The Messengers

I actually like this show and DVR it. Considering I'm an atheist, that's a pretty good review. Yeah, it's not for everybody, but if you kept an open mind and just enter the storyline with a grain of salt, it wasn't a bad show. The character building progressed with each episode and became more informative as the show progressed. Unfortunately, the shows shelf life is a little under the gun, do to its nature, unless of course they followed the "7 years" which would have made for a great rewrite of the bibles revaluations story. In short, I liked it, I watched it and enjoyed it. When I seen it was being canceled, I was disapproving. Everybody loves a good story about the end of the world.

It's one of those shows.

You know, the ones where extraterrestrial or supernatural or other-dimensional stuff happens, and then we watch flat and uninteresting characters navigate contrived plot twists for the rest of the season while some sort of "conspiracy" unfolds.

It didn't forget to include teenagers in the mix, because, you know, the committee which designed this show wanted to appeal to all possible demographics.

At the end of the season there will be a stupid cliffhanger which the writers won't know how to resolve, and then the show will be mercifully canceled and free up the air slot for something far more entertaining, such as a show about optimal ways to fold laundry.

Who greenlit this derivative, soulless schlock in 2014 and thought it was a good idea?

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.

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.

I found this show very entertaining. Nearly everything about it could have been better, but I found it very entertaining anyway. The religious angle is not heavy handed, and there were some clever plot twists that I did not see coming. Like a good B movie, I felt that this show's shortcomings actually added to its charm.