Reviews
*** SPOILERS *** I watched the first two episodes so far. I will probably watch the rest despite the below as there is nothing else on. Its well made in a cinematography sense, even if it has plot holes the size of the moon.
As you probably know by now, there is a great deal of violence in this show, I think it has set the record for people being graphically shot in the head. There isn't much sex but there is quite a lot of nudity, you even see James Purevoy's fairly long penis. I may never be able to watch The Wine Show again. And every other woman is naked, and a whore, of course.
There are several problems with the plot. For one, the timeline is way off and there are time continuity errors all over the place. The lead assissin dude is suppose to be from 200 years in the past, it is set in ~2500. But in many ways technology is not that advanced and the lead makes referrences to things he shouldn't know about and talks about things in the distant past the other person shouldn't know about.
Its mostly a rip off of Blade Runner and to a lesser degree Gibson's 2nd "bridge" trilogy (he should sue over that bridge scene). It suffers from what a lot of old syfy suffers from, inconsistent technological advances. Sure there are flying cars, but they use jet propulsion and you have to manually drive them, there is even a car crash in the first 5 minutes. As someone who follows technology closely and is aware of the trend of scientific advances, its simply bad writing. It comes off like someone was told to write a book and use peices from other books, duct taped together with nudity and violence. There is a blantant rip off of Frankenstein at one point and I would say you could make that analogy with the entire series, its a hodge podge of parts incorrectly sewn together into a monster.
There is a main conflict with religious fanatics wanting to die and have their "souls" go to "heaven." But the mind backup tech means you never have to die. When the religiously conflicted hispanic police officer goes into the confessional booth that is located inside the police station, you lost me. I can not use the word Stupid enough here. There is no reason a 1990 era police station would be built inside an abandoned church 500 years from now. Though I can really get behind abandoning churches.
There is a distinct lack of robots, despite everything else being "advanced" and the AI entities are downright stupid. No guests in 50 years and the AI is still running a hotel? Again, bad writing.
Alien technology? Really? Aliens?
All in all, its poorly told story. I know its glorified as a great book series, and no doubt people will give it 5 stars here, but there are so many flaws as to make it almost unwatchable.
And people smoke cigarettes, because 500 years from now they still have nicotine addiction. Lame!
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Finished it...
For a breif moment in episode 7, the story actually has some merit, the rebel story should have been the focus of the whole series, but episode 8 goes off the rails again, and episode 9 and 10 are a car wreck... have you ever seen one of those high speed chases where one car goes out of control at the end and rolls spins summersaults bumper to bumper flipping up in the air to finally succumb to gravity and give up its dying breath of kinetic energy and fall flat like a pancake in a cloud of dust in anticlimaxtic disgrace... thankfully out of its miseary... and you immediately forget about it because it had no meaning, no substance, no worth... it was just like that.
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This was an odd show from the get go, but it did have its moments. The Sophia deep learning idea was novel for TV, though it was completely unrealistic, as the computer often did things that are at least 3-5 years in our near future. Not that much of a stretch, but it was otherwise portrayed as being present day.
In spite of the sexual misconduct of the lead casting a pall over the show, about two thirds of the way through the series I thought it was getting good. But that only lasted about an episode and then it was canceled and it hard to feel good about watching a show you know is not going to end well. They truncated the last episode and put in a rather sappy closure with the search continuing without us watching, but what else were they going to do.
A lot of people really seemed to dislike the show. I'm not sure why beyond the dude being a dick. It was a ok mystery/police drama show, and you have to like mysteries and a tangled web of mess finally being striaghtened out in the end... but in this case, there is no end. We'll never know who Sophie's killer was. Oh well. Another one for the scrap heep. Movin' on.
The description of this show is totally wrong. Although it is centered in a hotel and there is a motif of cooking and scenes in the kitchen, it has very little to do with food. Its much more an extended family of misfits that were brought together by one man, who promptly dies in the first episode. Drama ensues and although the first 4 episode season was well crafted, it almost completely falls apart in the second season. There was a slightly titilating pseudo-incestuous relationship that is ended without any real explaination, and there certainly is lots of shaging going on, but its almost a side plot to the day to day running of the hotel. And the girls medical issue is interesting if only because its real.
The guy who dies reappears in many scenes in the first and second season as some kind of pseudo-christian afterlife BS used to push the plot forward. Although its disgustingly religious, it was at least handled fairly well in the first season, but by the second season, its almost like the character is a real person that just shows up whenever the writers couldn't think of anything else to do with the scene.
I would recommend watching the first season, and then dropping it. They partially wrapped it up at the end of the second season as if it may not have a 3rd season, so at least there is a certain amount of closure.
The first episode is very funny, but it drifts into the weeds after that and becomes more and more about the "doctor's" own problems. Like the first episode is a comedy and then it becomes a drama that tries too hard. I'm on the 5th episode and will likely finish it, its an ok show, just went down hill... like a lot of shows they put a ton of writing work into the first episode and then can't keep up that level.
Sensational first episode, its like a movie. The female lead actress is great. One amazing scene after another. I don't think they will be able to keep up that level of hyper-reality, but we'll see. I took off 1 star as I thought the male investigator actor was overly melodramatic, the opening 30 seconds was kind of dumb with the Top Secret above the sun video, and the show was overly violent... though the tree thing was "WOW".
I marked it down another half of a star after episode 3... again, excessive violence for no good reason. Its basically turned into a series like Millenium, where fanatical belief-based people act out based on conspiracy theories... you know, like the fake president in the States.
I took off another half star after watching the whole series. It was good but it could have been much better with another rewrite. The last episode was ironically anticlimatic. It feels as if some exec in a suit said "I think we want 6 episodes instead of 10." You never find out what was up with the sun and as if on cue, it suddenly becomes a problem everyone can see but you are never told what is happening. It may be renewed but I wouldn't bet on it. Again, its amazingly violent and I really didn't need to see the heroin being cooked up and shot into the kids arm by the government goon.
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A faithful dramatization of the first two books that became known as the Little Woman novel. The characters of the girls come through well against the barely shown austere backdrop of the civil war and hardships of the less fortunate poor people. Its mostly a tale of the self-centered myopic trials and tribulations of middle class america and the coming of age stories of 4 overly-different minded girls. Based on Alcott's sisters and largely herself in the character of Jo, the author wrote the first book quickly and in a way that makes it easy to recreate it as a movie or TV show, as there really isn't that much content. Its a fun and quick 3 episode jaunt into a bygone american dream that largely never was.
I was just thinking that its like the Brady Bunch during the civil war... but only Mrs. Brady and the three girls and Alice that maid. Mr. Brady is hardly in the picture being busy fighting the architect war. Meg Meg Meg!
Quite and excellent story though the ending is a cop out relying on the fake supernatural explaination. I knew nothing of the novel, and at first the dollhouse seems wrong, but the forshadowing aspects of the additional peices is done wonderfully well and reminds me of And Then There Was None from Agatha Christie. The sexual orientation aspect is interesting and belies the fake piety of those times and our own time. The sugar is fun to see... it really looked like that in those days. Its basically a 2.5 hour movie split in two. The young woman Lead is already a star, but she is going to be a legend in time, you can tell already.
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Its a decent show, good acting, good cast, written fairly well. I only watched the first three episodes as its a little slow and they drag out the intrique over 6 episodes when it would have been better if it was a 4 episode hard hitting series. The female detective behaves in a way that I just can't imagine a detective behaving, as she is either going to be killed or lose her job in the next episode. People just don't do that. And that would be fine if everything else about the story weren't boringly normal. If you like spy stories, you will probably like this, as its basically about spies living among us and we don't even know it. In fact, you might be married to one.
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Its basically a horror film, with a bit of Blair Witch style camcorder thrown in to make sure you know you are watching a low budget flick. I couldn't make it through the first episode. If you like horror and overly dramatic scary music and being strung along waiting for the bad guy to jump out from behind the abandoned ski lodge, then this is a series for you. And of course there are the English subtitles to make it extra annoying to watch.
Just mainlined the two seasons over the last couple days. I didn't think I was going to like it as the dorky guy was annoying at first and I figured I would get tired of it. But the personalities that they have been able to capture in this show are so much deeper than your average show.
Its about as close to real life as you can get in a show. There is one scene when they are swept up in that initial sexual intimacy that is palpable on screen and you know if that was you in that situation, you would definitely think the thought... should I say 'I love you?' But its not love, its just infatuation and familiarity so you decide not to say anything and just enjoy the moment for what it is. But for a moment on screen... it was almost real.
Neither of the main characters are attractive, Gillian is a beautiful woman, but her character has not had an easy life and the scars show through in every episode. The dork character is the type of anal controlling completely f'd up character you either know or have a little bit of within yourself. He is self rightous and riddled with self loathing at the same time.
They are opposites but both deeply flawed and redeemable at the same time. You can see how neither is a fully developed adult, and I think you could say that they both are the unredeemed hero trying to be redeemed and failing alone, and likely only acheiving self actualization through connection with each other. Like a lot of couples, they function much better together as each somewhat supplements the other.
Yet if one side goes too far imposing their thought process on the other's actions, the balance is thrown off and they temporarily spiral out of control until equilibrium is restored. The first two seasons are very well done, and each episode is unique and there are no filler episodes like a lot of shows. They do a great job keeping the conflict going without being overly contrived with the set ups.
I think they could do 6 seasons of this show if they wanted to, as the dork's movie related job is a great vehicle for bringing new people and settings into the world. And the addict's life is full of interesting people to keep introducing new situations and conflict. Having said that, I suspect it will end after the 3rd or 4th season or its going to get too repetative. Very much looking forward to season 3.
MAJOR CONS: There is near incessant cigarette smoking. I hate this. I would love to see shows and movies have to pay a fine for every second someone is depicted smoking on screen. They also keep mentioning Uber, in the way that you know they are being paid to mention Uber. Fuck Uber... the fascists!
UPDATE AFTER SEASON 3 - The last season (3) was horrible. Its like they forgot about the characters from the first two seasons and just pumped out bad sit-un-com, that 's "Un-comedy." New term. I tried to watch the first two episodes but just countn't do it. The annoying gross leech guy ruined every other scene. Bad writing. I skipped to the end and it was an ok closure at the end but nothing special.
Lame last seaosn ending to an other wise good beginning. I had given it 4 stars but marked it down to 3 due to the third season.
I recommend watching the first two and then dropping it like a rock.
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