The Equalizer

Queen Latifah is poorly cast in this role. She's just not believable as a skilled CIA agent. Also the writing is blah... absolutely zero nuance. You are directly told what pretty much every character's traits are.

The fight scenes are edited rather poorly as well. Jump cut after jump cut, it's not stylized it's just annoying.

It's unfortunate because the source material is quite strong, but, this attempt is very weak. Perhaps it'll get better after a few more episodes but the first two were bad enough that I'm not going to stick around to find out.

I watched the 1st episode hoping to rekindle some of that magic from the 1985 TV series starring Edward Woodward. Everything about that series was stellar, including the electrifying theme music composed by ex-Police Stewart Copeland. Everything about this remake is the opposite. The plot's simplistic beyond credibility, the protagonist hardly finds herself in any life threatening situation, and because everything from point A to Z appears as contrived as a 10-piece jigsaw puzzle, there's no suspense to speak of. Sad. I had expected much more from this and from 'Clarice'. Thank goodness for WandaVision. My opinion is based on the first two episodes.

Even though the Denzel releases had their own minor flaws, they were entertaining and the actor suited the role, and the story was interesting. In this reboot however it just seems ludicrous to have cast Queen Latifah in this role, even though she does do good roles elsewhere.

It just was a bit on the nose, I won't be watching it.

This is just not good television. The jump cuts are annoying, there is no believability in Queen Latifah being a seasoned fighter, and even for a network procedural, the writing is generic and over-the-top-hammy at best.

To be fair, my parents like this show for what it is, so I decided to watch the 1st episode with them. And yikes.

It has some likable people ( stand-outs being Tory Kittles and Adam Goldberg) but it just feels like a series trying to be something rather than actually being it.

The concept of "show, don't tell" was completely lost on the writers room. Every character had to describe every other character as "the best of the best", "the best the agency ever had", "the best I've ever seen".

If you have to tell your audience someone is the best, then they are probably not. The writers are just getting in their own way with excessive dialogue when some simple staging would allow viewers to come to their own conclusions., Instead, we're being TOLD everything.

Also, Queen Latifah is a good actress. She is, however, remarkably miscast in this series. The writers aren't writing to her strengths-- rock solid persona and strong delivery. Instead, they're trying to portray her as a seasoned fighter and are putting her in scenes where she's shown being physically violent. Those scenes fall flat due to the excessive jump cuts needed to compensate for the actress' lack of natural physicality. The classic 80's series did this well-- writing for McCall as a seasoned veteran in his late 50's vs. a modern spec ops warrior. As such, the original McCall used intimidation more than direct physical violence as his key weapon.

This series could be saved but it needs some heavy reworking. Right now it feels like "Equalizer in Name Only". Branding this as a remake of the original series is a disservice to all involved. Instead, create a brand new character for your very talented lead and stop trying to retread the past.