The Messengers

A meteor crashes onto the Trinity nuclear test site and a man rises from the crater. A shockwave is released and a few selected individuals are knocked unconscious. The man turns out to be the devil. The people hit by the shockwave are strangers who become angels with special individual powers tasked with stopping the rise of the four horsemen and the Apocalypse.

This CW traffics in the Biblical Apocalypse although it may be sacrilegious to turn angels into X-Men. Some of it is simplifying. I'm willing to root for the show which has a couple of familiar faces. It's not until the devil do something more complex and the Angel of Death reveal that the show gets better. It's too little too late as the show gets cancelled after 13 episodes. There is another problem with the story telling since the four horsemen are always expected to rise. If they don't rise, there is no show. It's trying to be a battle but some parts of the outcome are never in doubt. That keeps the tension at a lower level. Overall, it's a good enough, but not great show.

First, I wanted to like this. CW's "I, Zombie" has been a truly clever new series, and "The Flash" understands the fine line between Super Hero Fantasy versus Super Hero Science Fiction, favoring the latter. Both series have likable characters who you grow to care about, and they become deeper and more nuanced as the series progresses.

This delivers none of that. Instead you are immediately confronted as to why Lucifer needs to show up via a Meteor Impact, or why God has chosen the actions of these six people to stop the Apocalypse. He's VERY unhappy with us, but what's really mysterious is why He chooses any of these characters to give us one last chance!?!. Trust me, none of them are Noah nor Lot.

The series suffers from trying to bring too many main players too quickly onto the screen for you to develop that much attachment to them. What is supremely annoying though is that instead of cleverly weaving the characters to ending up at the same place, evidently God is heavy handed and just pushes them all to the same locations with the subtlety of a Political Attack Ad. This happens both at the beginning, sort of, and then at the end of the second episode. Since nothing terribly significant come from this it's not even a plot spoiler. THAT'S an even bigger problem.

The acting ranges from decent to more than a bit over the top, though I don't know if the latter is due to the script, director, or the actors involved. It's not a good sign when the viewers ask themselves that question. Plus the series cannot make up it's mind about Science versus Divine and Infernal meddling, with an unhealthy does of conspiracy theory thrown in for either paranoia or simple stupidity.

So you have heavy-handed, disjointed, and lazy script writing combined with multiple weakly acted/scripted/directed characters who appear more or less central to the series, and whom you don't care about particularly. I figure I'm only out less than two hours of my life, and I'll forgive CW after their other good series debuting this year. Everyone gets to screw up occasionally. If Apocalyptic is your preference, "Sleepy Hollow" is a much better alternative.

Whether this show was totally amazing or grade A dog moo-moo. I believe no show should be canceled until the season is concluded and you get the full picture of what the show is truly about. The acting is pretty corny I admit, but the concept is actually interesting. I bet when this show ends up on Netflix its going to have 4 or 5 stars lol. People nowadays hardly watch television and mostly watch Hulu, Netflix or even download what they watch. I've seen it time and time again. The show "Jericho" for instance was canceled after 2 seasons due to low rating. Jercho is rated 4 1/2 Stars on Netflx now. Another CW Show "The Tomorrow People" Canceled after 1 season is rated 5 Stars on Netflix and is in the most popular section. Television is slowly dying from the Internet's ever growing grip.

Now a moment of silence for all the shows that were taken from us too soon....

I want to like this show, I really do. But I can't. It's a little too simple, like a rough first draft. The characters are so far one dimensional and each of them has a one track mind. Of course there is the Latino who is into drugs (but really has a heart of gold), the mystical African American who knows all (and what is up with the clichéd African music attached to her revelations?), the scientist who does not want to believe in anything but science (and of course there must be a scientific explanation for God). It could be good, but instead of delving into the mythology, or really exploring these characters, it stifles itself with surface meaning. Oh, and the glowing eyes, a little over that already. Surely there is another way of showing that someone is evil than changing their eyes?

They didn't get the Message. I mean the producers and network executives.

This is another messed up series *designed* (so to speak) to appeal in younger audiences. After vampires, werewolves, heroes, originals, 100s, specials, mutants etc. etc. TV producers decided the last couple of years to give ...the apocalypse a go. Soooo Angels it is! This is the story of 5 (and maybe later 7) young reluctant heroes who are supposed to find the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse and stop the devil from ...well...his devilish evil plans.

God is present, but he likes to give strange ...visions and signs (even to his own ....angels) who must collaborate to stop the ...Rapture, (an act of God by definition). You see Rapture is when all true believers (dead and alive) will be taken from the earth by God into heaven. Seems like a good thing. Why God himself wants to prevent his own doing? Anyway...

The actors are all unknown to me and they seem really uncharismatic and forgettable. Except one who looks like a young version of "The mentalist". Vest and all. Their acting is really bad. No uprising stars here, sorry.

The visuals are the usual CGI with the devil having red eyes (sometimes, when the episode cuts to the next scene) and the angels having wings (when they look each other in the mirror), but they can't fly.

The plot is ridiculous in every way. It basically gets down to small detectiv-ish subplots, move there, find that man, prevent that, save this. Small things considering this is ...the Apocalypse.

Oh! And by the way all these happen to the ...U.S. because...well...I don't know...all the righteous people are there ?....or the filming is too expensive to shoot abroad....something like that! .