I got to say, five episodes in I'm just not excited to watch this show every week. I was after the pilot, but now it almost feels like a chore to watch and write these up. This episode actually aired two weeks ago and I just got around to watching it yesterday. The show is still improving, so there's that, at least, it just hasn't gotten close to the high of those first two hours.
This week we have a Sixer girl infiltrate the camp. I like the concept of the story and I really liked that it was all a ploy by Mira. Everything beyond that was just blah, which is how I feel about the majority of this show right now. A few things intrigue me, the rest I'm completely ambivalent to. I had been wondering when we were going to get back the Sixers and I'm glad they finally did. I don't think they handled it very well. I expected we were going to learn more about how the Sixers operated and little more about their motivations, but everything was super vague.
This show has a real problem with doling out mythology. At first, I was annoyed that they were giving us too much, too fast, but now that more is coming through it is not being done well. I want to try to piece things together from vague hints and guesses. However, they instead have Jim get captured by the Sixers, Mira tells him that "they" in the future are mad at Taylor and she was sent to stop him or something. When Jim rightfully wants to know more, she just says "You'll see." Exposition is something present in almost any form of fiction, but to start giving us answers in exposition form this early is a bad sign. This was problem Lost had from time to time. We would yell that the characters should be asking questions to certain people, but the characters wouldn't ask the questions to avoid boring exposition. In this case it's even more frustrating when the character is asking the questions and the exposition giver decides they've said enough. Why tell him anything at all if you're not going to lay out the whole thing? Is Jim supposed to question Taylor's leadership now? He probably would have questioned it even more if you had told him exactly why Taylor has angered these unknown future people. There's also been four pilgrimages since the sixth, no way for the future people to sneak on some more people on those? Just frustrating.
As you can see, I did not care for that one scene. The rest was mostly good. I liked Leah, and I liked the Shannons taking her in. Would have liked to have seen more family stuff, though. For a show that touts itself as a family drama first, they don't seem very interested in making the family interesting. They hardly ever spend time together. The one thing that really bothered me about the whole girl plot was the fact that the mysterious box was in Mira's house. That was how they figured out Leah was still working for the Sixers, but c'mon, Mira stashed this important thing in her house and then up and left without it? If it was so important, why was it left behind? That rankled me for the rest of the episode. It was nice to see a softer side to Taylor when dealing with Leah, but I like how he's still hard edged when trying to find the mole.
Maddy's doctor subplot was inconsequential, but at least showed her not being perfect. The soldier guy "courting" her, though, needs some personality really, really bad. I just can't get over how boring this guy is. Skye's interesting, can't we add some of that to soldier guy? Speaking of Skye, MIA this week, which meant Josh had very little to do. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I do want to know more about the bartender spy he's now working for.
So you know how I said at the top that this felt kind of like a chore. Not after I started writing. Apparently, complaining comes pretty easy, and it feels good to just let it out.
No comments:
Post a Comment