Reviews

While the show has great location scenery and is visually beautiful at times, and has great music, it really is a waste of time. The dialogue is some of the worst I've ever seen... It seems like the actors are just improving everything, badly. The two leads have no chemistry together. The pacing and editing are baffling. One minute the main characters seem completely unattracted to each other, then suddenly they're humping, then suddenly they're in love, with no evidence of that relationship growth presented. The growth is just shoved in our faces as fact with no story arc to back it up. Then there is 40 minutes of that bad dialogue, then finally some build up to action, but then they complely skip the action and cut to the main characters reacting to the action that wasn't even shown. Did they run out of money for the non-dialogue parts?

I hope this comes back for a season 3. Occasionally they'll have a bad episode, but overall it is a good show. I never watched the original, I couldn't stand Bakula and the other lead actor, but I like this version. When the episodes are good, they focus on time travel and the story. When the episodes are bad, the worst is when they grind the story to a halt to preach and it seems more like an after-school public service announcement rather than tv. Sometimes it will also get bad when they try to force interpersonal relationship drama... Not as bad as the show Manifest, but still annoying. The trans/non-binary-focused episode(s) were by far the most poorly written. Star Trek TNG, my all time favorite show, found a way to tell stories that had strong morals of inclusive, liberal values in a manner that kept the storytelling paramount, and were highly entertaining, but when this show tries to tell a trans moral story, it forgets that it needs to keep the storytelling paramount, thus the afterschool PSA feeling.

This movie was deeply disappointing. If you want to see a good movie about a WW2 STEM project leader, see The Imitation Game instead.

I think if someone else took all the raw footage from this movie and completely re-edited it, and re-did everything else, like the music/soundtrack, etc, there is a really great movie that COULD be made...the acting was fantastic, and historically this is a fascinating topic...but this movie isn't it.

This felt like watching a Jackson Pollock painting being made... like paint randomly and chaotically splattered againt a canvas with little rhyme or reason, and no discernable forms or shapes. It felt like the makers of this movie cared solely about proving they were "arTISTEs", and what suffered was actual storytelling.

The first 30 to 45 minutes were a mess. The whole movie suffered from absurdly short scenes that jump all over in time through out of context events that assault you like a random spray of shotgun pellets. Scene changes are jarring, and have no flow.

I expected something more to do with the Manhattan project and scientists, but instead got something that was a muddled mess of unspecified time periods, with the maker of the movie trying way too hard to be mysterious in order to confuse the audience for 2.5 hours before allowing them to realize that the movie was really mostly about a beef between Oppenheimer and one senator, with a little bit of Oppenheimer's introspection and Monday morning quarterbacking whether he had made the world a better or worse place thrown in. Again, Oppenheimer's introspection was so random, and chaotically scattered that it has no flow. You couldn't feel him changing over time, instead it bounced disjointedly all over the place. One scene he seems to have no regrets, the next he does, the next he doesn't, the next he does. His love life was similarly revealed in scatter shot, and seemed irrelevant to anything else. The movie seemed to be trying to tell too many stories: his love life, his college life, his professional life, his politics, his blacklisting after the Manhattan project, his beef with that 1 senator, all as separate stories that didn't tie together at all. It would have been better to pick 1 or 2 of those stories and gone deeper into them than to try to tell all of them in 1 movie. Way too many time periods shown, in way too confusing of a method. Again, terrible storytelling of a story that had so much potential.

Visual and audio representations of Oppenheimer's psychological state, essentially delivered to the audience as hallucinations, were randomly thrust upon us, so the movie bounced violently between seemingly more documentary to suddenly dreamworld fantasy. Unlike the tv show Scrubs where JD's daydreams felt like a natural extension of his character, the fantasy world here felt unnatural, and like the director was grinding the flow of the movie, what little flow there was, to a halt to make a public service announcement of how the character was feeling.

Music was over the top. Everything had music. It was annoying. It was noticable how the music was trying to manipulate my emotions, to make up for the poor storytelling being too impotent to do that on its own.

Note to all directors: Don't be afraid to use title cards indicationg time and location when you suddenly change time or location. There's a reason why movies do that.

Season 1 was decent. The makers clearly are trying to shock the viewers with gore though, something that I find uninteresting. I've never found shock tactics interesting... For example, I didn't like Howard Stern in the 90s. Shock lacks creativity and intelligence. It is an obvious attempt to push emotional buttons, and should only be used to supplement a story where it fits into the story well, otherwise it detracts and becomes tedious. When shock/gore are at the forefront, it is the entertainment equivalent of chugging unflavored high fructose corn syrup as a meal replacement. I want a real meal, with real flavor. Season 1 at least had a good story, and the gore fit into it fairly well. Season 1 had characters I could invest in and root for, plus there were so many great actor performances. Season 2 lost me... I powered through out of duty, and because at least Wilson, Smart, and Danson's performances were amazing enough to keep me watching. Donovan's accent was baffling and distracting, but the main thing that turned me off was that mafia turf wars, family loyalty tests, and gun fights just bore me. It is entertainment for simpletons. Nothing there to stimulate my brain. Then the last two episodes of season 2 just got ridiculous. Like writers high on magic mushrooms level absurd. And why suddenly introduce a narrator??? I don't know whether the split screen scenes were mimicking something from the 70s, but it was cheesy and annoying too. I started season 3, but was so bored with it, and found the villain so stupid, that I've quit watching and don't know whether I'll ever give it another chance.

This movie depended entirely on dialogue. Not really a good premise, plot, action, etc to work with. Just underdeveloped interpersonal relationships and dialogue. They tried really hard to make the dialogue fast-paced and witty, to make it interesting, but it fell completely flat. Every line felt artificial. It was disappointing because I've loved both Sudekis and Brie in other things they have done, but here it was like they were getting paid more the faster they spat out a sentence. The timing of the back and forth was off. It felt at times like they had memorized their lines a minute earlier and needed to get them out quickly before they forgot any, and other times like they were badly improvising. The dialogue was nowhere near as witty as I'm sure it seemed to the writers. When you can't deliver on either interesting, developed characters, or on the dialogue, in a movie entirely dependent on dialogue and characters, you get a dud... Bad enough that I gave up 2/3 of the way through.

One of the worst episodes in a great show... The ending of this episode was nicely done, and sweet, and I love how the writers intersperse different time periods... But that was only about two percent of the episode, and couldn't make up for the horrendous rest of the episode... Except for the funny exchange between Barney and Marshall on the phone. A hug chunk of time was wasted on the incredibly annoying Marshall trip across half the country story. I don't know if the actor playing Marshall was filming a movie or something and couldn't make it to set, so they worked around him remotely or something? I've heard him say he lost interest in playing that character in later seasons, and it shows. The whole trip was nothing but him being annoying, interacting with over-the-top obnoxious and annoying characters. In much of season 9, I fast-forward through Marshall scenes. The Barney gypsy curse mini-story in this episode was nearly equally dumb.

I loved TNG. I've thought SNW has had great potential, and everything is there except the great stories and a consistent identity. This episode goes back to the well that every Star Trek series goes to: time travel and a visit to earth, often both simultaneously so that they can hold up a mirror to modern real life (but this episode doesn't hold up that mirror, it instead ham-handedly tries to force too much character backstory into 1 episode, dropping all other characters from the story, probably to set up future stories, but harming the quality of this episode). I usually love time travel episodes. The earth visit episodes too-often get butchered and seem cheesy. The problem with this episode is that they butcher both with terrible writing. Characters go through abrupt personality changes like they are suddenly bipolar or something. A character known for her unwavering seriousness falls madly in love at the drop of a hat with a guy who hasn't done anything to warrant falling in love with. Obstacles pop up and are easily knocked down just to give the characters something to do. How many thousands of dollars can you win playing street chess for an hour, and how many times are writers going to re-use the street hustle concept as a way for broke characters to make money? Characters instantly learn new skills like they just downloaded them to their brains like in the Matrix. Jokes are forced. Super cheesy plot twists involving good characters suddenly revealed as wolf in sheep's clothing bad characters... Just every cliché in the book thrown randomly into the script. I've seen everything these characters do and heard everything they say before somewhere else. Music used to try to force unnatural emotional responses in the audience. I started the episode thinking it had a chance to be an 8 or higher, but it kept declining... 6 then 4 then 2. Still better than Star Trek Picard or Deep Space Soap Opera, but not good yet. I'm worried that there is a generation of writers who grew up watching crappy comic book blockbuster movies who have no idea how to write good stories.

Finally a decent story. They made me nervous because the season 1 episode I hated most was the one where Rebecca Romijn's character displayed superpowers... I want my Star Trek to be Star Trek, not Marvel superhero comic book shows (not relevant to this, but I also don't want my Star Trek to be Star Wars either). This episode was the first that revisited that superpower topic, but they at least took it down a much better path. I've criticized this show for multiple personality disorder before, bouncing around from one genre to another and never establishing its own identity. This episode continues that complaint, veering into courtroom drama territory like Law & Order, but FINALLY delivers some good writing and a good story (with a good moral buried in the story, the characteristic that made TNG my all-time favorite tv show)

I'll say the positive thing first, lest you misunderstand my better-than-5 rating: in terms of reboots, this one does its job adequately well. In a sea of reboot flops that I've given way worse ratings to (movies like any Star Wars film after the original trilogy, and the Matrix reboots, or tv shows like CSI Vegas, or Star Trek Picard) this one isn't a complete waste of time. It tells a decent story despite a dearth of dialog, is visually beautiful, and is paced nicely.

Now the tough love: this movie is as formulaic as it gets. Interestingly, one of the main themes of the movie is that a pilot needs to be less conservative in order to do great things, yet the makers of this movie took essentially no risks. Instead of new, bold concepts, they recycle old ones over and over. Cast with a bunch of square-jawed, buff actors, and possibly written via Blockbuster Mad Libs. Tons of references to the 1980s original, good at times, but seemed overdone. Even more self-referential in-movie callbacks, including cheesy one-liners, to the point of eye rolls that nearly detached my retinas. A simplistic, black and white world where one rogue cowboy with a heart of gold, who women can't help but fall in love with, defies orders from rigid superiors to save the day... You can practically hear Lethal Weapon dialog every time a commanding officer chews Maverick out for breaking the rules while being the best. Ed Harris gives a speech that sounded stolen from Agent Smith in The Matrix. The mission is recycled from the Star Wars Death Star fatal vent shaft flaw... I'm surprised Maverick didn't make reference to bullseye'ing womp rats in his T-16 back home.

It feels like a script written in the 1980s, with a mysterious, faceless, generic enemy, that was mothballed until 2022... Which is both a good and bad thing simultaneously. It does accentuate the nostalgia of rebooting an old franchise, one of the main reasons to even give the movie a try, so sure to please the older crowd.

The primary job of everyone involved in making a movie is to communicate a story. The group that made this movie failed miserably in that department. It's pretty, it's artsy, it conveys tone, but I shouldn't have to read the novel before watching the film in order to understand what is going on.

Watching this movie is like watching a foreign language movie without subtitles, or worse, listening to the semi -coherent ramblings of a tinfoil-hat-wearing mentally ill homeless person. There appear to be multiple time eras that bounce around in their nonlinear story, usually without any cues to indicate past versus present... No text indicating time period, no changes in character or scenery appearance to clue me in, no camera or editing work to suggest anything other than a change of location within the same time, or a tiny change of time within a period of a day or week. In an opening scene a character is shot and I thought he was dead, and that future scenes with him were all flashbacks, but then suddenly it is revealed that he didn't die, and those scenes had been the present??? (I don't think they intended for this to be a twist or surprise, so not flagging as a spoiler, they just did a terrible job of communicating past vs present)

A character is hunting for a mole, but the overabundance of underdeveloped characters means we know practically nothing about any of the suspects for us to formuate theories. Good suspense-mystery requires more revelation along the way than this movie offered. It was very badly told.

This is only the 2nd movie I've been disappointed by where I thought the blame belonged to editors (and both movies were released in 2022... is there an editor drought?) It has all the beautiful scenery and music we've come to expect, which is a big reason I didn't give it 3 or less stars. The acting felt inconsistent... Sometimes their usual great job, sometimes it felt like they should have done another take because scenes felt unnatural. I think the vast majority of problems came from editing though. The story didn't flow well... It played like reading off a checklist.

1. "We need a scene that shows 'x'. Check.

2. We need a scene that shows 'y'. Check.

3. We need a scene that shows 'z'. Check.

4. Grumpy butler getting flustered by improper proceedure and saying "harumph!". Check x20.

Scene transitions were abrupt and jarring.

There was a plot that could have been told better, and obstacles seemed to be placed in front of characters like dominos for them to all too easily knock them down, just to show they did and give the audience a cheap win to cheer for.

I can't put my finger on it, but something about character interactions seemed off too. They seemed less intimate than past tv episodes, like they were all standing farther apart and filming zoomed out more. If they had to for Covid reasons, forgivable, but also noticeable.

I fully expected to enjoy this movie, but over the first half began to realize it was awful. This is the first movie I've hated where I place the blame mostly on editing. I think there is an interesting story possibly in there somewhere, but the editing buried it. Parts would skip important character development and I'd have to rely on context cues to fill in the gaps. Other parts dragged on forever with inconsequential fluff scenes. The pacing was just terrible. Halfway through I started fast forwarding a bit, then more, then more until I gave up completely. I don't require fast paced action, but I do require characters I care about and some semblence of a forward moving plot.

Throughout most of this movie I assumed the theme was a sort of variation of "did I save the rescue dog, or did it save me?" There was a big twist at the end though that changed the theme, IMO, to this: regardless of what culture you come from, or what style of communication you use, we all experience the same base emotions, including: love, fear, loss, regret, and the titular desire for vengeance when we've been wronged.

The story is told in 3 parts. The 1st and last parts are extremely short and to the point. The majority of the movie is spent on the 2nd part.

The 1st part is in New York, and establishes who the main character is and what culture he comes from. I had watched the trailer 2 weeks before the movie, and this part did a good job of efficiently conveying what it needed to, so much so that I briefly forgot that most of the movie would be set in Texas.

The 2nd part juxtaposes the New York culture against the Texas culture. They do a great job of not making one seem superior to the other. Both are shown to have strengths and weaknesses, and the cultural differences and ways of communicating lead to humorous moments, like one revealed in the trailer: "How do you take your coffee?" "Um, in the mouth?" They did a good job of not judging Texas girl for not knowing New York guy's method of asking whether she wanted cream or sugar... she wasn't stupid, just to her it was a foreign way of asking, and the miscommunication is what's funny. There were tons of humorous moments like this, and the writing is extremely witty and well done.

The 3rd act I can't say much without spoilers. All I can say is that it happens rather quickly. The twist had to happen if the theme ultimately is what I surmised it to be, but the main character changes personality so abruptly that it can be difficult to find believable.

Like I said, the writing was excellent. Nothing else about the movie detracted, which means everyone else beyond the writers did a good job too. How much one likes the movie probably depends on willingness to accept a few leaps of suspended disbelief at the start and end, whether you recognize the theme for what it is rather than seeking to take offense, and whether you have a decent attention span without the constant stimulation of fights, gun battles, car chases, and prat falls.

This is not Star Trek. This is a dark amalgamation of Battlestar Galactica and a space soap opera. Any time a franchise like this turns from optimistic to dark, it is because they have either run out of good stories, or have succumbed to the lowest common denominator of emotional button pushing. Star Trek TNG is my all time favorite show. I like TOS and Voyager a lot. This is garbage produced by a juvenile mind. They attempt to cover up the shoddy writing with slick cinematography, good music/score, and actors trying desperately to play "cool" detached villains or flawed heros, but it all falls horribly flat because the story, and methods of storytelling are abysmal. They bounce back and forth between the extremes of boring interpersonal relationship drama that I don't care about, and stupid, gratuitous laser fights that try to make up for the boring parts but only make me roll my eyes in disgust. I tried this show when it first came out, put it aside for a couple of years out of disgust, but am now trying to get back into it and am disappointed all over again. They've ruined a good thing.

BTW: any time a franchise takes something that wasn't dark and brooding and tries to make it dark and brooding, whether it is the Bond franchise, Star Trek, Star Wars, you name it, they end up ruining it. It is a sign of either executives trying to take it over or directors and writers who are 2nd rate hacks.

This is a masterpiece of storytelling. The pacing, the doling out of information needed to understand the mystery, is perfect.

It is a bit of a litmus test for those who've been ruined by modern society's dopamine-chasing, fast-foodification. Those who lack patience will give up before episode 4, when the show really begins to sink its hooks with pieces of vital info, and the plot starts to accelerate, with info piling up on info faster and faster until the final episode where multiple stories intersect.

I would say that the method of storytelling is even superior to the story itself. Told in a different way, this show wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

The acting is superb. Sissy Spacek, who achieved fame before my time, continues to earn massive respect from me every time I discover something else she has done in recent years. J. K. Simmons, despite finding him extremely annoying in everything prior, is cast perfectly, and he plays his role flawlessly.

I'm left wanting more.

I have written fiction, and I've watched a lot of entertainment, and I'm in awe of the writing for this show. It isn't often that I acknowledge writing that I think is better than I could do, but this show does it. They will string together dozens of cleverly crafted sentences that are packed with information and hidden emotional bombs, yet done both efficiently and with a natural flow. My own writing tends to be wordy... They manage to pack what would take me 200 words to express into a 6 word offhand joke, such as the disdain a character has for his wife's trust-fund douchey friends. They consistently nail complex and diverse characters, including an especially hilarious take on a tween girl's attitude.

Kaplan's narration is especially fun to listen to, both in terms of writing and delivery.

Dane's performance is epic. She continues the streak of every performance I've witnessed her give in her adult life (I hated My So Called Life) be one of the best I've ever witnessed.

The rest of the cast performs flawlessly too.

The music, especially the parts that sound like a music box that starts normally, then decays, fits perfectly with the mood.

Through S1E4, I'd say the show is not awful, but not good either. Decidedly mediocre.

The main problem is that they are trying WAY too hard to be "cool". The story suffers because of it. Bad guys are too uncomplicated and evil. Their mannerisms, as they attempt to be cool, too ridiculous. Their movements and facial expressions all affectations. The lingo too far removed from present day reality, and I can feel the writer's presence, info on this new world doesn't flow very smoothly. It feels like it is written by video game designers, not tv show writers, but with millions of dollars thrown at it by Amazon to try to cover up the flaws with good special effects, graphics, etc. Definitely feels aimed at teenagers who'd lap up the phony cool without hesitation.

The next problem is that I'm losing half the dialog. I've tried watching the show on 3 different entertainment systems, yet still can't make out half of what they're saying. Not sure whether they have notoriously bad audio techs from United Kingdom, or it is the incredibly thick British and Appalachian accents, or with some characters, speech impediments, or a combination of all of the above.

You can't really give 48 seasons of SNL one single rating... it needs to be by eras that are broken up by when cast members came and left. In general, I like eras with actors who commit hard and don't break character (Phil Hartman, Janet Hooks, Dan Akroyd, Heidi Gardner jump to mind). I dislike actors who break character (Jimmy Fallon), including constantly smirking (Keenan Thompson), or that use the show as public therapy to work through psychological trauma (Kyle Mooney, Leslie Jones, Pete Davidson). Now that NBC has pulled it off of Hulu and put it on Peacock, I'm done watching it though, which, combined with how awful the show has been the last few seasons, is why I gave the overall 48 seasons a poor rating of 3. Put it back on Hulu and I'd give it a 6. I'm not paying yet more money for yet another streaming service (Peacock), especially given NBC's terrible content.

By era: --- 1970s: 4 stars: Dan Akroyd was phenomenal, one of my all-time favorites. Jane Curtin and Chevy Chase were very good. I liked Gilda Radner and Bill Murray at times, but often I quickly tired of their characters. I thought John Belushi was awful, and every character he played seemed like a jerk, not funny. A few sketch jems, but a lot of duds.

--- Early 1980s: 2 stars: Eddie Murphy had moments of comedy brilliance. Joe Piscopo was mediocre. Martin Short had a few good sketches, but some got stale quickly. Other than those occasion bright spots, this was a terrible era.

--- Late 1980s into early 1990s: 10 stars: Phil Hartman was my all-time favorite cast member. He could play the absurd with the straightest of faces. Dana Carvey and Jan Hooks were also fantastic. I liked Dennis Miller's news, other than Tina Fey, he was the best to do it, despite turning into am awful right-wing kook later. The rest of the cast was also typically very good, making for a great ensemble.

--- Early to mid-1990s: 6 stars: The Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, David Spade crew took over. This was my high school era, when SNL writers claim everyone says is the best SNL, regardless of when they went to high school, but this was not my favorite cast. They had their moments, like the Shlitz Gay ad and Matt Foley: Van Down By The River, but often Sandler and Spade skits just seemed mean and fell flat, or were just too weird. Norm McDonald was awful, my least favorite cast member ever. In Living Color really gave SNL a run for its money during this era too.

--- mid-1990s cast turnover part 1: 1 star: Nothing worth watching, despite some otherwise talented actors who did really well in other shows (Michael McKean, Mark McKinney).

--- late 1990s resurgence: 7 stars: Darrell Hammond is another all-time favorite of mine, again, he could play the absurd with a straight face. Will Ferrell was a star, but both he and Jim Breuer could be over the top obnoxious and weird and tiresome. Cheri Oteri, Molly Shannon, and Ana Gasteyer had some good, memorable sketches. Colin Quinn was awful, but still better than Norm McDonald. Mad TV was really good during this era, giving SNL serious competition.

--- late 1990s into early aughts: 5 stars: Jimmy Fallon couldn't stay in character, Tracy Morgan was obnoxious and awful. Chris Kattan's characters were all obnoxious. Maya Rudolph's characters were tedious. The only two things I really enjoyed this era were Chris Parnell, some veterans noted in previous eras who stuck around, and Tina Fey.

--- early aughts part 2: 7 stars: Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, and Will Forte added some nice support to a few good veterans.

--- mid to late aughts: 9 stars: Jason Sudeikis is another favorite of mine. Kristen Wiig, especially early in her tenure, had moments of brilliance, but later became just too weird and tiresome. I loved Bill Hader too.

--- early 20-teens: 7 stars: Jay Pharoah was one of the best impersonators I've ever seen, but otherwise didn't get written for as well as he should have. Bobby Moynihan went from awful to amazing somewhere around his 2nd or 3rd year. Loved Taran Killam and Vanessa Bayer.

--- mid to late 20-teens: 5 stars: Some of Cecily Strong's early work was hilarious. Kate McKinnon had a fantastic start, but like Wiig, later in her tenure her characters just became too weird and tedious. Aidy Bryant had some hits, some misses. Beck Bennet could play the absurd with a straight face, so I liked him. Kyle Mooney was one of my least favorite cast members, he only made me laugh once, in his final season. Leslie Jones, Pete Davidson, and Michael Che also hardly ever made me laugh.

--- late 20-teens into 2020s: 5 stars: The era of great actors with mostly awful writing. Alex Moffat and Mikey Day were often great, especially together. Heidi Gardner is amazing, and could play dramatic roles just as easily as comedic. Chloe Fineman is turning into a star. The writers lean on rap videos and game shows way too much, and had a lot of duds with a few jems here and there.

--- 2020s: 1 star: The show is really falling apart. The Pandemic didn't help. Still some good actors, but writing is only occasionally good. Pulling the show from Hulu killed it for me. I'm no longer watching.

This show used to be good, but now the only good thing remaining is the Roots band. Fallon seems tired of his job, and like Letterman used to be, more interested in wasting time to run the clock out than actually doing anything interesting. The games they play with celebrities I always fast forward through. I don't envy writers who have to produce comedy daily, but they've lost their mojo. They need to demolish this show and start over from scratch with a new host and writers... not that I'd watch now that they've pulled in from Hulu. I'm not paying for yet another streaming service, especially not nbc and their inferior content.

Are the people who make this once great show in a game of chicken with Hulu or its fans, to see how bad they can make it before they get canceled or fans stop watching? I just wrote a review earlier today praising The Americans for making engaging entertainment without resorting to constant fights, chases, or emotional outbursts, but with Handmaid's Tale they've taken it to the extreme of hardly anything of note ever happening, and it has become so boring. Whoever is writing this is hyper-focused on conveying emotion via fascial expressions, sacrificing plot and realistic details in the process. You can't make a show that is 90% Wayne's World unnecessarily extreme close-ups of June or Serena's face, 9% dialog that sounds like the actors were told about the scene seconds before shooting it and had to improvise every word, and 1% stuff actually happening. This episode was awful. Remember that thing that happened in the past? Here's 5 minutes of June thinking about and her facial expressions as she gets emotional. Now here's 2 minutes of Serena thinking about it and her face as she gets emotional. Oh, and Season 4's absurd Canadian government behavior continues, & they hold prisoners in cushy resorts, letting prisoners meet with each other as they please or as it fits the writer's needs.

Season 1 was pretty good. Season 2 was ok. Season 3 it started tanking and the plot began meandering aimlessly. Season 4 was horrendous. Season 5 is looking abysmal. While I'm griping, from a past episode, I still can't believe the tank on a truck transporting milk would have interior lighting, or an interior liquid release valve.

TV/MOVIE EXECS, PRODUCERS, SHOW RUNNERS, DIRECTORS, AND WRITERS TAKE NOTE: The Americans should be your guide for how entertainment does NOT need constant, long fights, car chases, or emotional outbursts. It does NOT need clearly defined, black & white, un-nuanced good guys versus bad guys. It does NOT need music shoved in the audience's ears. A show can have audiences other than just teens with Attention Deficit Disorder.

It can, like The Americans, be built on: a great premise plus a fascinating story that takes its time developing; suspence and drama; writers who don't over-write scenes and let superb actors wordlessly convey thoughts and emotions with facial expressions and body posture, to the point of having a wordless 2 minuute long dinner scene that conveys more relationship tension than any screaming match could; subtle background music (without singers) that seamlessly blend into the background (until season 6).

So many things that I've griped about in IMDB reviews of other shows or movies over and over, The Americans did right, especially in seasons 1 through 4. One of my favorite things about the show is that it made me feel for people on both sides of the cold war... no one seemed completely good or completely bad. The characters were deep and complex. The situations written for them were complex, with choices that had pros and cons no matter what path they chose, and decisons made sometimes seemed like the best choice based on info at hand, until more info was revealed indicating how assumptions, conjecture, and mistrust can mislead those decisions.

After I quickly got over my initial kneejerk reaction of "this is trying to copy Homeland, except set in 1980s cold war", I loved the show. My complaints for this show: 1) season 6 the music suddenly became obnoxious, intrusive, and inappropriate, especially the first half of S6. 2) Season 5 a new young character was introduced, and they kept randomly bouncing back and forth between an older main character and the new young character, with too little explanation of what was happening, and for much of the season I mistakenly thought they were flashbacks to a younger version of the main character. Then later the new character just disappeared from the show and all the time they spent on that character in S5 seemed pointless. The new character didn't impact the story at all and seemed like a waste of time. They could have resolved this in the series ending, but didn't. 3) although most reviewers loved the ending, I found it a bit baffling... parts of it were good, but several characters made decisions that seemed like very sudden, drastic, unrealistic shifts in personality.

They had a great show from episode 2 to the penultimate episode of each season, but then would ruin it with the season finale and 1st episode by making it a godawful cheesy soap-opera too-serious, overdramatic cliché fest. Happened end of season 3, start of season 4, now end of season 4 again.

I had been worried during the season 3 final episode and its continuation into S4E1 that they were ruining Castle with endless overdramatic clichés and absurdity and losing sense of the show's personality up to that point... this episode was a triumphant return to Castle form. Good (but generally predictable) format, character interaction, and suspect twists, and not taking themselves overly seriously or constantly sounding like Danny Glover in Leathal Weapon. Less overacting and awfully written dialog than the previous 2 episodes. Quite relieved.

A masterclass in storytelling. Some people might be too impatient to deal with the slower parts in the first few episodes, but those have good drama and set up the rest beautifully. Secondary characters unexpectedly blossom into primary characters, and there were several season 1 episodes that had really good plot twists. They do a great job of presenting thr necessary details without telegraphing the plot twists until the characters are ready to reveal them. Also really enjoy the balance between drama and action, and character development and dialog. Top notch actors delivered as expected.