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S01.E01: Brave New World


ohjoy

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I watched this after reading online that Netflix has been rolling out some pretty poor shows recently.  The show "Another Life" was used as an example; I tried AL and bailed after 2 episodes, so I wanted to see for myself if the criticisms were on point.   Wow, were the reviews right.  

The first thing that jumped out was the antagonism between the lead Latina character and the angry blonde - their fighting and sniping in the first 5 minutes of meeting came out of left field and just felt contrived.  It felt like they needed to create "enemies" for drama but this hate-at-first-sight interaction was so set up, I just felt played.  Also, I haven't seen Kate Bosworth in hardly anything, but she seems all wrong for a bitter, aggressive mystery woman.

I'm up to episode 3, only to see how this plays out but I also may bail at any time.  Much like when I watched Lost, I only stuck around to see if they could tie everything up in a plausible way.  

Edited by patty1h
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Initial conflict between two women and attempted rape were both contrived.  There had to be a better way to have those two as adversaries than that being the reason.  There is no where else for those two characters to go in future interactions.

For now, I'm going to keep going, but I'm leery of it getting better.

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So, I gave this first episode a shot while cat-sitting at someone's house because I needed to kill some time and figured this would be a good series to watch for the next few visits. 

But oh man, I am already so close in saying "nope" and stopping right here. 

My main issue is how everything feels disconnected. The dialogue, in particular, is very paint-by-numbers. For example:

Lead Female: It could be nothing but it could be something.

Also:

Lead Female: For all you know, we could be friends.

Angry Female: Or we could not be.

Getting from one plot point to the next felt disjointed, for sure. None of the characters felt very natural and I'm not sure if that's on purpose or not. All of the characters seemed angry with each other. Not confused or awkward, but...angry. Everyone seemed to be solving problems left and right without much context behind it. Everything felt too....neatly tied together, I guess. 

Rapey Guy was definitely antagonistic right off the bat and the first few minutes even before the attempted rape made him seem like an asshole. Angry Mystery Woman (K.C?) was too cartoony. "Oh, I'm gonna be pissy for no good reason at all at everyone but it'll seem like I'm mysterious." No, girl, you're just bitchy and pissy for no good reason (since it didn't feel like she was angry because of the situation they were in since she refused to help out in any way). 

So many of the characters felt....2-D, and the rest were just annoying. I think the only character I actually didn't hate by the end of this first episode was that Hayden chick. 

And also, the name tag stuff? So contrived to get everyone's names. I would have much preferred the ten people give each other temporary names and have them slowly remember what their real names are. Confusing, but at least not totally stupid.

I hope that they're stuck in some sort of experimental prison type place. I'll be honest, I was fully expecting that one guy who got attacked by a shark to initially run into the water and slam into an invisible barrier, Cabin in the Woods style. But I guess that would have really given away the mystery. 

Basically, I left this first episode wanting everyone to get eaten by that shark, except for Hayden and that Mathematician Dude (Mason?). 

But...alas, I will be (painfully) watching the series and probably hoping for no season two. 

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