Reviews

So far, through episode 5, this epilogue has been everything I had hoped for and more. And I'm a pretty harsh critic when it comes to film and TV.

I knew before the show aired that Rick had been taken by the CRM and I knew it would take a monumental effort for Michone to "bring him back," but she did. And the moment that she broke through to him was utterly beautiful and some of the best acting I've ever seen from Andrew Lincoln or anyone for that matter. I almost never cry, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I was in tears in episode four.

The best stories, be it in literature or film, are about love. They are about friendship, family, hope, perseverance, and overcoming insurmountable odds to do what is right. And the very best stories have full, resolute, and satisfying endings.

While I haven't seen the final episode yet as if writing this, I'm confident and hopeful that it will be a fitting ending to this show that has been a global phenomenon at times and a story that captivated my mind and heart for several years.

As for the negative reviews, I cannot make sense of them other than that people tend to follow the zeitgeist. During the latter seasons of TWD, it became very fashionable to hate on the show and write the entire series off as being just as bad as the last couple seasons, which is not remotely true. It did indeed become a bit cumbersome and aimless in the latter seasons, and it was clear that the show runners didn't quite know how to end it. That seems to have left a very bad taste in many people's mouths, and I think they are allowing that to unfairly affect their perception of this epilogue and TWD as a whole.

Then again, some of the negative reviews seem to have simply been written by true midwits who have no interest in or patience for the human side of the story and would rather just see an action packed zombie kill fest for 6 straight hours. But like any show, it's the human side of the story that makes TWD a good show. The relationships, the love, the loss, the sacrifice, and the hope. Those are the things that stick with us when we watch or read a story.

I base my ratings of stories primarily upon how they make me feel. Cinematography, dialogue, editing, effects, etc pale in comparative importance to the depth and meaning of the story. And for that reason, I have given The Ones Who Live a 9/10.

I highly highly recommend this series to anyone who even remotely enjoyed TWD.

I'm sure the Hollywood leftists who decided to turn a Zombie show into a leftist political allegory (with no zombies) thought they were very clever, but it doesn't quite land as I'm sure they hoped it might.

All subtlety is lost by the time we see a montage of what basically amounts to the police discovering a communist underground meeting den to the tune of "Eat the Rich" by Megadeath.

The irony of it being wealthy Hollywood elitists who wrote this aside, what was I'm sure penned as a critique of capitalism is actually a critique of statism.

Free markets to not allow for the state to be giving envelopes full of cash to the members of the elite class. Statism does. Free markets are just freedom and simply that. The commonwealth is far from a free market society. It is more akin to a centrally-planned oligarchy.

I just finished a book about the Russian Revolution and this episode immediately brought to mind the way the Bolshevik Party members all had private villas and servants, ate caviar and drank fine vodka while the Russian peasants and workers starved to death by the millions.

And the "CA" police force that Daryl and Rosita are a part of us reminiscent of the Soviet Cheka which would later become the KGB.

As usual, the Marxists hurt themselves in their confusion.

Where to begin?

I watched the entire series. Beginning to end.

I loved it at first. Even through the first few seasons. It was captivating actually. But the fascination and intrigue I experienced were based on the assumption that the hundreds (literally hundreds) of wild, mysterious, random seemingly-important plot lines and events had a meaning... they didn't.

There are countless dramatic, striking events in this story that you're certain MUST have some meaning or reason to them down the line that will be explained, at least in part. I can't stress this enough, as it's the central downfall of the show: there are sooo many things that happen in each episode that, if they had any meaning or explanation whatsoever later in the show, could have made for an absolutely incredible story. They even tie in a real issue of National Geographic that exists in our real world! Amazing! That issue from the 1970s was going for hundreds of dollars on Ebay due to this show. It had viewers searching for answers and clues in real life outside of the show! Such a cool concept! But to no avail. That plot line, like the hundreds of others, led to absolutely nothing. There was no answer. There was no bow tied at the end or anywhere. It contributed nothing to the story down line. It amounted to nothing within the plot.

Anton Chekhov, one of the greatest storytellers to ever live, once posited to a fellow writer the concept of "Chekhov's Gun." He said that in a story, if you make it known to the reader (or viewer) that there is a gun hanging on the wall in a scene, then that gun should play a role in the plot at some point. It should be used in the story in some way. Simply put, don't include events and details in your story if they never actually go anywhere. This show is a testament to how right Chekhov was and how devastatingly terrible your story can become if you include too many guns that have no purpose or meaning. Or will ever even appear again later in the story.

This show could have been an absolute masterpiece if the writers had spent more time trying to somehow tie at least some of the events together into a coherent story that explains why they happened at all, but as it is, they made no effort to do so. It is as if they were playing a sick game of MadLibs where they all wrote down crazy, wild things that could happen in each episode, pulled them out of a hat, and stuck them in the show at random, without any intention whatsoever to come back to them again or explain why they happened in any way. Just utterly reckless, irresponsible, and juvenile writing. What a waste of such a fascinating concept for a show.

I can guarantee you, (and I'm sure you can pick it up in their writing), the vast majority of the people giving the 8, 9, or 10 star reviews in here are the types of people who go to contemporary art museums, see a canvas with a single line or random paint splatters or human feces smeared on it, then post a picture of it to their Instagram (or more likely VSCO), and pontificate about how profound and striking it is. And then when the rational, non-pretentious, honest viewer asks them what exactly is so profound about a canvas covered in feces, they smugly roll their eyes, take a sip of they organic soy Chai latté, and tell you that you just don't get it. It's to high brow and sophisticated for you to understand. But THEY "get" it. They really do.

Let me tell you, they don't. They are either that pretentious snob who values their faux sense of intellectual superiority over the lowly peasants, or they are in a sort of denial borne from trauma. Meaning, they don't want to admit to themselves that they poured hours upon hours of their lives into a show that they loved at first and had so many mysteries, but in the end gave no answers or resolution and left them hanging out to dry.

I would strongly advise against watching this show, but if you do decide to watch it, prepare to have your heart broken in the end. I promise you that all the mysteries, all the rabbit holes, all the wild and intriguing mystical plot lines go absolutely nowhere.

The Leftovers answers exactly one question in the end which is the entire premise of the show: where did the 2% of the world's population that vanished actually go? And even the answer to that question is astounding predictable. So simple and predictable that you're sure it can't really be the answer, but it is.

If you thought you were disappointed at the ending of Lost, you haven't even begun to understand how deep disappointment can go.

My goodness. What an awful ending. It was as if they got too deep into all their twists and turns that, instead of attempting to untie the knots and resolve the plot, they just decided to end it and be done with it as abruptly as possible. It also felt like it was a sequel to another movie that actually had something to do with or at least used the subject of Chinatown for more than a couple ominous and vague one-liners. It honestly felt like this was Chinatown 2 and I missed the far superior, more exciting Chinatown 1. It was as if the writers knew they liked the line "Forget it, Jake. That's Chinatown" but were so eager to end the movie with it that didn't bother to explain to the audience the significance of the line. It was like a callback that didn't have an initial call. A comparable example is the line TIA (This Is Africa) in Blood Diamond. It's used early on and you get a sense of its many different meanings and it's supposed familiarity amongst Africans and then the line is called back in a very moving way at the end. That's what the Chinatown line at the end should have been, but wasn't. I am just in awe as to the lengths people in the film community will go to to fall in line with the status quo on things like this. I cannot imagine anyone has ever seen Chinatown and been moved or enthralled to the point of wanting to watch it again. It seems to me that, much like the contemporary art community, film critics put on kid gloves when it comes to the so-called noir genre and are absolutely ready and willing to write off any lack of depth, lack of character development, and terrible endings as insightful and artistic noir touches. Why even name the movie Chinatown if there are only going to be 4 lines in the whole movie having to do with Chinatown? So many roads to nowhere in that movie. And then in the end, the whole movie is a road to nowhere. Chinatown could be summed up as: a private detective spends two hours unfurling an intricate web of conspiracy and corruption and then it just ends.

...

I've now watched four episodes of this...thing...and I am still trying to figure out whether it's a terrible SNL skit from when Bill Nye was the host that got cut or some sort of creepy Orwellian indoctrination video.

First off, there's almost no "science" whatsoever in the show. There are many "scientific" conclusions, but not even a feeble attempt to show any process, research, or study whatsoever. For example, at one point there's a correspondent who seems to offer the position that gender is a spectrum because the "vibe" in South Korea is less conservative due to the growing popularity of an EDM sub-genre..... That's about as scientific as this show gets. Bill Nye the Science guy, a show for young children, was about 2000% more scientific and far less condescending. It's basically Bill Nye just mocking conservatives and strongly implying that conservative disputes of political issues are unscientific, but not proving a shred of actual science to back up his claims.

It feels like it's just some guy who got a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering calling himself a scientist and regurgitating unscientific political viewpoints while yelling at you and getting his belly rubbed by his miraculously existent studio audience. Which is exactly what it is.

Even if I were a bleeding heart liberal progressive I would cringe at how smug, pretentious, and condescending this drivel is. At one point, after a disgusting and grotesquely worded song about sex and gender, there is a cartoon video of several ice cream cones in which all the flavors other than vanilla (symbolizing a cis, white, male) are mocking his theism and urging him to participate in some sort of pansexual ice cream orgy. It's horribly offensive, in the poorest of taste, and frankly nonsensical.

I'm appalled that Netflix would even participate in this after the dozens of actual watchable shows and movies they've produced.

Honestly, my first reaction was that it seemed like someone made a video mocking the profound lack of scientific evidence or process that back up Nye's many claims, but it is in fact Bill himself and it is horrifyingly real.

To be completely honest I'm having trouble putting into words how incredibly terrible this show is.

Put simply, this show is Bill Nye, a man with a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering, spouting off his extremely leftist political views while pretending to be an actual scientist and acting like he even came relatively close to scientifically proving his claims. It is hands down one of the worst things I've ever seen in my entire life.