lidarose9

Maybe I watched too much TV during covid, but I quit after episode 2 and reading the comments here, I'm glad I did. Everything in this show is something I've already seen somewhere else, and most of it is overused, lazy, and shallow. I'm ready for something new or different. The evil mining corp, the "scientists" doing vague secretive research, the drunk Inuits, everybody sees dead people in Ennis, a micro-organism that cures cancer or whatever. All that joyless bonking, the middle-aged "troubled" cop struggling to balance private life, parenthood, job, etc... what a yawn. All of it. The dialogue was just "off"... like the writer was going for a blend of film noir and Northern Exposure. It just did not work. I did love the look of it, though. Good direction, great art direction. It's a minority opinion, but I found the acting to be a huge problem. Jodie Foster's acting was horrible, awful, bad, pee-yew. Like she was trying way too hard, all the time. But I really liked Kali Reis' acting. She's got the goods. One reason why I hated this so much is cuz I just watched The Head and hated it too, for many of the same reasons.

I watched 3 episodes and gave up. This is one of the stupidest shows I've ever watched. Let's start with the bright green and electric blue cars that stick out like a sore thumb, especially for cops doing surveillence, yeah right. Randomly parking your helicopter in someone's field and then leaving the student sitting in it (I have a dentist appointment!) while you chase who/what/where? The nanny freaks out, steals the SD card, and runs -- but Maya just imagined the whole thing? It was a collection of tired predictable TV tropes that someone tossed in a paper bag and then arranged into a script. What a waste of time of all involved.

I'm watching this a year later and just want to add, for those of you interested in the murder of the Romanovs, the film "Nicholas and Alexandra" was very good. The screenplay was adapted from a book by Robert Massie written long before their remains were found. After the fall of the Soviet Union, more evidence came to light, and it turns out Massie's book did a good job of filling in the blanks. The only point where his account lacked important detail (imho) is the fact that most of the men who took part in the massacre were very drunk that night. The Whites were breathing down their necks, they were nervous and scared, and they wanted to get the hell out of dodge. It was a sloppy, horrific operation. They made a huge mess of it, it was dark and there were so many bodies to carry out and heap onto carts. The room was full of smoke and blood. Some of the victims were still moaning as they were being carried out. The forest was pitch black. One of the carts got stuck in the mud. They had to dump them temporarily that night and come back the next day to dig a better grave. They literally abandoned the Ipatiev house that night after the bodies were removed. When the Whites arrived a couple days later, they found everything as it had been, including the bloodstained walls and personal items left behind. Also the jewels were small and had been sewn into the gowns' seams so they'd be less obvious. It's an exaggeration to say the bullets bounced off the jewels.

The final episode would have been OK if they'd left off that whole black-and-white section in the first half about the kid. It was meant to tell us how Jason came to be so down and out in that 12-step meeting, and we could easily infer that from what we learned elsewhere without being bashed over the head by it. (I had never heard of Jason Segal before seeing this series so I know nothing of his past history.) I hated the whole Clara thing. It was a clunky plot device that didn't work. My other complaint is that Fredwynn's character was not as well developed as the others. We never really got much back-story on him. The game itself was original and fun. Overall, the series started out with an interesting premise that eventually resolved into just another "we need to connect with other people to be happy" story.

We both found season 2 very disappointing, in spite of many great actors. The writing just tried to shoe-horn in way too much stuff, which had nothing to do with the actual story, and much of it just made NO sense. Chee's character just seemed like a supreme dumbass, either bad writing or bad acting or both. Who goes on surveillance driving a car like that? The blond guy was supposed to be some superhuman monster who could voluntarily dislocate his shoulders to escape handcuffs and walk through a frozen desert with only one shoe -- yet is dumb enough to turn his back on the bad man with the gun? On the plus side, the music for season 2 was fantastic, though. We watched the one with Wes Studi last night and in spite of the lower budget, it was a much better show.

Tom was OK with pimping out his wife, metaphorically if not literally. And Shiv was OK with it too. Once she realized she could "win" by proxy with her lapdog husband in the driver's seat, she knew this was a great way to make her brothers pay for underestimating her.

Behind the times, just finished this.... Struck me: Lamb is the anti-Smiley. When we meet him, Smiley has been shoved out to pasture and is discredited like Lamb. He makes himself invisible by being ordinary, small, nondescript, and so does Lamb. It's just that with Lamb, he goes for the whole grungy drunk smoke working class dirty raincoat type. Smiley was the aging bachelor uncle, retired schoolmaster look. All that boozing and snoozing with Lamb is a cover story; he can sober up for field work any time he needs to. I knew Min or Louisa would die cuz they were happy together -- tired of that predictable trope. And River was just a dumbass throughout. They really are bad agents. My big gripe was the editing: Mom's plane was in the air way too long with London in the distance, River was writhing on the floor too long, the evacuation and crowd scenes went on too long. They were working too hard to cut back and forth between scenes. I see this all the time these days: time gets prolonged and shortened to make believe things are happening simultaneously when they just simply could not. But overall I love this show and have recommended it to friends. Hope they can keep it up with season 3.

I am catching up with episodes I missed when they came out and just have to say... I hope they fired the people doing Diane's hair, makeup and clothing for this season. Her hair looks yellowish and her foundation makeup looks powdery and too tan. She has always worn such gorgeous suits, often with beautiful coordinated necklaces, but this season she's in a lot of monochrome colors with weird geometric shapes that look vintage 1980s and vaguely J.C. Penney. Worst of all is the lipstick. Some horrid wine or cranberry color. The overall effect is to age her 10 years. I was always impressed by the way this show could make the women super-stylish and slightly sexy while still looking professional. Not here. And at home the decor in her bedroom/sitting room is that mauve I associate with 1990s. Star Trek Next Gen. Also I am really tired of the endless arguing. Every discussion immediately breaks down into pointless arguing. Last season leaned heavily on this, obviously meant to reflect the unfortunate dynamic paralyzing public dialog these days. Everybody wants to argue, nothing ever gets resolved, we cut to a new scene and the story moves on. We see this over and over. I find I can't remember how storylines wrap up because many of them don't -- they just peter out. I see enough of this crap in real life, don't find it entertaining. I am currently only hate watching the rest of this show. Although I love the Mandy Patinkin storyline.

To me Maxy seemed genuinely distracted, like she just found out she's pregnant.

So how did Tosh get out of that caravan?

In the earlier seasons, this did play a factor, as did having to take a ferry to get from one island to another. As the books got further into the rear view, it became less of an issue. Which is a shame cuz it was part of what ramped up the dramatic tension: the feeling of being isolated in these remote islands.

I am one of those people waiting for the whole thing to be done before watching, so I am only now starting. I just finished the second episode, where Jimmy & Tosh drive out to the junk yard when a body is found in a car there. Jimmy takes a look and says to Tosh: "It's her. It's Bryd," and they both act like Bryd's been missing and everybody's been looking for her, when in fact we just saw her at the dorm the night before, getting a text from Connor. Why did they both expect it to be her? Did I miss something?

Why did she want Becca's address. I was just lost there.

1. Either Ursula is really really stupid or she just didn't care if anybody knew about her affair. Throughout this show, people were doing lots of really stupid things. At least once per episode, someone did something so unbelievably stupid, I would have turned off the show if I hadn't been enjoying it so much. All of them make promises they promptly break or overlook obvious red flags. We end with an innocent bystander blinded, an innocent cat dead, Minna frozen to death, Roger's life ruined, Gabriel outed, Ursula's family torn apart, Eva's career derailed... JP may be the cause, but the sisters are leaving death and destruction in their wake throughout. But then I remember the title: these are not good sisters. 2. Apparently Irish police are incredibly stupid too. 3. Did anybody understand what the pregnant wife was doing with the files?

For me it would have held up better if they'd had Grace discover his secret life BEFORE her birthday, maybe confronting him about it at the cabin. And I agree the strangling would not have left cause of death undetermined. A good bonk over the head with a blunt object would have made more sense, and been easier to explain than a convoluted motorcycle accident in the middle of the night. Especially as she is so tiny and thin and we're seeing her in the flimsy white slip. It seemed like they were deliberately stripping away her emotional defenses along with her clothes. I do like the way she switched gears from being weak and passive to being protective and strong once she knew how he'd been victimizing her sisters. I can somewhat understand Eva keeping quiet about the rape, esp since she was obviously blackout drunk. They'd said repeatedly that she had a drinking problem back then. Unfortunately, I've had the experience of being so drunk I really couldn't be quite sure who did what to whom the next day, and since it was her sister's huband, she'd keep quiet. On the other hand, it felt like a very tacked on reveal to up the ante, and it wasn't needed at all. We all knew what a malignant prick he was. They were all flawed characters, none of them blameless. I didn't need them to be innocents and I was OK with their flaws. Yes, I wanted to slap the shit out of them at times, but they were flailing in an extreme situation. That's the makings of a great TV show! I hope there isn't a second season. It ruins shows like this by trying to drag out a story with tacked on drama. In the end, though I'm not 100% happy with the finale, it's a good story that worked and ended where it needed to end. Although I do hope Grace and Roger across the street get together. :)