Lolli123456

Only the pilot was aired, but there are 10 episodes that were filmed and leaked online after the cancelation.

Its basically a re-imagining of the 1988 Heathers movie, with every plot point and character flipped or switched in some way to make it a new story. The gorgeous slim rich girl bee-atch is a fat homely rich girl psycho bee-atch. The jock who was accused of being gay... really is gay. One of the 'Heathers' is a transvestite. You get the idea. Its actually fairly well done, but if you like the original, it will take some getting used to.

I applaud the writer for the substancial feat of rewritting a beloved dark comedy-drama, but the 5 episodes I watched (which appear to conclude the story arc) definitely go downhill after the pilot. The dialog includes almost all of the classic Heathers one-liners, but used in different contexts. At times this seems forced, like the writer had a list of ideas to include and he was going to get them to fit in there somewhere even if it didn't meld perfectly. Where the original movie flows, the series jerks along in fits and starts. Where the original was at least plausible, the series is hyper-reality... more of a long dream sequence than a movie.

The social commentary is still there and it is far more biting than the original, but where the original was dark and ironic, the series is sensational for no reason except to try to shock you. Like a lot of things in society today, the characters are soo extreme that one could think a Reality TV host could become Fake President, totally un-believable.

One amazing aspect is that the young woman playing the Veronica character, originally played by Winona Rider, actuallly sounds like Winona Rider at times. Its hard to tell if its dubbed or if she is just mimicing her voice, but the effect is eeriely brilliant and pays omage to one of Rider's hay day roles.

UPDATE: I watched episodes 6 to 10, and the show def gets better in the second half of the season, the social comentary is more biting, especially the active shooter episode... yeah, why don't the school shooters wait until everyone is together in the auditorium or cafeteria?? I love that the hero is the villian and he loves her for being a killer like himself. Its a shame this was not released so everyone with a brain could enjoy the poignant commentary. The ending is a rather sickening christian heaven/hell parable, which was stupid and they could have ended it in a much better manner without the religiosity. I deducted a whole star just for that mistake. It looked like they were going to do some kind of reincarnation thing for the next season, like the same horrible people have lived in the past and are rinsing and repeating. Again with the religiosity BS. Not a bad thing it was canceled, but I feel it was canceled for the wrong reason.

I'm kind of super-heroed out, but I gave this one a try. Its much better and much worse than I thought it would be.

The best parts are the well thought out writing and the high production values. I've only watched 4 episodes, but its well done. It is a little bit confusing with all the flash-back, flash-forward, flash-somewhere-else, flash to What metaphorical chaos is this? .... I could see younger viewers not understanding the more bizarre non-reality scenes. But an experienced viewer will be able to follow along and appriciate the multiple levels of plot the writers are exploring.

The bad is the veiled psuedo-christian idolitry of evoking some unexplained 'divine' power as their origin story. The use of churches, and corrupt preists, and childish praying, and choir singing, and graveyards, and angel symbolism, and voodoo shops, and voodoo rituals, and all the damn stain glass windows... gets to be too much. As a rational person, there is only so much religiousity I can take in a show, so I deducted a star and half for that alone. It simply does not add anything to the story and panders to the uneducated (in the United States especially) instead of being creative and inventing a real origin story (although there is the rig-blow-up-wave at the beginning that will no doubt be used with ample psuedo-science to explain the actual origin by the end of the season). The archaic concept of "belief" is the bastion of the untalented writer, and much like characters prolifically smoking in shows for no reason, I find second-hand-belief disgusting and an abuse of the story craft.

From a strickly entertainment perspective, its a decent show. Its not overly predictable, the acting is good, the super-powers are unique, and like most good super-hero stories, the powers are evolving and not fully formed. So you get to experience the characters discovering what the powers are at the same time they are discovering them themselves. I would draw a parallel to the recent premier of the Jumper spin off Impulse, which has a similar feel... without all the religious nonsense.

This YouTubeRED show is from the third book of the "Jumper" series. Much like the Jumper movie from years ago, a young person (a woman this time) starts having weird telekinetic issues and then inexplicably teleports to her bedroom when under stress.

The season is largely based on a partial rape and they really explore how people come to grips with rape and how then delude themselves into remembering it differently while trying to deal with the emotions.

I did think the girl somewhat over-reacted to the partial rape, as in every other aspect of her life she is a hard ass. She incessantly smokes pot, swears, mistreats her mother, skips school, ventures out in the middle of the might to spray paint tag buildings and buses, has had sex before with at least one boy-friend, etc. Hardly some innocent waif.

But since I'm not a 16 year old girl with some misogynistic jock forcing his fingers into my vagina, I guess I really don't have a valid opinion about how a woman or young girl would react to that experience, even if she is a hard ass in many other ways.

The rape becomes the motivation for her burgioning super power, and you go on her journey of discovering what she is capable of over the 10 episodes. While teleportation is the big picture plot point for the show, its not really the focus of the individual episodes or the seaosn. Its more a thing that either causes problems to be dealt with or alleviates problems in unexpected ways. Its done well.

CON: I will say that the rape theme kind of crowds out the rest of the plot and they keep coming back to it again and again. And while I'm sure this is realistic, it kind of gets in the way of the rest of the story. At some point its one long Anti-Rape PSA and I found myself saying, yeah yeah, I get it, she was raped, next scene please.

PRO: Its probably one of the best examples of a show dealing with the topic of rape and I think they did a great job.

There is the 'big bad' organization that is trying to capture (and somehow use the jumpers, we don't know why yet), but the season has a local bad guy that keeps the action going and is the main focus of the season. The father son and son trio are just bad people and motivate a lot of action.

The show explores several other topics to some degree, there is the high-functioning autistic nerd friend and the other daughter who may like girls, she's not sure, but I'm pretty sure the character becomes a lesbian in college.

I liked that the religious fanatics were behind the opioid crisis, rather fitting since religion is the opiate of the weak of mind in the first place.

It was a fun action-packed season, and I definitely hope YoutubeRED does another season.

UPDATE ON SEASON 2
The season starts off strong and the backstory of Nickeli was amazingly good, but the by episode 7 it all falls apart, the main driver of the season is unceremoniously stopped without any effort, and the incessant rape rape rape backstory that never ends is just insane, and the outing of the lesbian who apparently can only be a lesbian if she gets bad grades and is flunking out of school is a horrible message. The ending was lame. I hope it gets canceled. So sad that they turned the Jumper movies into this ongoing PSA message.

Two misfits go on a road trip and someone is murdered. This reminded me of a movie called Kiss or Kill from 1997. If you are going to kill someone, always kill a pedophile.

Although there is a fair amount of external action (never a dull moment), this is really about the psychology of the characters. The boy is the "hero" in the sense that he changes over the course of the series and becomes more man-like. The girl changes too, but she appears to devolve becoming more childlike, almost reverting to a stage of innocence as the boy grows out of his childhood fantasies. Both going in opposite emotional directions, as if something was exchanged. It comes through, but its subtle, like the girl bouncing over to her father like she is 7 instead of 17, or the boy actually smiling at one point.

I think the author (originally a graphic novel comic book) was trying to show the boy (who thinks he is a psychopath, and he is correct, he is) as he becomes a much more normal person over the course of the adventure and his connection with the girl (or her connection with him, as she is almost always the aggressor), as he develops empathy for others, even animals as he refuses to behave the same way he had in the past. He even takes one for the team at the end of the fucking world.

The ending isnt as emotionally strong as I think it should have been, but it was still a very good story. If you like this sort of thing.

It doesn't look like there will be a season 2. It was a one season arc like the comic.

The first episode was a good pilot, but after the second episode they are already getting formulaic. The Son character is sooooo dysfunctional, there is no way they would ever work for a police department. The Father character having"phone time" to be able to call his son 20 times a day to help solve the case is downright stupid. They are trying to do a Hannibal Lecter type of situation, but the Father living in a plush library for a cell with a full time guard is not nearly as potentially realistic as Hannibal's cell in a prison.

I may watch a few more episode to see if the mysteries get any better, but so far they spend so much time on the Son's dysfunction and the Dad prison visits that the mysteries are taking a back seat.

The allusions that the Mother was in on the killings is very unrealistic, not that it doesn't happen, but that its usually a meek woman being control by the man not two psychopaths working together.

Add to blender: Alien, Arrival, Lost in Space, Contact, and bits and pieces of every sci fi blockbuster from the last 30 years, then set to purée.

It starts a little rough but gets better. They quickly run out of sci-fi troupes to use and the plot meanders around in search of a reason to be on TV. Its mostly one disaster after another, counter pointed with the mystery of alien contact.

I stopped watching after the first episode. Its a well done show and I'm sure faithful to the book, but the scene where the other plane is blown up and the guy hits the window is nasty. I'm still having recurring images of that gore a couple weeks later.

The show is well done, kind of a female Ray Donovan, she fixes problems for celebrities. Its a decent show. The acting is good, its entertaining, but the stories are juvinile. Its TV.

The issue I have with it is that the show characterizes woman who are powerful as being pychologically broken, and emotionally difficient. She's not really a strong female character at all. If the character was a man, they wouldn't make a big deal about her sleeping with her client, or lying to the spounce. It would be considered manly.

And that is what I think this is. Its a male role, rewritten for a female, but that makes no sense so they have to make her a little F'd up in the head so she acts man-like. I'm sure lots of woman sleep around and lie to their husbands, but that doesn't mean its good TV.

I'm kind of surprised Anna P took the part. Maybe she wanted to be more edgy. I watched a couple episodes but its not adding anything to my life, so I dropped it. I only watched one episode of Ray Donovan too. People being bad human beings for no good reason does not appeal to me these days.

First episode: Very much like the beginning of the 2011 movie, but better. Where the movie plopped you down into the situation without much explaination or motivation for the girl's training, the TV show shows you the back story and you see there is a very good reason why she might be special.

Of course, there is no Saoirse Ronan, who definitely made the movie go from an 8 to a 10, but the girl in the TV show is still good.

My only complaint so far is that the writer or director made the girl act weak at times, and for lack of a better word "girly". Which doesn't fit with the otherwise hard as nails assasin in training.

Also, snickers commercial. Twice. I will never buy a snickers again, not that I would ever eat that crap anyway.

Definitely a good start to a hopefully great show.

UPDATE: Halfway through season 1... unfortunately, here is the plot of every episode: Hanna does a dumb thing and the bad guys find her, she escapes from the bad guys with the help of others despite continueing to be dumb, the bad guys get even more determined to catch her. The Hanna actress is not very talented and I think she was miscast. Knocking it down to 2.5 stars.