had to die because of this human scum. And it's a damn shame that some of these parents still sit there like murdering federal agents was normal and poor David. No, not poor David. Poor your kids for having you as a parent and poor federal agents who did nothing but their job that day and ended up dead because of this psychopath.
This is the worst documentary I've ever watched. How you could take a topic like this with all the history and turn it into a platform for conspiracy nuts, I have no idea. But this disjointed documentary throws everything at the wall and doesn't manage to explore anything in-depth. It feels like it was written by a teenager with ADHD. Just on its own merits and without all the bizarre doxing of "definite DB Coopers" aside, this is a boring slog through a subject that's already been covered better before by a country mile. Leave it to Netflix - the channel that made Marilyn Monroe boring - to give us this. Even the title of the documentary is beyond stupid. This happened 53 years ago. DB Cooper was a mid-40s male. He would have been 96 years old when this documentary was released. He's dead. Whether he died in the crash or died of old age, this person is dead. And he was very likely dead long, long before any documentaries about this were made. None of the bills from the hijacking were ever spent. None of them. It's very likely a civilian went out to look for his corpse and his money and actually stumbled on some of that money later on. His body had probably long since been eaten by wildlife. And the guy they point everything to, a man named Robert Rackstraw would be easy to rule out just with witnesses. DB Cooper was in his mid-40s. Even by the picture, you can tell that this is someone who's middle aged. Robert Rackstraw would have been 28 at the time of this crime. So Netflix looks crazy, their interviewees look crazy, and the producer looks crazy. You can even tell the dude when he's asked to deny he's DB Cooper looks like he knows he's dealing with a bunch of nuts. Rackstraw's sister also very slyly agreed to the interview with them but with a grin pointed out that her brother didn't have brown eyes. They then somehow twisted that in their imagination to the woman not seeing the man's eye color right. Google: Confirmation bias. Google: Reasonable doubt. This is a documentary about mass hysteria by a few money-hungry filmmakers hoping to score the story of a century. They're harassing an old man on film who only has a few years to live. And they've selected him for precisely that purpose. The real DB Cooper would be dead. Rackstraw was alive, so they zoomed in on him hoping to score millions. At one point they stalk him so badly he hides in a storage bin. I'd hide from these psychopaths, too. I can't imagine how scary that would have been. This dude had gotten three university degrees after his crimes in the 70s. He was a former professor. These filmmakers are obnoxious vultures with zero proof that this man had anything to do with this - he was 18 years younger than witnesses said Cooper was - and they're outright stalking him on film in a very threatening way. I would have been scared, too. If you look at the mugshots side-by-side, the real DB Cooper looked like Rackstraw's dad. They present no evidence whatsoever that he's DB Cooper. Millions of young men in the 70s had military training. Millions more knew how to fly a plane. You can't assume someone's guilty because they have the "skillset" of a crime you're obsessed with. Millions of other people do, too. Yet they offer no evidence of him having a direct link to this crime. He's one of thousands or even millions of people who could have done it. The real DB Cooper would have been 87 when those scenes were filmed. He would be 97 today. Rackstraw is almost two decades younger than DB Cooper, and these people made utter asses of themselves during this documentary. They picked Rackstraw because he was still alive, and these money-hungry vultures hoped to get him to confess, even if they had to pay him. Very disgusting. They even say at the end of the documentary that they didn't find one piece of evidence that said "It's not him." Yeah, they did. The mugshot looks nothing like him. He's not a mid-40s male. He doesn't have the right eye color. Endless strings of evidence said it wasn't him, and the eye color alone would have acquitted him. Just unbelievable at the mass hysteria internet sleuths fall into and how money hungry Netflix and these people are. Willing to stalk an old man who'd lived an exemplary life since the 70s just for money. It's okay to have possible suspects. Everyone always will. But despite mentioning "93 pieces of evidence" multiple times during this trudge, they never at any point produced any of those. Their lone evidence was 93 reasons he could have committed this crime lol Which could fit millions of other former military, FBI, CIA, and airline pilots. If you watch this, watch it for one reason: To see how crazy internet sleuthing and greed can make "investigators."
Netflix greatly overestimates how "dangerously charming" Joe is. To anyone over 18, he's not charming. He's creepy. Anyone who's dated more than two or three people wouldn't be able to take the show seriously. The actor they cast in the lead role is too short and dweeby to pull off the kind of character they wrote for him, but it comes off as even more comical because the woman they got to play his obsession would have already dated a million obsessive psychopaths by the time she ran into him. She's ten times out of his league, would have already seen all the blazing red flags before, and would have said yes to a restraining order before a date with him. And the idea he could have bedded these women is also laughable. Unless he was a rich actor of course. It's a good premise, but with a horribly miscast 5'9" dorky actor hitting on women 10 times out of his league, the whole show seems silly.
This is Frasier. It's a simple family comedy with a laugh track. Critics seem to have written it off, but it's not Frasier that changed, it's them. The first 10 minutes of the show were unbelievably awkward, and my guess is many critics stopped watching there and started complaining. The internet has really ruined simple, straightforward family comedy in the last five years. People don't watch TV anymore to watch it. They watch to complain about it online. This is pretty much Frasier at his best with a surrounding cast that can't keep up. And that's exactly what the original Frasier was, too. Ross was never as funny as people remember. Neither was Niles. Neither was his dad (although he was close). The premise of the original Frasier was "This is Kelsey Grammar out-comedying everyone around him with one-liners to their situations." It's the same thing here. Don't listen to critics. Watch this show. It's worth it just to see Kelsey Grammar be brilliant one more time.
There are a few problems with this show (okay, more than a few). The first is pacing. While they do a fantastic job of pacing the physical workplace and its mystery, they do a piss poor job of pacing character development. Like many other modern shows, I have no idea who these people are or why I would care about them in the first place. I think the writers and directors are taking for granted that people will just like these characters because they're attractive and well-dressed. Not so. The lead character is wood, soulless, and doesn't have a backstory besides "his wife died." Okay? Does he have a personality? The answer is no. The second major problem is the mix of side humor in combination with blaring music. Severance's score is understandably unsettling and should be. But when you play that score through 80% of every episode, it's a distraction, not a companion to anything going on. And when you play it so much that every mundane moment gets its own portion of the soundtrack, everything starts to look like parody. "Christopher Walken strutting through a corridor." I can almost hear a director saying "Turn the music up!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Finally, it all goes back to the people. I don't know these people. I don't see them having regular human conversations that are relatable. Why would I care about them? I had planned to binge this but couldn't get past episode 4. We had a funeral for a character we'd seen exactly 4 times and were just naturally expected to see that as a moment. It wasn't. I don't know who this man was or see enough of him to care. Is it unsettling? Sure. It's also boring and melodramatic, sometimes comically at points. But I'm sure Apple TV paid for plenty of reviews, so no one needs to worry about mine.
I've watched anthology shows for the last 40 years, since I was a kid, and there's virtually nothing I don't like (including 2020's Amazing Stories). I despised Black Mirror and suspect most of these reviews are Netflix employees trying to drum up more numbers for investors. The acting in this show is mediocre and the plotlines are basically Twilight Zone episodes with a modern setting (and without the charming quirks). Tastes change over the years, I get this, but I loved modern movies like Smile. Something about Black Mirror is disturbing, that's for sure, but it's unpleasantly disturbing and so poorly acted that it's impossible to enjoy even the decent storylines.
