therdawgg's reviews

When the Beatles released Strawberry Fields, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys pulled his car over as he heard it for the first time on the radio. He then immediately drove to the studio and shut down all production on future albums, saying "The Beatles got there first."

It's over for this genre. There is no way people will surpass what episode four just did. It's even got people on here trying to defend Breaking Bad from it, and if those people feel threatened, you know you're in for some top tier TV. I mean seriously, this is one of the best episodes of TV that's been made, and may be the best episode of sci-fi ever made.

Would give this anything less than a ten? This is a generational standard. Even if it doesn't hit for you as an adult, this is Bluth at his best, with Spielberg at the helm. There is nothing better at the time and the emotional space it carved out allowed for modern Disney successes. An absolute masterpiece.

Just release this as a standalone and let ep 7 finish the season.

This was sloppy rushed nonsense after incredibly slow pacing midseason. It's a pity we got fuzzy uncle Gunn and not season 1 Gunn.

I mean seriously, just tag all the emotional payoffs to the last episode. Don't rally the group and then have them do nothing, that was the most wasted great acting I've ever seen.

For once, there are vague causative relationships between things happening int this show... bake make no mistake, everyone remains wildly out of character, and people are doing things their characters would never do without explanation. The show remains pretty with deep incoherency in direction and tone.

They must have lost the writers and producers that make Cunk on Earth a success. The jokes are all flat, and the timing that made all the jokes worth is nowhere to be found. Philomena seems like she's trying to force all the words out in rapid fire, not giving anything room to breathe. It's also turned from a fake documentary into a self aware comedy, which makes it a bit unbearable.

It gives off the vibe that someone wanted to pump out material after the recent success of Cunk on Earth, but didn't want to put in the prerequesite work to make it good again.

A pity, Diane deserves so much better. She's gone so far and has so much further to go.

Benioff and Weiss fail the world again, with their characters sleepwalking through a world that doesn't care to build on itself.

Bafflingly flat performances throughout, one can only assume the fault lies at the feet of the director. There is little reason given at any point to feel invested in any of these people.

Most scenes centered around character development are approached with the care of a drunken autistic child.

The sound production also is baffling, there's little emotional crescendo built and they might as well have not hired anyone at all.

At some point this is on us for thinking this duo has any talent at all and haven't just ridden on the works of others to get a name for themselves.

The bad reviews for this are almost exclusively people angry it wasn't an action packed epic. That was never what this was meant to be. Please, don't let them dissuade you.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's a 7 to 7.3 and it's rated 6.2... not far off... but it's the difference between watchable and not.

This is a story of people who HAPPEN TO LIVE IN the world at the time of an alien invasion. It's keeping in the spirit of Arrival. It's not as good as Arrival, but it does a better job of handling the multicultural/global aspect of the response.

It relies on the viewer to appreciate finer points, it absolutely does not hold your hand. Modern viewers seem to hate this. And yes, it's very slow to build. Season one was never meant to be a show about the aliens themselves.

Visually it's absolutely stunning and the soundtrack by Max Richter is soaring and moving. Thematically it's depressing, but this is in keeping with what losing civilization would feel like.

Season two is more "fun" but basically feels like Apple stepped in and told them to make Stranger Things happen. Season two has some light handed exposition with a few moments of forced comic relief that feel entirely out of place. The writing quality drops a bit and they lose faith in the viewer. It's really a pity, but I understand Apple execs have to do their part to keep these things on the air.