Chasing Ghosts

So episode one of season 2 was a great restart to the show. The stronger character arch's and better actors led the season opening very well.

However, this episode was terrible. I am quickly remembering season 1 despite the couple year hiatus because I remember how much I hated these characters.

The soldier was great in most of season 1 until he got got tied up with the kids in England. Then it turned into the most boring and horrible mix of British stranger things/Harry Potter acting. So much misplaced cussing in a missed effort to make their acting seem real.

Most of it is just pointless head talking with zero plot reveal. I truly detested this episode and these characters. So boring.

I only watched because maybe it will apply yo the more interesting characters down the road.

I'm hopeful for the soldier storyline. He seems yo be a good actor. But his being tied to the kids drags it down. And seeing him get gaslighted by all those that should understand he is a war veteran was upsetting. But it was easy to get over because it led the show away from these bad people and more about just the soldier. And when this happens...you actually get good content.

But unfortunately the kid squad drags the episode down. This doesn't seem to be a kid show, so why add so many kids with huge talking parts?? It drags the show down and you won't get the kid audience you hope for.

The only reason I rated this a 4 instead of a 1 is due to the soldier schemes in the second half of the show.

After the glacial pace of season one and the cliffhanger ending, I was hoping season two might pick up the pace and introduce something interesting about the aliens.

• Nope. We are still following the family we don't care about (apparently this is the "character interest" part of the formula.)
• The giant spiky coronaviruses that impale people can apparently be taken out *easily* by fire. What are they fighting back with? Flamethrowers maybe? No, Molotov cocktails thrown by our Japanese "hero" from last season. She has a great arm.

• The giant alien ship that crashed? Surely, the world governments have banded together and sent their best military minds to tear that thing apart, so we can find out how to defeat the aliens. Of course not! Let's leave it up to it to an annoying, churlish billionaire (as if money would matter when a large percentage of the atmosphere is already poisoned) to figure this out (I guess we have Elon fans among the writers). Still, he needs our Molotov throwing heroine because ONLY she knows how to communicate with the aliens.

And this is just within the first 15 to 20 minutes. It's a waste of nice production values and occasional good special effects. I would be stunned if this show gets a season three.

Any expectation that the second series of Invasion would correct the many, many failings and exasperation of the first have been well and truly dispelled by Episode 2.

After spending the first series watching our wandering soldier try to find a way back to the USA from across the world, he's realised that nobody wants him there, particularly now that he saved his sister's son from drowning and was immediately kicked out of the house for that --his sister unable to reconcile the fact that he shouted at the not-dead boy and she took the time after her son drew a waterlogged breath to tell our soldier this instead of comforting her child. This is the level of writing they've given us and in fact it's now evident that the extent of mediocrity in this series knows no bounds. The writing and acting are really awful. It takes a while to fully grasp this but, never fear, the realisation will come to you after the razzle-dazzle of the shiny trailer and enticing in-app artwork wear off. It will reveal itself to be nothing of substance, a padded, drip-fed exercise in audience baiting.

Not content with sending our wandering soldier on another walkabout, the writers and directors have now sent our band of soap-opera standard young actors on a walkabout to find Casp (short for Casper, because we must economise on syllables whenever wanting to convey familiarity) as if watching the family in the first episode wander about, then our soldier on walkabout again in episode two wasn't enough. And despite all of the cordoned-off zones and countries in this Invaded world, everyone seems to be able to wander about with free abandon, even from country to country, far easier than we could during lockdown. You may make the observation that this wandering is simply a repeat of the first series and who am I to disagree with that?

If you like watching people wander about, then enjoy. But if you, like myself, thought the trailer for Series 2 signified that it would be better than the first series, then you're likely to be abjectly disappointed and a little peeved if you're in any way of balanced patience. Why, because dropping one episode per week as a way to draw out monthly subscriptions would be palatable if only the episodes themselves were something of substance, with an actual story. Sadly, two episodes in, they're well short of delivering anything near what the marketing promised ... yet again.

The first season gave me hope, and the first episode of this season (despite being awful) also made me think that it could at least remotely improve. I was, unfortunately, wrong.

It's still absolutely awful.

Instead of the little family arc they have where the children do the most mindless stuff ever, they, in this episode, brought us back to more children who do even MORE mindless stuff!

It's slow, lethargic and stupid. It tries to build tension, and fails horribly. No attachment is remotely built towards any of the characters, not just because the writing is crap but also because the acting is almost comedic, as is most of the scenes. But at the same time, the acting can only be as good as the writing so...

It was bad enough in this season's premier that we got yet another annoying character - the rich dude funding the research that apparently the governments, including the big international World Defense Coalition are too broke to handle. But at least that episode moved forward and had some intrigue.

But in this absolutely useless episode, we get almost an hour of pointless filler, most of it the British kids, that made it feel like I accidentally tuned in to a Disney channel. It seems Apple is rotting with this series, if this is the best they can come up with after making fans wait two years.

Unless the next episode wows me, I'll be done with this show and will be cancelling my Apple subscription, I'm not into paying for boredom.