Reviews

Dark redefined the time travelling sci-fi genre for tv series.

Bodies has that element of going back and forth in time, with storylines piling up and getting further complicated by family trees. Tye similarities though end here.

Bodies doesn't have the same depth, atmospheres, nor the acting and photography that Dark does. It's a pastiche with much mediocre acting, a plot that never takes off and a mystery that ceases to be such too soon.

The evil master plan does also have a bit of a Terminator quality to it. Sadly though, after failing as a mystery, it also fails as a sci-fi and action tv show. The science is barely a factor in this pastiche, and the action is both too much and not at all gripping.

It also fails as drama, cause we're not made to empathise with any of the characters.

Pity.

It is unclear why a film set in fascist Italy, a stop motion that doesn't require real actors, should be in English. There is also a very weird conflation of the two languages, Italian and English, here and there, which is unclear what it is for. The setting during the ventennio fascista had a lot of potential, but then it didn't lead to anything at all. A pointless adaptation that does not add anything to the long list of already existing Pinocchio adaptations, though it is particularly annoying due to the choice of language and the missed potential. The reinterpretation of characters with the merging of two into one in the case of La Volpe is also an inexplicable choice that, again, doesn't add anything.

This show was entertaining in a Desperate Housewives sort of way. Surreal, upbeat, larger than life. Yet they had to go and end on a sour, irritating and cliche note. Killing off the non - mother as the expendable character to insure surviving of the nuclear family, was simply very cheap. The entire ending is based on the symbolic sacrifice of the one who doesn't have children as a necessary death for a new life, a new and "real" family to form - as if J's life was less valuable, as if a real family cannot be formed by two friends and children and only a heterosexual unit blessed by a biological child is the only possible happy ending.

First season was interesting. About mental health, paranoia, hereditary issues. The second season is just boring family drama revolving around the most exploited and excruciatingly cliches of topics. Also, you know. Women are not just uteruses and sometimes we'd like to see someone deciding not to have children for a change. Not because they're scared or not ready, but because in real life people happen not to want any.

Not sure why interesting premises I'm season one we're jettisoned for yet another story of motherhood, a woman's journey towards realising she's ready to be a mum etc etc etc etc.

So a girl who has been kept prisoner by a pedophile shows up at somebody's door and pretends to be their lost daughter. Then she kills herself and all that the "mother" can think about is that she wasn't her own child, so really her death doesn't matter that much. Completely unrealistic.

Cheesy, boring, cliche episode. Two people who couldn't make it work the first time because, as teenagers, they were in different places, eventually end up together-mostly- because they won't find someone else. The right person for Kevin, for the show's own sake, would have been Zoe. Symbolically, she represents what would have made the family whole again by reinforcing Kevin's ties with Randall. Also from a race perspective, which is an important part of their relationship as brothers from different parents.

I did not mind the pace, and the delay in showing the aliens etc. I would actually have cherished such slow buildup with fear slowly creeping in and reality eventually downing on everyone if the subplots had been interesting and with a purpose.

Nobody needed another representation of glorified motherhood, or of bullying.

It's just old cliches dressed with cliches coated in even older cliches.

Of course, the biggest hacker in history ends up being the mere vessel for a "new" life. Doesn't matter what women on tv accomplish, the biggest achievement must always be getting pregnant.

One of the most complex and well realised characters of ti shows of all times honestly deserved much better than this pathetic ending. We waited 10 years for this crap that ruined the entire Dexter series? Shame on you.

Watch Dexter instead. First two seasons are monotonous and one the repetition of the other. Same pattern (though I guess that's the point). Season 3 is about amateur killers disseminating corpses all over a town and constantly getting away with it.

The show ending is realistic. Both couples had been walking on very thin ice for a long time. The final montage is constructed beautifully.

But one negative note: enough with the fake tolerance of all sensitivities, it undermines actual issues. Don't feel at ease in a dress? Don't wear it and don't be a bridesmaid - the world doesn't revolve around your clothing discomforts and pretending it should is a disservice to actual societal struggle. This was the rant of a privileged and ungrateful child, nothing to learn from this scene.

God forbid should they stage an abortion. They happen all the time yet not on screen, for some reason it appears that women are abound to change their minds last minute to suit cinematic conventions. Regardless of how circumstances are, you won't get an abortion on screen. But you will get the cheesy music and the tears and the final change of heart. Pathetic.

If this TV were an offspring, it'd be like the pan sexual quadruplets of Stanley Kubrick and J.K. Rowling. On acid. Good. But what did they do with the multilayered, meta-level, mix of genres? They give us another dumb, boring, story of a mother who - guess what? - finds redemption through having to protect her family and kids. Bla bla bla. She's like - a villain. But we are given more evil villains to hate so that we forget that she's kidnapped and kind-controlled thousands of people for weeks. But she's a mom who cares about her family so we are ordered to feel empathy. It's all tragically pathetic.