Tom Swift

....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 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.

A thoroughly unlikeable hero with daddy issues, he is arrogant, selfish and has a massive chip on his shoulder. The premise of this show is interesting enough, but the execution is twelfth-grade writing-contest level. Everything is drawn to extremes with little subtlety - the villain is immediately apparent even without a twirly moustache.

The core story is hackneyed, with Flash Gordan level effects, over-earnest, immersion-breaking dialogue and a plot that bounces from serendipity to McGuffins and back to magic tech mumbo jumbo.

Clearly The CW is capable of good TV (Superman & Lois, Stargirl), but this has too many extraneous constraints, competing with the need to write a compelling story.

Very disappointing. I was looking forward to a modern take on Tom Swift. Good news - attractive cast. Bad news: everything else. Acting and dialogue were atrocious. Story line was just plain silly. Hard pass.

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?