The Watcher

After watching the excellent series Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, another creation from the succesful duo Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy, I was pretty excited to see what they would come up with now. Could it be another great show based on true events? That how it starts though, stating it's based on true events, but after reading about it after watching this show you can only conclude that 90% of it is all made up, and that's honestly a shame and a letdown. I binge watched it though, like I did with Dahmer, and it's only faire to say that it is very watchable. The mystery level is very high, the suspense is mildly high, the acting is very good and that from the whole cast, but the ending is diappointing and that's why this show scores so low compared to Dahmer. But you can watch this show if you like mysteries, and if you like good acting, because with actors like Naomi Watts, Bobby Cannavale, Mia Farrow, Margo Martindale, and Richard Kind, just to name a few, you get quality acting. The Watcher could have been a really good show, they missed an opportunity here, just because of a weak last episode. Since they were making up 90% of the story they should and could have imagined a better end to this short series of seven episodes.

So, the backstory on this is pretty underwhelming in my opinion. 3 letters and people that didn't even move in. So, the writers really had a very blank slate to create something amazing. It seemed like they were on track but episode 4 was when all hope was lost for me.

You could see very clearly that they lost their way and didn't know how to close this. 7 episodes was just dragging out a story that was running out of fuel after 3. There is a lot of filler in the first three episodes but you can overlook that with anticipation that something great is just around the corner. Unfortunately when you turn the corner, there is just a bag of meh.

I can think of several ways this could have gone that would have been much better. Some of the stuff is just so far out there is is just insulting to your intelligence. This concept would drive most anyone nuts for sure, but humans are pretty predictable and the characters in this just seem to act in repetitive ways that make the story just annoying.

A real missed opportunity.

When I first started watching, I was hooked. It was clear that this was going to be an interesting story and it caught and peaked my interest even more because I intentionally did not read up about the true story prior to watching.

It was good for the first few episodes but then it started to get sloppy. Every single person seemed like a potential suspect and certain pieces of information was just left unsolved. Too many plot holes. It began to feel like I was on a merry-go-round that was never going to lead anywhere. The show just became frantic with no clear direction, which ultimately spoiled it for me. I watched until the end to see if it became better, but it didn't. It was an ok watch but i wouldn't watch it again. A little disappointing.

I knew nothing about The Watcher and was looking to watch something while on the treadmill the other day. At first I was questioning some of the writing and thinking things were a bit hokey, but then I got hooked.

I watched the entire season in one day. I had to to know what was going on and what was going to happen next. I truly was enjoying what I was watching.

So the last episode came on and I was excited to see how the heck they were going to wrap this up and man did they really mess this up. The plot twists were getting to be too much and when it was all over I was like "Huh? What about this thing and that thing? Why did they bring these things up and not address them any further?

I am disappointed to have spent the day watching six interesting episodes only to have the seventh episode (the last one) be a complete turd.

I would save your time and watch something else.

I feel like this show was written by someone who thinks they're a very clever writer. There are constant occurrences of misdirection throughout the show but the issue with this is that, if you just take a couple seconds to actually think about it, you see right though it. It's like the second any information is divulged to the main characters they just automatically run with it instead of taking a step back to use their brain..

...without giving anything away I'll just give a relatable example. Imagine a movie where the main character's parents were killed with a golf club by a man in a red hat. Then 40 years later the main character is golfing and sees someone else on the green in a red hat... so they go up to this person and start bearing them up mercilessly... but the person they're beating up is only like 19 or 20 years old... meaning there's no way in hell they could have been the murderer..

That's what happens in this show over and over and over again. It's like the writer thinks they're being clever by relating one thing to another to misdirect you but entirely lacks the ability to connect the pieces logically.

Nobody in this show has a single ounce of common sense and it gets frustrating so fast and so frequently. Idk imagine someone gets shot and everyone in the area looks in the direction where they thought the bullet was coming from and they just see a baby in a cradle sleeping.. well in reality we can deduce that it 100% was not this sleeping baby that shot someone.. but in this show, all they would think would be, "man shot. Gunshot come from that direction. Sleeping baby in that direction. Must be sleeping baby. Everyone attack sleeping baby"

Just, not a well-written show at all.