The Messengers

A meteor crashes onto the Trinity nuclear test site and a man rises from the crater. A shockwave is released and a few selected individuals are knocked unconscious. The man turns out to be the devil. The people hit by the shockwave are strangers who become angels with special individual powers tasked with stopping the rise of the four horsemen and the Apocalypse.

This CW traffics in the Biblical Apocalypse although it may be sacrilegious to turn angels into X-Men. Some of it is simplifying. I'm willing to root for the show which has a couple of familiar faces. It's not until the devil do something more complex and the Angel of Death reveal that the show gets better. It's too little too late as the show gets cancelled after 13 episodes. There is another problem with the story telling since the four horsemen are always expected to rise. If they don't rise, there is no show. It's trying to be a battle but some parts of the outcome are never in doubt. That keeps the tension at a lower level. Overall, it's a good enough, but not great show.

First, I wanted to like this. CW's "I, Zombie" has been a truly clever new series, and "The Flash" understands the fine line between Super Hero Fantasy versus Super Hero Science Fiction, favoring the latter. Both series have likable characters who you grow to care about, and they become deeper and more nuanced as the series progresses.

This delivers none of that. Instead you are immediately confronted as to why Lucifer needs to show up via a Meteor Impact, or why God has chosen the actions of these six people to stop the Apocalypse. He's VERY unhappy with us, but what's really mysterious is why He chooses any of these characters to give us one last chance!?!. Trust me, none of them are Noah nor Lot.

The series suffers from trying to bring too many main players too quickly onto the screen for you to develop that much attachment to them. What is supremely annoying though is that instead of cleverly weaving the characters to ending up at the same place, evidently God is heavy handed and just pushes them all to the same locations with the subtlety of a Political Attack Ad. This happens both at the beginning, sort of, and then at the end of the second episode. Since nothing terribly significant come from this it's not even a plot spoiler. THAT'S an even bigger problem.

The acting ranges from decent to more than a bit over the top, though I don't know if the latter is due to the script, director, or the actors involved. It's not a good sign when the viewers ask themselves that question. Plus the series cannot make up it's mind about Science versus Divine and Infernal meddling, with an unhealthy does of conspiracy theory thrown in for either paranoia or simple stupidity.

So you have heavy-handed, disjointed, and lazy script writing combined with multiple weakly acted/scripted/directed characters who appear more or less central to the series, and whom you don't care about particularly. I figure I'm only out less than two hours of my life, and I'll forgive CW after their other good series debuting this year. Everyone gets to screw up occasionally. If Apocalyptic is your preference, "Sleepy Hollow" is a much better alternative.

It's one of those shows.

You know, the ones where extraterrestrial or supernatural or other-dimensional stuff happens, and then we watch flat and uninteresting characters navigate contrived plot twists for the rest of the season while some sort of "conspiracy" unfolds.

It didn't forget to include teenagers in the mix, because, you know, the committee which designed this show wanted to appeal to all possible demographics.

At the end of the season there will be a stupid cliffhanger which the writers won't know how to resolve, and then the show will be mercifully canceled and free up the air slot for something far more entertaining, such as a show about optimal ways to fold laundry.

Who greenlit this derivative, soulless schlock in 2014 and thought it was a good idea?

Already seen three episodes and stopped.

I gave it a 5 for production value only, there are shows rated 5 that are far better than this. Without any spoilers (apart from ones already depicted on the IMDb description of this series), here's what you get:

Seven young, good looking people (born between 1996 and 1985, with the exception is JD Pardo). These play the angels of the apocalypse.

One young, good looking and fit devil, acting exactly as the devil would do, even getting glowing red eyes.

No ugly, fat, normal people shown ever, even between extras.

References to the rapture, apocalypse and angels but not to (christian) God who somehow, must make ending the rapture a true riddle.

So you'll get twists, turns, unwilling characters without any reason at all.

Neither fiction, neither sci-fi, not even a good battle between good and evil. If you want to find questions (and subsequently answers), watch Carnivàle (2003-2005) instead.

My main issue is that this show is advertised as a sci-fi. It is not! Ironically the two most unscientific characters on the show, are the two people supposed to be scientist. The writing is absolutely horrible, it's still to early to really judge the actual story, seeing how we only have the first episode thus far. But I don't have high hopes for this show, the plot just sounds really boring.

If you want good sci-fi, you need to create an interesting universe, in which you can experiment with different aspects of reality. WALL- E, what if the earth died - GATTACA, what if we could genetically improve our lives before they even began - and so on. It's all about asking what if - and this show completely fails to ask any interesting questions. Honestly I would deem it pure fantasy, but even as a fantasy story it fails, see how fantasy stories are supposed to be relatable metaphors for life - often coming of age stories. But this show is neither, it is just bad.