toxicpilgrim

The tone of this show feels way off. It presents a world where the bad guys are senselessly evil, and the good guys are righteous and just in their revenge quest only by the scope of the villain's evil. The show indulges in the violence, often exaggerating it to the point of slapstick. And then the next scene drops some tragic Holocaust exposition, or blatant racism on you to justify it.

I feel like they either needed to commit to the absurd satire of monstrous Nazi war criminals living in 1950s USA, or to the dramatic tale of a band of holocaust survivors grappling to lead moral lives while being compelled to seek revenge on the men who tortured them and their families, but we're left with an awkward in-between that feels like they went ahead with their first draft of the script.

To me it seems that the showrunners really just wanted to make a series about killin' nazis, and I guess they did.

Yikes I haven't been this frustrated with a movie in a while. Even bad movies. I watched this with a friend, and I found almost nothing to stay engaged with in this film. There are some interesting scenarios and stunts, but the way they're shot and edited are schizophrenic. Even when something interesting happens, the camera can't stay focused on it for more than half a second before flipping away to some other pointless flowing motion. It's like watching a spray of effuse from a hose trying to catch glimpses of recognizable shapes in the patterns as they splash upon a wall. The plot itself is even worse. A brief moment of something interesting leading to ab.so.lute.ly nothing.

I really didn't expect to find myself laughing so often during season 2. Nearly every scene is set up with a visual gag. There's always something there that you don't expect to see, and it's somehow resolved either in a horrible way or in an amusing way. Maybe a feeling like watching Twin Peaks, where the situation can turn to either horror or absurdity. I found it refreshing\disturbing\delightful! The mystery involved in season 2 didn't pull me along so much as just wanting to see how they would resolve it, and I don't think it disappoints.

Tonally it's quite different from season 1, so if you really enjoyed season 1, there's no guarantee that this one will float your boat. Janelle Monae has a pretty fascinating face to stare into and wonder what she's thinking. She seems so perpetually neutral and in control, and when that control seems to crack I found her very compelling.