I know that Spielberg signed his name under this and I can't hold it against him, who's going to produce Sci-Fi if he won't? But when he signs his name he also needs to exercise some actual creative control, slap that stupid guy and send him back to do a rewrite instead of being an absentee landlord. He made the same mistake with that nonsense show in which dinos "liked to eat nickel" by a "great mind" of that Braga creature.
Sci-Fi is a genre of ideas, genre for smart people. Melodrama is genre for stupid people to wipe their tears on stupid "oh so emmo" concoctions. They don't live in the same universe and if you mix that you lose all audience. Melodrama lovers can't understand even a single word of Sci-Fi and Sci-Fi lovers puke when they see sappy "designs". Every character has a "sad backstory" which stinks on PVC and formaldehyde beyond endurance and destroys what could have been a decent average show.
In this show every episode is a steaming pile of sap concoctions. What was supposed to be the Sci-Fi "part" was spent in 16 min of the 1st episode, 8 of the 2nd, 4 of the 3rd 2 of the 4th, 1 of the 5th. Then it flatlined but didn't awake as The OA :-)))
Seriously, if he wants to do something really good he needs to stand behind a show like "The OA". I'm sure Brit Marling wouldn't have refused extra budget :-) and a better distribution channel and he'd have something he'd be proud to show around instead of having to hide his name (literally in this case).
The sole bright spot of this show is Sarah Shahi. She's in that class that can make a wooden pole look alive at the other side of the frame but she can't revive brainded scripts - even gods have their limits :-))
So, Steve, be nice, next time, give Brit this budget and you can ask Sarah to join her latter :-) At least she'll get to practice some good non-verbal acting and to learn text that is worth something.
