acg_imdb

I am struggling to finish Episode 2, but watching this series is like a Groundhog Day of documentaries. The amount of recaps, rehashing, replays and repetition following every single commercial break quickly progresses from bizarre to ludicrous, to the point that there is hardly any new material brought in before the next commercial break, after which the recaps start all over again.

I cannot recall a prior series that had this much padding and repetition stuffed into it, simply to fill out its time slot. Seek out your true-crime mysteries elsewhere.

This series (of which only the first episode is available on Hulu as of this writing) gets off to a good semi-mysterious start {AND HERE WE HAVE THE FIRST SET OF COMMERCIAL INTERRUPTIONS BY HULU}, including an almost too-perfect meetup {YES! TIME FOR ANOTHER 2 MINUTES OF COMMERCIALS} between two young mothers {BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! SO MANY COMMERCIALS!} and their daughters {DIDN'T WE JUST HAVE A COMMERCIAL BREAK? WE FORGOT! HERE ARE MORE ADS JUST IN CASE!}, all of whom hit it off immediately {DID WE MENTION THAT YOU WILL HAVE PLENTY OF TIME TO GO TO THE BATHROOM?}, while we of course wait {WHILE MORE COMMERCIALS RUN, RIGHT?} to see where things are going to go {PROBABLY TO COMMERCIAL, IF WE HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT} sideways.

Episode One keeps the necessary exposition to a minimum {THEY NEED TO BE CONCISE BECAUSE WE NEED TO INTERRUPT FOR MORE COMMERCIALS} with only one or two moments of foreboding {PROBABLY WONDERING WHEN THE NEXT COMMERCIAL WILL APPEAR}, but how well they can maintain this competent buildup of suspense remains to be seen {OR MAYBE NOT. HEY, WHERE'D EVERYBODY GO?}.

Episode 7 is really starting to try my patience. I will remember this one as where the wheels came off the screenplay, and all the disbelief I was trying to suspend came crashing down.

There have been a number of scenes along the way where no one is doing anything in particular, but a big long chunk of dialogue must be churned through in order to move the plot forward, or talk at length about someone's feelings (you could almost hear the pages flipping in the source novel), or at least have big long staring sessions at the other character, much more silence than any two real people would have in one sitting. (This was especially true in the Afghanistan scenes, where baffled stares could have been plausible, except that we knew that most of the major characters could express themselves in passable English if they would just, y'know, start talking.)

But when some long-awaited action finally occurs in Episode 7, it just yields more questions, such as: Did the budget for extras run out? In particular, a shootout at what we'll call an important local public facility seems to generate no notice from anyone; in fact the entire building seems deserted except for one employee at the front desk, despite all the parked cars out front. The production has had a lot of past scenes where the book just doesn't produce an exciting (or even logical) presentation on the screen, and this episode has more than most.

I'm too far in to quit now, but this would have been more enjoyable if someone had perhaps reviewed the script one last time before, um, all the shooting started.