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Reviews
Westworld: Que Será, Será (2022)
This Season Ran out of gas.
To me this season sort of limped along, until finally we get a finale that only manages to raise more questions, with not a lot of fulfillment. If anything most of the fourth season feels as empty as its finale. Who is running the show? And why? And is anything real? The character of Delores is completely tossed aside, and then Caleb, who was so intriguing in the third season, is someone obligatory. His story in this season is kind worthless, as with all the "outliers". Stylistically, this is magnificent; the effects are fantastic, the performances spot on. But the story... it just ran on fumes until it finally choked a few times and died.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Memento Mori (2022)
Best Episode so Far
Loved this! Frightening, sentimental, a genuine sensation of claustrophobia - like a submerging submarine. And a black hole ready to pull the Enterprise in. Really good storytelling and terrific direction.
Foundation: Barbarians at the Gate (2021)
Salvor Hardin hijack
The show has been hijacked by Salvor Hardin, whose written as a messianic character that espouses sexist, ignorant, nonsense so often its worthy of a groan. I mean, come on Apple, we get it already, you've created an inclusive, diverse cast of characters. Can you at least make them palpable? Five episodes in and I'm just about ready to call it quits.
Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne (2019)
Revisiting an Old Friend, only to be betrayed in the end
I thought perhaps time would make the final episode more palpable, it doesn't. I thought watching the entire series from beginning to end would offer the conclusion more latitude - it doesn't. Although there is plenty of foreshadowing to Dani's demise, it is pulled off with about as much grace as a bull in a glass shop. The overly sweetly sentimental and very un-GOT final fifteen minutes of an otherwise brilliant series, is almost enough to completely poison the whole thing. The best advice is to stop after season seven (or even six) and make up your own ending. Because what we were given is just awful.
The Stand: Pocket Savior (2020)
Even worse than the first episode
Why do I care for these characters? The disjointed non-linear way in which this story is told completely diminishes any emotional impact that I'm supposed to feel.
Technically this is fine work, but focusing on individual characters to create this story is a misfire. I'm not sure I even want to continue.
The Stand (2020)
Losing Literary Narrative
If King had written his book like this non-linear mess, it would have been editited or shelved. The makers of this show assume you a) have read the book and know the material or b) have seen the original ABC series and know the material. This is a big miss! No character development, no tension, none of the building blocks for good story telling.
The Man in the High Castle (2015)
How a Might Series Fails
It's unfair to rate a series entire when the first two seasons are so strong and then the last two first drift and then plow forward off into oblivion with a weak, disastrous storyline. Overall the series shines with likeable characters and somewhat believable situations. Based loosly on the PKD novella of the same title, this inturpretation takes the story so much futher than its source material, and at first that is a good thing. We get a glimpse of what America might have appeared had the Axis won the war.
Yet, in the final act the producers of a very fine series threw common sense to the wind and literally ditched it, and I can't help but wonder if they did so on purpose. The finale is so outrageous that it's insulting to those who have stuck with it through four years and forty episodes. It's so bad in fact that I was actually rooting for the Nazis in the last couple of episodes, to put this inept, social justice claptrap cliched garbage out of its misery. This makes the end of Game of Thrones look like Citizen Kane.
The Man in the High Castle: Fire from the Gods (2019)
Boring and highly, highly unsatisfactory
The writers of what was a fine show had no idea where to go and so they just gave up. This fourth season to me was completely unnecessary if it was going to be ended in such an unstasfictory way. I mean, the BCR is completely unstoppable; they were set to take on the Nazi invasion of the west with what seemed like an unlimited number of weapons. And of course they have to remind us just how awful the Nazis were and that Smith is a murdering xenophobe that is set on cleansing the continent. Remember, wink-wink, Nazi bad? Shit, I was almost ready to root for Smith to make it. Julianna and her band of resistance set the explosives up in less than five minutes? I dont' know much about munitions, but give me a break. I turned the volume down and put my head in hands and really did wish I had skipped the whole season. This show should've ended at two season.
Servant (2019)
Clever, dark, interesting and sad
Well written, acted, shot and produced. Just when I felt the show was headed in one direction it would go somewhere else. These are not empty stereotypes, rather well-rounded characters in a self-created nightmare. The ending was appropriate and gratifying.