Tom Swift

So I watched only to see what they would do with the venerable, intrepid adventurer and scientist. They made him into a CW TV series. Manufactured suspense, gay sex with a twist of fabulous and special effects that were hardly worth the effort. As mentioned elsewhere why use the 20th century American literary character if you are going to change LITERALLY everything about him? Making this a unique character, a person of his own time and place which he is, would have made this far more successful with its target audience, presumably habitual CW viewers. The only thing the two Tom's have in common is they are both wealthy industrialists (played down in the original character) and apparently are creative inventors although all the current Tom's accomplishments are in the past unless you count the extra special detergent he's forced to create in the first episode Can't see that as one of the old books. The "adventure " seems to be a quest for pieces of a mystery. Does this show's actual audience even know who Tom Swift is?

Like a lot of white males I was attracted by the name since many of us grew up reading the books. Casting a black lead was an opportunity to update the series but instead this is collection of unrealistic stereotypes on top of ridiculously trite dialog. They apparently skimped on the writing hoping they could distract us with special effects which are equally unimpressive.

This may be one of the worst shows currently running (as you can see from the Rotten Tomato score). I maybe lasted 10 minutes on episode 1.

I tried to get through the first two episodes. It was mental root canal. One of the main reasons is this Tom Swift's total departure from both the 1930 and 1960 book series. And, no, I don't mean that in this version he's Black or gay. What I mean is that he's mean-spirited, vindictive, and just plain unlikeable. He's full of himself and revels in his narcissism. The Tom Swift of the book series was altruistic and a humanitarian--concepts this Tom Swift wouldn't begin to understand. I was so looking forward to this series, but this is one is just plain painful.

....and it got worse and worse after that. But we shouldn't be surprised because it's a CW show. And you know that the first season will be okay but the seasons after that will just suck. That's how CW works.

I was expecting something like a mashup between Alex Rider and Black Panther. After all we have those as examples of highly successful, modern takes on similar story lines. But what I saw was just... garbage. The kind that has been sitting in the sun for a few days. I couldn't even make it through the first episode. The CW should just kill the show right now and replace it with reruns of something - anything - else.