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beachorchid800
Reviews
Motive (2013)
Great shows still exist!
Motive is a very special treat. I love how instead of figuring out "who dunnit" the show is based on "why they dunnit." It's such a great twist to try to come up with the motive. A show giving you the victim and the killer right up front is really turning the tables. You have to think in a slightly different way. It's a great concept that works. Sometimes murder mysteries are easy to figure out and very boiler plate. In Motive the acting is excellent. The stories are well thought out and don't follow a cookie cutter format. I look forward to every episode. I hope this show goes on for many seasons because quality TV is so very hard to find. This show is a gem! I highly recommend it!
Scandal (2012)
Olivia Pope jumped the shark
Scandal started out as a great show. Olivia Pope was a strong female lead commanding everyone around her and then she disappeared and a weak, indecisive, approval seeking wimp moved in. The stories became more and more outlandish and the soap opera sex became front and center. Kerry Washington can only pout her lips so much before it gets old. The long-winded, breath holding monologues are now done by everyone on the show, taking more of Olivia's fire away from her. Every character is now delivering lines with the exact same tempo as Kerry Washington, further diluting what made Olivia Pope a compelling character. It's really quite sad. Olivia Pope used to control everything and everyone. She used to fix every mess. Now she just is a mess. The other characters are a mess. The show is a mess. That's the real scandal.
How to Get Away with Murder (2014)
I want out of Shondaland
From what I've seen of Shonda Rhimes shows I am beginning to feel like she is the TV equivalent of a Harlequin romance writer. I've watched every episode of Scandal and am trying to watch this show. Scandal went off the rails second season with a crazy amount of sex and violence. Rhimes sure does like to mix a story into a bunch of over-the-top violence and sex scenes, which brings us to this new show. How to Get Away with Murder is basically a romance novel on screen. The characters are one-dimensional and unlikable. They exist mostly to provide characters for sex scenes with some thinly plotted murders in the background. Viola Davis is such an amazing actress and her talent is wasted in this role. It's just sad how poorly written material is all over TV and this is becoming our standard. Luckily there are some good shows still on like Motive and BBC's Sherlock, where characters are multi-dimensional and plots actually exist. How to Get Away with Murder should be retitled How to Get Away with Bad Stories if you Mix Enough Shocking Scenes in to Distract People's Brains from Your Bad Writing.