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The Legend of Vox Machina (2022)
Effing terrible
The writing for this show is upsettingly bad. The worst most cringiest D&D players got together and designed a terrible narrative and gave their incredibly annoying voices to it. This is the kind of execrable nonsense that gives a bad name to table top roleplayers and nerds in general. There are no real jokes, no punchlines, just stupid faux quirky/edgy dialogue. The characters and their identities are uninteresting and completely forgettable, the framing of the narrative is so low brow you will lose brain cells watching this.
If you like dungeons and dragons, or good tv shows, or even just fantasy settings in general avoid this like the plague.
Doom Patrol (2019)
deteriorates as the seasons go by
As wonderful and funny and entertaining as the first season is, the way that the characters never seem to grow or change much despite going through these massive internal struggles and winning the day by having their moment of great insight, they then pointlessly repeat the cycle with a less interesting villain in the next series and the series after that.
The show, just like the characters never really evolves, it just repeats itself conceptually over and over, a massive shame since the first season was so great, and the following seasons have lots of great ideas and well written dialogue and performances, despite all that I find myself skipping through the later episodes because of their predictability.
If I was only rating the first season I would give it a 9/10, but as each season after the first gets worse I sort of gave the show an average rating.
The Diplomat (2023)
Terrible writing
This show is full of excrutiating faux pithy dialogue that makes anyone normal want to deafen themselves with a meat skewer on hearing it. It's terribly written in the same way that the west wing is terribly written, if you like that bad show then you'll probably like this bad one too.
The characters run around spewing meaningless intensely delivered verbal diarrhea at each other with total bathos as the camera swings around them in an attempt to create some sort of excitement in this hauntingly bland narrative.
This is an incredibly sad step down for Keri Russell after her stellar performance in the incredible "The Americans"
Reboot (2022)
Wasted promise
This show had such a promising premise, and such a great cast, and instead of fulfilling that it takes every opportunity to turn itself in to middle of the road dreck. It always makes the most hack choice, or disappoints in the most bland way.
Also it's pretty ridiculous that they want you to fill 600 characters to describe something so unambitious, who could do that about a show of such limited scope without pointlessly dragging out their review. Brevity is the soul of wit imdb, there's a reason people seem to prefer letterboxd over this bloated website that gets worse each year, how is this new restriction helpful?
Reprisal (2019)
It's fine
People have said this show has great world building, but it doesn't. The idea of some convoluted alternative economy existing just so people can go to a chain of tacky bars with mediocre bands and lame burlesque is so stupid that it really stretches willing suspension of disbelief.
It has all these anachronistic style choices it makes but they never reach a sense of coherence within the piece, and the internal logic of the characters choices, and some of the dialogue is a kind of wonky and style driven.
All that aside if you can check your brain at the door, and let the vibe of the show carry you along it's pretty fun.
Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel (2022)
Incredible
Truly wonderful standup special, it manages to have humour, a consistent structure, and at the same time feel like a real dialogue with the audience. This is an incredible feat from an amazing performer.
Dollface (2019)
It's fine
This show spends a lot of time trying to say something in a very pointed way, without knowing how to say anything, this burns a lot of time, when it finishes with that nonsense however it can be fun, if not actually funny, and it's mostly pretty inoffensive.
Halo (2022)
Bland
The tale of john mister chef and how bland his cooking and his show is, he slowly boils the flavour out of beef, while his show slowly boils the interesting aspects out of any of the sci-fi tropes that were shoved hodge podge into this thing at it's inception.
For a soothing nap turn the volume down on your tv, lie down on your couch, and get ready to have your brains slowly leak out your ears. 99/10
best television based sleeping pill ever created.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Urgh
I regret buying this, and doesn't that say enough, that the movie wasn't worth 20 bucks? You might have a different experience but I found the writing terrible right from the start. They took every bad superhero movie trope, from the type of superhero movie I thought we were done with, and through it at this interesting ip and now we have this pile of garbage.
MacGruber (2021)
They never committed
The writers didn't commit to making a tv show, instead they've made an action movie the length of 8 episodes of tv, with the tropes of an action movie, and lots of fun jokes and stuff, but it feels stretched out and wears out it's welcome because that's what it is.
It would have been much better if they had actually committed to the medium and taken advantage of elements of serialization, playing off some of the tv shows of the era, macgyver, walker etc.
The Shield: Co-Pilot (2003)
Makes some mistakes
This episode contradicts earlier stuff, and messes with the believable timeline it's very frustrating. Having the character who dies infiltrating the strike team in episode one, joining the strike team on day one doesn't make any sense. It also makes the setup of the barn seem haphazard, not to mention their deals with the dealers seem new in a way that doesn't make sense for the earlier episodes.
This is a bad episode.
The Wheel of Time: Blood Calls Blood (2021)
Slow and boring
If you want to do a boring slow esoteric info dump episode like this and not have people totally give up on your show you should have something for people to cleanse their palette with afterwards, waiting a week for another episode that could potentially suck as much as this one, no thanks.
Hanna (2019)
None of the assassinations in season 3 make sense
Any idiot off the street could have pulled off the assassinations in season 3, it doesn't make any sense that they would house and clothe and feed and train 40 children for 18 years and the expense of that just to plant a bomb on someone's car parked in an empty street, or push someone down a stairwell at a crowded warehouse party.
It's a really dumb place to take the original story conceit just to extend the show beyond the bounds of the movie, basically it's just really dumb writing just to have a show for it's own sake with no good or original ideas.
Cowboy Bebop (2021)
Less good than the anime, but okay
After having watched the first episode I would say that it's a disappointment but not a major one. The show takes more time to tell the same stories with less style and less substance. Trying to tie the thing together with an overarching plot too early steals loses some of the joy of the original. Jet Black is great.
They made a lot of choices in this show that made it more generic, and less unique which feels sad when you consider that the creator set out to make something people hadn't really seen when making the show.
I edited this review and my score four times while watching the series going from enjoying it, to annoyed at what they had changed and made worse, to being a little sad about the loss, and ultimately on to acceptance of what it is:
Worse than the anime but not terrible, reasonable fun but with less depth.
One last note the way they did Ed was so bad it was upsetting.
Isn't It Romantic (2019)
Not as good as they came together
But I still really enjoyed it because I love rom-coms and also love dissection of their tropes.
Girls5eva (2021)
Really great, too short
The show is very funny, but I wish it was like 10 episodes longer.
Invincible (2021)
Fine I guess
It has a great voice cast, and the plotting is a bit hit and miss, but the writing is pretty mediocre, with the dialogue occasionally getting so bad as to be cringe-worthy.
Halt and Catch Fire (2014)
I originally rated this 2 stars.
I originally thought that this was a shallow piece that lived on the strength of it's main characters constantly undermining each other to create drama without real development of character. Despite my original misgivings I continued on with the show, and it showed it's real depth in the process of it's evolution it proved itself to be a show about the evolution of young promising people into older more wise and weary people. At this point it strongly resonated with me and showed me what incredible depth it had.
Chick Fight (2020)
bad writing
A business isn't a house, you can't legally have customers inside your place of business in america without insurance. This might seem like a really dumb review, but I don't really get bothered by verisimilitude in well written movies, they carry me along well enough that they create a willing suspension of disbelief, this movie was bad enough that the only thing I could do to entertain myself was be annoyed at little stuff. This movie was made by someone with no understanding of fighting, running a business, working a cafe, therapy, comedy or emotional growth, which are all the aspects this movie has, as a result the movie is a complete piece of garbage. The cinematography, plotting and lighting are really bad also, the only reason I gave this movie three stars is because it's got a great cast of actors, they're terribly used, but great none-the-less.
Dicktown (2020)
Don't bother
I love Jon Hodgman, his podcast, and most of his performances, I really wanted to like this but I didn't. All the jokes hinge on an exhausting and patronizing take on teenagers dealing with modern issues and the main characters experience juxtaposed against it. I think this conceit if pulled off well could have worked but I never once laughed watching 4 episodes and frequently felt actively annoyed at the show.
Gangs of London: Episode 6 (2020)
Solid bottle episode, does well with the format
The show is good and the format worked for this episode, it's a true exemplar of what a bottle episode can be. However I have a personal pet peve, for anyone that has hung from a bar for minutes for workout purposes, the idea that someone could hang from their arms for hours then do anything at all with them is a bizarre falsehood.
Great Pretender (2020)
Swing and a miss
I'm going to echo what other people have said here, the animation and music is great, but the writing is cringeworthy. The story seems like a stream of conciousness narrative invented by a 12 year old describing a heist movie, the narrative doesn't know where it's going when it starts and tries to plaster over the cracks badly as it goes, not to mention the terrible characterization on show, it's pretty disappointing since with a little editing these narratives might have worked.
Love, Guaranteed (2020)
Does exactly what it says on the packet.
It's totally predictable and it hits all the standard rom-com tropes, but the cast are charming and play their roles cleanly, and the script knows exactly what it is, their isn't a layer of pretense, and doesn't fall down into unwatchably bad writing because of that. All you have to do is look at the poster to know whether or not you will like this movie.
Sirius the Jaeger (2018)
Terribly written garbage.
More bad anime churned out by netflix with what appears to be no structure or editing in the writing. Do not bother.
Stumptown: Dex Education (2019)
Bad premise makes a clunky episode
The premise of the episode is terrible, who cares if a friend sleeps in the same bed as you after a bender, everyone in the episode acts like it's a big deal and so nothing that follows works around that.