Impulse

This show fooled me in thinking it might be a sci-fi mystery drama using the Jumper idea, but it ended up being a confusing mess. The "sci-fi teen has superpowers" elements made no sense whatsoever. It just felt like the developers couldn't decide on weather to make it a superhero story or rather a teenage drama with high school issues. The main character was so bad written that you end up hating or at least disliking her completely. I just watched it to see if things got better cause it made me feel bad for wasting the time, but it just got worse by the end of it.

While the market is currently saturated with scifi and superpowered humans not all of those shows are made well. Impulse is made better than most of the other shows it competes with despite it likely being aimed at catching high school aged female eyes. The acting and effects are good. Characters are good. I thought this was a ripoff of Jumper but it's based on the same novel as that movie.

As a big fan of the genre, I'm pretty harsh towards a few Netflix series fight scenes that are abysmal and the entire inhumane Inhuman fiasco. None of that train wreckage to be found in Impulse. Production quality exceeds CW offerings, as well as The Gifted and AOS. It has the feel of a serious drama not a feel good teen show. No plugging in of the same shots of a location like you could catch the first season of Bosch on Amazon. If not for the music tracks at certain points I'd question the targeted demographics. Plenty of strong and intelligent female characters.

A fair few reviews on here, so I'll try not to cover the same ground.

I came to this show for the superpowers but they take a back seat for much of the series in favour of drama, intrigue and teen-life. Without the sci-fi element I may not have watched and that would have been my loss. The acting (including the main actress who comes in for some flack in some other reviews) is on point throughout, neither over nor under played. Film-making is well-done - again avoiding extremes and simply serving the story really well. Pacing is spot on.

Major issues (that affect people in real life) are handled intelligently, honestly and without hyperbole. Both male and female characters are three dimensional enough to be believable and engaging. Few characters are black and white, almost all have shades of grey.

So far (I'm up to episode 7) this has been a refreshing addition in a rather quiet time of the year. If you want a bit more grit with your super-hero tales, are happy to see female lead characters who are actually human and have an appreciation for well crafted TV then this will either provide a pleasant diversion or you'll find a show that nudges you towards bingeing.

More like this please, makers of TV shows!!!

Was worth binge watching. Kind of slow buildup to her learning her abilities. Always left you wanting to see her using her ability more on purpose than by accident every episode. Was sometimes more like an after school special with an 1-800 number at the end but that's what i think the writers really wanted to do. Hopefully if there is a sesson 2 they can just make it about her abilities and leave the morel stories on the writing room table. Like I said though, was worth a binge watch.

This is sort of a scifi in that the scifi part is only about 10% of the show and the rest is about this angry little girl that screams and fights with her mother, friends, and the cops the whole time, useless drama in my opinion. The characters should have been well developed by the end of S01 and lets get on with it already. Basically this is about the main character Henry who has a special ability she cant come to terms with.....anyone normal would embrace it and learn to control it and use it either for good or bad....but not Henry. Her personality is basically that of an angry little school girl that grates on your nerves from the beginning....a serious personality defect....for whatever reason. There are some other, sort of, intertwining sub and parallel plots going on too, some add to the show, some don't. Overall it's fair but I think it could have been better and worse. So only a 7 but could really go in either direction if she doesn't wise up. Maybe high schoolers will like this....