Felt really rushed and unfinished. I really want to enjoy this, but I can't -- it's not good. I'm going to give this show a couple more episodes to see if it gets better, really disappointing so far.

 

The first half of ep 1 was pretty good. The show fell down badly in the second half, starting with the training at the Carnival of Crime. The show seemed to be rooted in a typical near-reality universe, but all of a sudden we're introduced to semi-mystical bullshit training, a morphing spider-silk cloak with too obvious CGI [reminds me of 1997's Spawn film], and some nigh-omnipotent hacking/phreaking/whatever-the-plot-needs from Orwell. You want to jam all cell phone signals in a 500 yard radius from your location? Orwell can do that in seconds. It also becomes obvious that these are some of the worst written characters I've seen on such a slickly produced show in a long time.

It's a shame. This show did a lot of things right, and it seems to have the financial backing to produce television gold, but the things it got wrong... plot, character motivations, that stupid cape... jeezus, what a waste.

 

I'm probably going to regret this later on but I think the show did have some merit to it.

Of all the super hero TV shows I've watched, it wasn't the best but it sure as hell wasn't the worst.

I was never a fan of the carnival of crime thing since I saw the previews, but it's a convenient way to explain the skill training.
Enter MONTAGE!

The hacking River Tam ( I know but I wont think of her as anything else ) was more poorly executed hollywood Executive producer bullshit. I almost laughed at the laser keyboard thing. Her character will probably be retconned later to giver her unnecessary emotional baggage and depth while diminishing her capabilities.

But honestly I like the mix of old story ideas.

Orwell was bugging me till I remembered Dark Angel and the main lead male protagonist had that watchdog vigilante network running (Eyes Only). The whole ARK company is totally OCP from RoboCop.

I'm interested to see where these elements will be going, as I rarely get to see such ideas mixed together, except in poorly written fanfiction.

The only real 'WTF' moment I had was when The Cape got out of Orwells car.

Were they listening to an R&B station while she drove the guy in long underwear home. Did he let his cape fly in the wind? Wasn't he there at the dock for a reason?

 

The pilot just crashed the plane, folks. In a blaze of not-glory.

The first 10 minutes of the show were the only parts that didn't feel entirely too rushed, and the rest felt like the writers pumped the plot up on meth. Really, really bad meth. I've honestly never watched something where I found that the plot moved too fast, but here it is.

More specifically, I got the impression that the directors wanted to compress the first 5 episodes of the series into a two hour premier and told the writers to cut out nearly all 'unnecessary scenes' - basically anything that wasn't plot related.

It wasn't bad, but going that fast whipped off a whole lot of potential it had. The characters were interesting, if slightly cliched (which couldn't be helped), and the premise was actually attention-grabbing but needed to be expanded on (which didn't happen).

 

Oh I think I only watched the first hour... I didn't realize there was more up.

Edit:

Seriously I still don't see what is wrong about this show.

I just watched Tarot, other than being a little underwhelming, it was okay.

Its nothing a second season wont make better. First season shows usually are a little ho hum as they set the backstory. its usually second or third seasons where shows start to take off.

But then again this is NBC. If they can cancel Journeyman then they can cancel anything.

 

The second ep was less rushed than the first, but still failed in many ways.

The wife's speech to the interviewer wasn't inspiring, it was the desperate grasping-at-straws of a pariah's widow, and yet the interviewer was still impressed.

Max Malini's constant enigmatic smiles and knowing chuckles are getting old, fast.

Vince Faraday's face is all over the papers, but he never wears sunglasses in public to keep from being recognised, not even while shopping. He just keeps his hood up. Now he's made his little BDSM eye mask, and perhaps the director wants an easy visual cue for the audience to tell whether it's Vince or The Cape on screen. It's still stupid.

Vince lets his enemies live... Vince is a former black-ops [assuming from the flashback] military man, and yet all he does to the psycho, serial-killing, murder club inducted, paid assassin whose tried to kill him several times [and nearly succeeded] is to tie him up on a bench for Chess to find. Yeah, right. You know what would've been faster than tying him up? Slitting his throat and leaving the building before anyone saw him instead of posing for the bad guy like a complete wanker. Batman can get away with it because his visage inspires fear in his enemies; The Cape is just a melodramatic do-gooder.

Vince left Chess and The Tower alive and still able to carry out their plan. All he did was knock The Tower out and tie him up. Chess could have untied him, woken him up, and they'd be back to poisoning the Secretary for the Bureau of Prisons in a heartbeat. Or else they could have gone with any of the Chess' backup plans... he's a supposed master of strategy, so Vince should've allowed for the possibility that leaving the two villains alive and in situ with their target wasn't a very smart thing to do.

Trip, the kid, is supposed to be some heart string pulling character for the audience, but I just find him obvious and annoying. I'm hoping that the kid dies, but unfortunately this doesn't seem like a bold enough TV show to do that.

The way that the poisoning was cured just boggles the mind. The Carnival have no idea what poison has been used, or the symptoms, or how it was applied. They don't think of vomiting or trying to identify the poisons... instead they stick leeches along his jugular vein and carotid artery, and then they inject him with some Belladonna mixture as a cure-all to fix him right up.

Jeezus, there's so much about ep 2 that pisses me off. Some parts of this universe are realistic, and others, such as the Carnival, seem to take place in a surreal alternate universe. It's almost a fever dream.

 

I got caught up in the hype and didn't look past the CGI, the somewhat cool swooshy cape and Sgt. Foley.

Don't really care that much about Glau since I've only watched bits of Serenity.

I think it's trying to be ironically campy and bad.

We'll probably see a season's worth of flashbacks to develop the characters, if it lasts that long.
This series is gonna end up jumping the shark faster than Heroes.

In fact, they're asking fans to come up with villains. Sounds like fun but it screams poor planning and retarded plot.

 

Summer Glau curse hits again

http://eztv.it/tvnews/5592/nbcys-ythe-capey-bombs-while-yharryys-lawy-starts-solid/

Most likely getting cancelled and they've only aired 3 eps.

 

Haha, oh god, if this gets canceled, it totally deserves it. It's so bad it's almost funny, but so annoying that it can't even really manage that.

Poor Summer; I don't know how they convinced her this was a good idea. I think the worst part is that a super hero tv show could be pretty awesome, but they effed it up in just about every way possible. In fact, I think Summer's character is the only one I didn't hate by the end of yesterday's ep--and that closing scene with her trying to do the ribbony-dancy-spinny stuff brought me really close to Rage.

Ugh. I hate every calculating, poorly executed bit of this show. It's got no heart, and none of the characters' actions make sense. I think QuaziJoe kind of hits the nail on the head:

These writers are a bunch of pantomimes. They see the cool parts of other things and try to adapt and smush them together, and it ends up being some kind of frankenstein creation.

I freaking love reading reviews for it, though.

 

Ugh. I have to agree. I enjoyed most of the first episode, but almost everything in the second and then everything in the third was terrible. What a waste of a decent premise. This disappoints me.

 

I guess there's no need for me to bother with the third episode then. Unfortunate.

Summer Glau's filmography isn't all that great. She's got a handful of TV movies, and a scattering of appearances in other shows, but nothing that's been a major role since Firefly apart from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It's been 9 years since Firefly FFS! Summer's in two films to be released this year, neither of which I hold much hope for.