The Watcher

I'm a huge fan of Ryan Murphy's productions but this was painfully pitiful. A collection of wonderful actors completely misused. Mia Farrow was the only bright spot in this ludicrous story. There were twists for the sake of twists, and inconsistencies for the sake of inconsistencies. Every character was a caricature and left me wondering why the actors chose to do this. However, if it were advertised as a parody then it wouldn't be so bad. Producers seem to be loosely basing their productions on true stories with hopes of connecting to an audience with the most basic primal need of curiosity. The Watcher was ridiculous and an embarrassment. True, I wasn't obligated to watch the entire series but I continued to hold out hope that the magnificent cast would save this show from itself. Didn't happen.

I feel like somebody just ripped me off. I watched all 7 episodes because the cast was amazing and honestly the story DID have potential. The ending was one of the laziest bits of "writing" I've ever seen. It was as if the writer wrote themselves into too many dead ends, and tried too hard to build this huge tapestry that made no sense whatsoever that they decided to just give up on writing a conclusion. Imagine reading a really long novel only to reach the end and find out the final chapter was removed. That's the best analogy I can think of for this mess of a show. Forever hating myself for watching all 7 damn episodes... The brilliant cast did their part though; the acting was great. Not enough to fill the massive holes in the series though.

When I first started watching, I was hooked. It was clear that this was going to be an interesting story and it caught and peaked my interest even more because I intentionally did not read up about the true story prior to watching.

It was good for the first few episodes but then it started to get sloppy. Every single person seemed like a potential suspect and certain pieces of information was just left unsolved. Too many plot holes. It began to feel like I was on a merry-go-round that was never going to lead anywhere. The show just became frantic with no clear direction, which ultimately spoiled it for me. I watched until the end to see if it became better, but it didn't. It was an ok watch but i wouldn't watch it again. A little disappointing.

So, the backstory on this is pretty underwhelming in my opinion. 3 letters and people that didn't even move in. So, the writers really had a very blank slate to create something amazing. It seemed like they were on track but episode 4 was when all hope was lost for me.

You could see very clearly that they lost their way and didn't know how to close this. 7 episodes was just dragging out a story that was running out of fuel after 3. There is a lot of filler in the first three episodes but you can overlook that with anticipation that something great is just around the corner. Unfortunately when you turn the corner, there is just a bag of meh.

I can think of several ways this could have gone that would have been much better. Some of the stuff is just so far out there is is just insulting to your intelligence. This concept would drive most anyone nuts for sure, but humans are pretty predictable and the characters in this just seem to act in repetitive ways that make the story just annoying.

A real missed opportunity.

I feel like this show was written by someone who thinks they're a very clever writer. There are constant occurrences of misdirection throughout the show but the issue with this is that, if you just take a couple seconds to actually think about it, you see right though it. It's like the second any information is divulged to the main characters they just automatically run with it instead of taking a step back to use their brain..

...without giving anything away I'll just give a relatable example. Imagine a movie where the main character's parents were killed with a golf club by a man in a red hat. Then 40 years later the main character is golfing and sees someone else on the green in a red hat... so they go up to this person and start bearing them up mercilessly... but the person they're beating up is only like 19 or 20 years old... meaning there's no way in hell they could have been the murderer..

That's what happens in this show over and over and over again. It's like the writer thinks they're being clever by relating one thing to another to misdirect you but entirely lacks the ability to connect the pieces logically.

Nobody in this show has a single ounce of common sense and it gets frustrating so fast and so frequently. Idk imagine someone gets shot and everyone in the area looks in the direction where they thought the bullet was coming from and they just see a baby in a cradle sleeping.. well in reality we can deduce that it 100% was not this sleeping baby that shot someone.. but in this show, all they would think would be, "man shot. Gunshot come from that direction. Sleeping baby in that direction. Must be sleeping baby. Everyone attack sleeping baby"

Just, not a well-written show at all.