northernpaladin

No really. Absolute, mind numbing, brain rotting garbage that's not even worth watching while you do something else. Kevin James has never really been funny and in this he is just embarrassing while Ritchson demonstrates he is just a one trick pony and anyone who watched season 3 of Reacher knows he is all out of tricks. Plot? Well there isn't one really; tried hard/looser step dad (James) and his son meet up with perfect dad (Ritchson) and his off spring and a bond is formed amid a revolving door of stupid security contractors, a high tech millionaire and child clones - it even sounds stupid as I type it. The set pieces are weak, the gags excruciating and the pacing is all over the place. I gave it an hour, which was way more than it deserved, and then turned it off. Please don't watch, even if you are an Amazon subscriber like me whose subscription is being wasted on this crap, find something else to do.

I started watching this after it first aired and have now caught up (episode 7) and will certainly watch it through to the end. The basic plot of airplane full of convicts crash lands in Alaska and doughty Marshal (Jason Clarke) starts a multi agency manhunt aided/hindered by CIA operative (Haley Bennett) who is after one specific convict presents like Con Air meets The Agency but it quickly becomes something else. Written and produced by Jon Bokenkamp of The Blacklist fame this shares a lot of the same traits, nothing is as it seems, everybody has secrets and an agenda, alliances change, friendships are broken and generally this is perfectly acceptable but, just as in The Blacklist, the long arm of coincidence is stretched mighty thin. On the plus side the two main plot strands, capture the convicts and hunt down the 'special' convict (Dominic Cooper) keep each episode powering along nicely and if that were all that was going on my rating would be higher. Clarke and Cooper give solid performances and in supporting roles Alfre Woodard and Dallas Goldtooth do their best with underwritten roles. On the minus side are the way too numerous sub plots that clutter each episode and in a couple of cases derail the episode, again a weakness of The Blacklist. Particularly weak is the family drama surrounding the Marshall, not a shred of it is credible and the poor acting of Simone Kessell doesn't help raise the dramatic tension. Overall this is a perfectly good watch and if you can shut out the plot inconsistencies it will see you through some early winter nights, remember, it's TV drama, not Shakespeare.