matthewbaker-10037

Gone are the days of narrative arcs that are allowed to unfold on their own. The modern action film is a parody of the corpse of its forebears, moving from vapid setpiece to setpiece like Barry Bonds in the seventh inning. Smiling Friends go to Brazil is no different, serving as a gaping maw of materialistic void that can only be described as 2022. You'll groan, sigh, and wonder where the time went- down the drain and to the canal, perhaps- because yesterday's water is today's water. The crew leading smiling friends have officially signed their lives away to the die hard money machine, the rambo cash register, the burger flipping transformer, all for the low price of time off your life. Each gritty explosion and visceral crash is punctuated by the lust interest turning yet again to the only thing they have to offer the world: the taut skin compelled only by the mortal coil hollywood has propped up with the mummified likenesses of men concerned only with increasing the size of a headstone. If you "like" mission impossible, you'll love to get a load of this chum sack.

Much of what I enjoyed about season 1 was how direct and subtle the editing was. I felt like I was given credit as being a reasonably attentive viewer, and that my noticing something that was important was my choice (even though it wasn't). That's what good editing means.

Now it feels like every single person gets a protracted backstory, every minor character gets their own personal 5 minute sob scene, and every scene could have conveyed the same exact information with fewer shots.

Clearly it's higher budget, but I'm not convinced the editing is at the same level as before. It also seems like many of the cgi shots are running away from the show into their own realm of direction. These issues seem to compound in a way that dilutes the narrative, disenfranchises the characters we ought to care about, and generally gives me less opportunity to feel like an active viewer- I've solved where the narrative is going 20 minutes before it happens, but they need everyone to get their backstory scene that nobody wanted and the story could have gone without.

This episode just feels less focused and more heavily produced than anything in season 1, and I'm not a fan of where this is going.

edit: yeah it turns out that only this episode sucked pacing wise, the rest of the season was incredible