Reviews

You go from scene to scene without any transition. There's no flow. The black officer is undercover in a black radical group, the very next minute he's suddenly starting a KKK investigation. Huh?

The writing is really bad. Conversations are made unnatural in order to create problems and drama. Brenda, the main character, shows up at people's homes or workplaces and starts asking them all sorts of questions without telling them who she is, then gets aggressive with people when they get defensive and don't immediately answer her and do what she tells them to. One example that really annoyed me: one suspect asks to see his brother and, instead of saying, "I'm sorry, that's not possible, he's dead," Brenda goes, "That's impossible!" Nobody talks like that!

Brenda only got her job because she's the Chief's ex-LOVER, which is also the reason she gets to be totally unprofessional and unethical all the time while keeping her job. It is in no way believable that she would keep her job, also because she knows nothing about office politics. And she only "solves" crimes by luck and because of lightbulb moments provided by other people - oh, and because the writers get all suspects to confess.

Brenda is a completely selfish, self-absorbed LIAR. She lies to everyone about everything all the time, including to her fiance, the most ball-less FBI agent one can imagine. From their first meeting she makes clear through her actions that she's only interested in what he can do for HER, namely being unethical to do her favors to help her solve crimes. She treats the man like a complete doormat and he still proposes to her!

She solves her crimes to satisfy her ego, not to do what's best for all involved - she actually undermines other investigations and puts multiple people's lives in danger just to convict one guy.

Contains spoilers!

Update: ok, so I was wrong. The acting is indeed fabulous, but Tony must be the worst mob boss ever. People walk all over him, his daughter's a total B to him. What in the world.

And here goes the spoiler: his sister kills Richie, and the next episode nobody asks any questions. In fact, the next episode shows the writers' complete laziness: it's mostly Tony dreaming and having food poisoning, including all sorts of gross sound effects and all.

This show gets more and more boring as it crawls along, there's no point to anything that happens and no resolution either.

--- Original: The acting is fabulous. It's a really good show. This, Breaking Bad, Seinfeld - these shows are in a league of their own.

The casting is great, so really good job there but the dialogue SUCKS! You know those shows where people don't ask obvious questions like, "You're from New York. What brings you to Berlin?" Yeah, it's one of those and every dialogue is far from natural, to the point that it insults the intelligence of anyone who has any.

And we're supposed to believe this is realistic: creepy girl who's never been out of her small Jewish community in Brooklyn offers to help guy in Berlin carry coffee, then somehow knows exactly where the entrance to the theatre he's in is (though she's never even been to a theatre). When the guy leaves the theatre, creepy girl comes to say she watched him the whole time, and nobody finds this strange. She then asks to tag along with him and he's like, "Yeah!" Then creepy girl suddenly comes into his lesson as an observer and decides to apply to his school. We're supposed to believe that's totally normal.

Nobody exchanges phone numbers, either. There's so much more, so very much more.

And the icing on the cake is, of course, all the self-conscious "diversity", which of course means as few white people as possible (though granted, that's Angela Merkel's real plan). Here we are in supposedly the top music school in Germany and in a big group of some 10 people only 2 are German. Barf.

SPOILER ALERT!!! I'm going to tell you about the ending.

Former NYC exec passes on the chance to get a fantastic job doing what he loves, one that would allow him to give his daughter a good life and things like a college education, in order to continue picking up garbage because of a chat he had with a movie star who tells him that if he were "smart he'd be home playing in the dirt with his kids." We're expected to believe this. Seriously.

Ben Affleck's character is all over the place, all the way up to the sad looking suit he wears to the job interview he'd asked someone else to set up for him - and for which the person had to work hard to get!

Oh, please.

Just not that good, though it follows the trend of big name actors starring in bad movies - how and why I do not know, but here we have Liam Neeson (THE Liam Neeson) and Charlize Theron. They're always great to watch but I can't understand why they agreed to be part of such silly antics. Even if seeing that Sarah Silverman was in this lowered my expectations, I was still surprised at how bad it was.

(Spoiler alert) I mean, Liam Neeson falls to the ground and Theron sticks a flower in his butt crack. Really? Then Neil Patrick Harris relieves his bouts of diarrhea in a couple guys' hats, which is disgusting and immature - but wait, there's more! We actually get to see what came out of him. For that alone this movie loses a couple of stars.

Come on, people, how low can a movie go? I don't know what's up with Hollywood but it doesn't fail to disappoint. Granted, dumb is the new black so maybe they're just responding to a need for stupid - *more* stupid that is.

The movie tried to pull off a "The Sixth Sense" type of plot, though nobody's dead but the main character, Louise, can see the future. She didn't, however, see the aliens coming but fine, maybe she had to think about what she wants to see. I'll buy that.

A brilliant multilingual linguist, apparently, Louise tries to communicate with the aliens without actually speaking with them. At this point I said, "This is a stupid movie." She then uses a white board to write, as if the aliens could read human languages, but continues not to speak with them. Finally she decides to take off her hazmat suit to speak with them but here's the thing, Amy Adams has one tone of voice throughout the whole movie, along with two facial expressions: scared and worried. That's all she's got throughout the whole movie.

Then she finds out why the aliens came, which has been her job the whole movie, but instead of telling her superiors about it she just doesn't. Facepalm time. She also somehow can't manage to put her hair in a ponytail or anything, and it just blows across her face. It was really annoying. The gift, btw, is to give humans the gift of their language, which considers time differently, and is supposed to help us.

I'm a tad confused here. I adore Robin Williams and there will never be another like him, but I didn't quite get this movie. It's definitely my expectations, because the movie is pretty theatrical and I was expecting more of a, you know, movie.

Jack tries to get Lydia to out with Perry without so much as making Perry take a shower. Really? Then Lydia agrees to get her nails done for $40 (in 1991!) and even goes to this total stranger's house after the weird ways in which Jack tried to approach Lydia. It just wasn't believable.

And there was a bit too much black knight on the horse going on. Also, breaking into a millionaire's house on 5th Avenue by climbing on the street side. Really? Sorry but it was just impossible to believe any of this.

I cannot believe this thing. How? Why? WHY?! I'm going to guess this series reflects the ultimate narcissism/head-up-butt we've become so used to because surely someone saw what a piece of doo this is but some extremely egotistical d-wad wouldn't have it, or at least I need to hang on to that hope lest I face the reality that humanity is doomed.

To be fair, I skipped through a lot of episodes because I do not deserve to be tortured, but one episode in particular caught my attention: at least 3/4 of the whole episode was Mike talking to his daughter-in-law. Like, just sitting there talking to her telling her about his son. I could not believe it. Why - who would want to sit there for 45 mins watching two people talking? Who thought that was a good idea? The number one rule of writing is: "show, don't tell." Nobody associated with this crap got that memo, obviously.

And the writing. OMG. It is so bad. I mean, I didn't expect this show to be as good as Breaking Bad, but couldn't they at least have gotten the writing right? Instead we get third rate and amateurish dialogue - and God, is there a lot of dialogue! More like drivel, though, that drags on forever. Right in the beginning we have this: Tuco points a gun at Jimmy's head because two other guys are accusing him of trying to dupe Tuco and his grandma. Instead of saying something like "I thought your grandma was someone else. I was trying to get someone else," Jimmy says "It was a mistake." Who the FFFF talks like that?! Nobody bloody talks like that to begin with. And with a gun pointed at your head? COME ON!!! So all in all it's a stupid show that fails and falls on its face right in the mud.

IT.SUCKS.

What did I just have to skip through to just get to the end and find out what happens? There are many problems with this whatever-shite-is, but the main issue is that it downplays mental illness and not only turns into a joke, it romanticizes it. It actually tries to make mental illness hip and trendy.

Depression and other types of mental illness are very serious. Mental hospitals are also very serious. They're not little "vacations" as the vapid main character puts it. Serious depression isn't just something you "feel sometimes" as the main character's self-absorbed best friend puts it. Taking medication isn't cool as the other self-absorbed friend tries to imply.

What is wrong with the people who made this junk?! And it's unrealistic from the get-go. What mental hospital admits an underage kid without his parents' consent? Where does that exist? Then it just lets mental patients stroll in and out of the ward? RUN??? One of the things one learns when one goes to a psych ward is: DON'T RUN.

GARBAGE.

And the color palette? Everything has to be muted neutrals or some pretentious crap? Get over yourselves.

This "movie" needs to be burned.

Other reviewers warned us all but I figured I could handle the crap on a night I need to turn my mind off. Oh, boy.

Carrie was always really annoying, and Big should have done himself a favor and stayed away from her, but she actually manages to get even more annoying in this movie. I just want to reach through the screen and punch her in the face, then reach in her purse for Big's balls and hand them back to him. Trouble is, women like her exist in this world and I see them all the time - that's the saddest and maybe most angering thing about this movie, that such self-absorbed, self-entitled women do exist.

Carrie shows utter disappointment when Big gets them state-of-art flat screen TV for their bedroom as an anniversary present. Instead of "thank you" she tells him - tells him! - that "a piece of jewelry would have been nice." The reason he got them the darn TV was that he had found it nice to lie in bed with her in a hotel room and watch old movies *she* likes together.

The women just look aged and they try to remain young, which is sad. Just - geez...