temporaldisturbance

I learned to tolerate politics injected in massive quantities into modern TV, as long as the writing is good. Having watched 1.5 episodes of this show, it's become blatantly obvious that the writing is really bad.

Nevermind the differences in source material, just the plain quality of this show makes its cheesy old "Sabrina" predecessor look like a masterpiece.

Everything is flat. The main actress is cast well, but she's given bad lines and her character is flat and uninteresting. Other actors don't even fare that well. They have bad lines and they're overacting, again, like subpar cartoon villains, firing off blatant expository dialogue.

They're not believable in the slightest. None of them are. I don't believe that character X lived in isolation for decades, or that character Y is wise enough to warrant their standing in that world.

They're all just actors in make-up. That is when you know - the show failed.

How is this getting high ratings? Are they all paid reviewers? To think, Netflix pushed 3rd season of "Stranger Things" to 2019... for this?! Where do I even start... how about enumerating all the major problems with this show.

1. Reliance on acting skills of bad child actors. One of them in particular, the boy in glasses, ruins every scene he's in, as he visibly struggles to repeat the lines. His fakeness removes immersion and converts everything into a mundane filming set.

2. Constant jumps between time periods. They remove suspense from earlier scenes because you've already seen the people involved 30 years down the line, and know who will survive the "childhood scares". They also create confusion as this show tries to imitate "Westworld" with its "delayed revelations". This storytelling method is annoying, pretentious, and boring.

3. Lethargic pacing. This show is the showcase for Netflix's methodology of taking one episode's worth of content and stretching it into 4. When it comes to pacing, this show makes season 2 of "Walking Dead" look like an excitement-packed adventure. Seriously, between the scarce CGI scares, it's hard to stay awake. Which brings us to

4. Flat characters/bad dialogue. The characters are not believable. They don't speak or react like real people. They're flat cut-outs, droning boring expository dialogue, stalling for time. It's almost as if whoever did "Iron Fist" and "The Defenders" was in charge of this project, too.

5. Drab color palette. Another Netflix trademark. While some of their shows manage to have a decent color palette (OITNB for example), this one falls victim to the usual Netflixing, where they suck the life out of the picture and darken it to obscure their low budget and/or cheap filming equipment.

In all of 6 episodes I've forced myself to stay awake through, only one actually seemed to have a story. It reminded me a bit of "LOST". But really, is that the kind of ratio we're shooting for? Watch 5 episodes of throwaway garbage just to get to the good episode which could be told without the other 5?

This show is pretty much the worst of Netflix. Even if it redeems itself somehow in episodes that follow... I simply ran out of will to push myself further. After work, I want to be entertained... not tortured. Simple as that.

I am writing this review while episode 4 of this show is playing in background. It just drags on and on like some kind of reanimated corpse. So I had to distract myself by doing a public service announcement: avoid this mess.

All of the actors are miscast. None of the characters have a hint of developing into anything resembling a real person. They're all just pretty people cast to play random roles.

A guy in a cop costume we're supposed to believe is a cop, a woman in a lab coat who's supposed to be a doctor...

None successfully passing for their assigned roles.

This show could've been saved if it all could hang on credibility of the lead actor, but he is one of the more jarring and unbelievable characters.

And finally, worst of all, there's too much padding, and the plot moves along at snail's pace. It is a joyless, un-fun, dull, passion-less, formulaic affair.

Avoid.